R o m e
Rome Richards is an Australian writer whose work exists somewhere between poetry, confession and the things people are afraid to say aloud. For her, writing is a kind of alchemy, a sacred practice of taking what is ugly, unbearable or unspeakable and making something strangely beautiful of it.
Her debut collection, Girl on the Ceiling, descends into the darker chambers of love, betrayal, heartbreak and the human condition. Raw, unsettling, intimate and at times merciless, her writing marries chilling imagery with an almost painful tenderness. There is something both grotesque and beautiful in the way she examines the human heart, its appetite for love, its capacity for cruelty, its relentless devotion, and the terrible longevity of a thing so often torn apart.
Her second collection, One Last Hallelujah, ventures into the strange and sacred territory between human suffering and divine love. Written through the eyes of a young woman crawling her way to a God she's not sure she believes in yet, it is an unflinching account of faith, doubt, grief and the deep tenderness of surrender. A collection of poetry, prose and prayers from a girl who had never quite learned how to pray, there are no polished words or easy answers here. Only a journey. A truth. A glimpse at something a little sweeter than the life that came before.
Together, the two collections form an almost accidental before and after; one written from the belly of darkness, the other from a messy crawl to light.
Raised on the windswept, rain-soaked coast of Victoria, Rome's adoration for the natural world bleeds into her writing. The brutality of nature is as much a part of her work as the people who inhabit it. She finds something holy in the ordinary, something whole in the broken, and often very little distance between the two.
For Rome, the human condition is neither beautiful nor terrible, but an extraordinary collision of both.