With her songs Collide and Watch Me Read You, Sydney-based singer songwriter Odette is tipped to be a rising star. Here she discusses the lure of vanilla Lip Smackers, the importance of highlighters and why she’ll always love Shamanka.

What’s thrilling

The Fenty Beauty [by Rihanna] range of foundations. I’ve struggled to match my skin tone because I’m mixed. I have this skin tone that’s like golden undertones and simultaneously pasty, so nobody makes my shade. But I’m really excited because I think [Rihanna’s] come out with something that will match my skin tone.

[At the moment] I have this Born This Way foundation and it’s really good, but they don’t have my exact skin tone. So I’ve been mixing it with my concealer and moisturiser and try to level it out. I feel like I’m concocting a potion, mixing different colours and hoping for the best.

I’m an on and off reader. I used to read so much when I was younger and now I just read poems. [My dad] recently gave me a Sylvia Plath book for my birthday. He knows I’m very much into writing and it’s important for writers to read because I haven’t been reading much lately, so he’s like “you need to start reading again”.

What’s nostalgia-inducing

Definitely my Keats poetry collection. My dad gifted that to me when I was a kid. It’s this old green leather book, it has all his works in it, and I would read it all the time. I memorised this one poem, I stood tip-toe upon a little hill. That definitely holds a lot of sentimental value. I’m much more inclined to read something if I’ve been given it by someone I’m close to, it’s quite a sentimental thing plus people say you’ll have some insight into this. It makes me focus more on the parts that they think I would really appreciate.

I loved Lip Smackers as a kid, I would collect them, the Coca Cola, vanilla [flavours], I was obsessed with them. I felt like the coolest kid if I had a Lip Smacker. [My favourite was] vanilla. Everyone says it’s such a basic flavour – it’s not, it’s delicious, I’m very passionate about it.

What I keep going back to

The Nivea cocoa butter body moisturiser is my life, honestly I love it so much. I use it on my face too. I don’t know if you’re supposed to do that but I’m not going to buy two different moisturisers.

Highlighter is also important to me. Not powdery highlighter but a balm that gives you a nice natural glow. I carry that in my bag, everywhere I go. It’s great, especially when it catches the light, it just makes everything look amazing. [My favourite brand is] Nars. They have this contour highlighting balm. I ran out of the contour [cream] but I’m still making the tiny amount of highlighter that I have left work.

I really love this novel, it’s called Shamanka [by Jeanne Wills]. That’s my go-to, if I’m going to get into something that is not poetry. It is about this girl, she’s orphaned, but then she goes on this hunt for her mother. It’s all about tricks and sleight of hand magic. It’s really clever. I must have been about 13 when I first read it. [The main character is] pretty hardcore, I think she was around my age at the time that I read it so I could level with her. She’s in a really tricky situation, and she has to learn how to be independent and cope on her own. She was a very strong female lead and I hadn’t read many books where they had a woman, a female character around my age who had such a strong mindset, so it was really refreshing to read that kind of literature.

• Odette will perform dates in Sydney and Melbourne during February and March