Drawing from centuries of artistic and literary traditions from around the world, this gorgeous bedtime book pairs works of art with poems and short fiction. Divided into eight thematic sections it features dozens of double-paged spreads that families will turn to again and again as part of their bedtime routine. The carefully chosen, diverse selection of images includes works by John Singer Sargent, Georgia O'Keeffe, Utagawa Hiroshige and Henri Le Sidoner among many others, beautifully reproduced in luminous colour. Accompanying these artworks are poems, mediations and short fiction that range from lighthearted verse to eerie folktales. Together these words and pictures create meaningful impressions that children will treasure and remember as they drift off to sleep-and hold onto for the rest of their lives.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 160

Dimensions: 210 x 270 mm

Publication Date: 30-09-2021

The poems in Sinking Lessons portray the vitality of a world full of things and beings we too often disregard, using language that vibrates in harmony with the lively tales it tells – from small, everyday events to stories of shipwrecks and strandings, resurrections and reanimations, arctic adventures and descents into the underworld. The cast of characters includes members of the poet’s family alongside heroes from myth and literature, such as Orpheus, Scheherazade and Frankenstein’s Creature. And crowding in upon these, at all times, a multitude of non-human protagonists: sun and stars, wind and water, mud and sand, body fluids, decaying matter, chemicals organic and inorganic, and a great many fishes and birds and beasts. Sinking Lessons is the first collection of poetry from Philip Armstrong, winner of the 2019 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 54

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 07-08-2020

One of New Zealand’s most prominent, well-loved and accessible poets Kevin Ireland’s words pop like seaweed pods, whether he is: honouring friendships — making sourdough bread — grinning at the weather gods — wondering why he slept in — marvelling at the miracle of a shower — giving advice to writers — analysing chance remarks and philosophical paradoxes — celebrating the benefits of a failing memory — circumnavigating childhood, ageing and death … or just having fun, which he does refreshingly often. Shape of the Heart sparkles with poems that take us from brain to heart, sometimes detouring to unexpected places (such as the belly button), but most often in a direct and delightful line.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 64

Dimensions: 140 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 12-05-2020

From Sean Macgregor's lounge occupied by stoned youths, to three bank robbers en route to the Penrose ANZ, Michael Steven's second collection presents his clear, clean vision of 'the lifers' who inhabit these islands and beyond.A generation's subterranean memories of post-Rogernomics New Zealand are a linking thread, in the decades straddling the millennium, while other poems echo with the ghostly voices of the dead, disappeared and forgotten. Steven's writing neither patronises nor romanticises in its intricate depictions of small worlds of violence, despair, love and struggle. Always it refers back to the redemption of human connection as its magnetic pole.Dawn is a fire show of gold and hot white, blasting the darkness off the isthmus.In two hours, I will land in your city.I am made of atoms and they are dancing.

Pages: 92

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2020

A mysterious doppelgänger sister, a newborn baby, a boy in a mural, a detective, a former lover, a student stalker … are they real or imagined? Building on Diane Brown’s tradition of extended poetic narratives, Every Now and Then I Have Another Child is an inventive and heartfelt meditation on motherhood, the creative impulse and the blurred line between imagination and reality. This delightful, evocative poetic narrative wafts between the truly surreal and the ‘everyday’ absurd.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 164

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Are you fed up with that one person who posts way too much personal info on social media? Are you worried your friend is taking the hipster look too far but don’t know how to tell them? Do you need a poem for when your satnav crashes and you start catastrophising that you’ll never make it home again? Yes? Then Poetry for Millennials is the answer to all your woes, offering poetry from some of our greatest literary figures as an antidote to help laugh off the most common millennial problems. From the joys of internet dating and house-shares to digital detoxing and growing up, this book will help make you more resilient to what’s thrown your way and show the previous generations that you definitely aren’t a snowflake *after wiping away your tears*.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 128

Dimensions: 127 x 170 mm

Publication Date: 08-08-2019

The title of James Norcliffe’s tenth poetry collection points deftly to the way it conveys big emotions without cracking a smile or shedding a tear. In Deadpan, Norcliffe writes in an alert, compassionate yet sceptical voice. The book’s first section, ‘Poor Yorick’, shares the thoughts of an introspective narrator as he contends with the travails of later life. ‘In his hospital pyjamas’, Yorick is by turns cheerful and beset by loss, laughing and weeping, comparing the stages of life (and death). The following sections – ‘Scan’, ‘Trumpet Vine’, ‘Telegraph Road’ and ‘Travellers in a small Ford’ – reach around to mine experience in a world where ‘nothing lasts’; not childhood, place nor identity. An appropriate response to this ephemeral world is to embrace ambiguity, uncertainty, absurdity and surrealism. ‘Deadpan,’ writes the author in his introductory essay, ‘is the porter in Macbeth pausing to take a piss while there is that urgent banging at the gate. It is Buster Keaton standing unmoved as the building crashes down on top of him. It is my poker-faced Yorkshire grandfather playing two little dicky birds sitting on the wall.’ These poems are concise and contained, using supple, precise language and a gleam of dry and mordant wit. Deadpan is the work of a mature and technically astute poet who is one of New Zealand’s leading writers.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 100

Dimensions: 165 x 235 x 10 mm

To the Occupant takes the everyday and transforms it into something fine and precious and enduring. With an unsparing attention, Emma Neale creates shape-shifting poems that confound prejudices and subvert expectations. Displaying verve and confidence, her poetry is filled with musicality and dynamic language, always observant to the world and its details. The striking imagery and emotional range of her work never veer into sentimentality. These poems engage with the full spectrum of human emotion and experience, the hauntings of history, the cold hand of social inequality, and the long contrail of intimate cruelties. They challenge the open and latent violence of contemporary life, from refugee crises to rape, poverty and mental illness to climate change, while revealing the extraordinary in the everyday, where a child’s-eye view of the world can witness the wonder of the new or the shadow of darkness. Whimiscal typographical experiments and prose poems sit next to reimagined fables (the Big Bad Wolf repurposed as inner demon), deliciously light-handed satire, and quietly powerful insights into the contemporary political terrain. To the Occupant is an innovative and astounding collection from one of New Zealand’s leading writers of her generation.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 80

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Families, language, fear, loss, food and the victories that can come slowly. These are at the heart of this collection of poems by people who have come to New Zealand as migrants or refugees. "More Of Us" provides a glimpse into the experiences of this diverse group of people, which includes those who made New Zealand their home decades ago, and newcomers still finding their feet. And here they all are, speaking in their own distinctive voices. The companion book to "All Of Us", a collection of poems published by Landing Press in 2018.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 92

Dimensions: 150 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 17-01-2019

when life gives you spoons, demand a refund, an inquiry when life gives you spoons, scoop the innards, carve a heart when life gives you spoons, collect a set Alzheimer’s and a Spoon takes its readers on a tangled trip. Public stories – a conversation at the Castle of the Insane, online quizzes to determine if you’re mostly meercat or Hufflepuff. #stainlessteelkudos. Personal tales, of Liz’s babcia, a devout Catholic and a soldier in the Warsaw Uprising, who spent her last years with Alzheimer’s disease. There is much to remember that she so badly wanted to forget. What do you do when life gives you spoons?

Bind: paperback

Pages: 100

Dimensions: 155 x 235 mm

Publication Date: 28-06-2017