Cotton-stuffed

‘tulip lips and birdhouse chests. broken alarm clocks and lipstick-stained slot machines. butter. goggles. candles. a garland made of raisins. she drinks cherries and grows weeds and mistakes her garden bed for a dustpan. she is old western and new hollywood and an answering machine you can’t stop calling.’

Our protagonist lives beneath the gaze of a tapestry in the home of her bell-tongued grandmother. Even in its absence, the gaze of the tapestry follows her – as her family migrate from Peru to Australia and begins to splinter apart, as she grasps to a tentative place on monkey bars and in office cubicles, as she learns to wax her body and to morph herself for ideas of love – until something changes her vision of all that is beautiful.

From award-winning poet Arantza García Ferrand, Cotton-stuffed is a collaged collection of idioms and ephemera and conversations with succulents. It is a questioning of archives and who is allowed into them. And mostly, it is a coming-of-age love letter to queer relationships, migrant families and anyone feeling the tugs and shifts of identity.

Arantza García Ferrand is a Peruvian writer living and performing on Kaurna Yerta, South Australia. She was shortlisted for the Deep Creek residency in 2025, and has had her work published in Cordite Poetry Review, Pure Slush, Sweatshop, Word Travels and Red Room Poetry. Arantza was the 2025 Australian Slam Champion, having competed in the national finals at the Sydney Opera House, and has performed her work across festivals, galleries and events.

If you enjoyed Cotton-stuffed, we suggest:

• Picking up the classic queer coming-of-age story, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

• Exploring diaspora identity via collage in Dictée by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

• Reading more hybrid collections, like Timmah Ball’s A Map & Other Parts

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