"There are so many words, insults, labels and boxes for women to be packaged and packed off in. Often, but not always, they're words coined by men. Why that is, is a bigger conversation that is starting to be had by women everywhere. We're slowly, but oh-so-surely, making it clear that there is no man in womxn. We're writing him out and writing us back in and we deserve a suffix all of our own. So from here on in, we are WOMXN." Sticks and Stones is a powerful reclamation of the slurs and insults thrown at women for centuries. It's a righting of wrongs - a rewriting of sexist, belittling and shaming language. It's a tool for breaking free from the stereotypes and impossible standards used to confine women, transforming them into messages of resilience and resolve. And, most importantly, it's a rallying call for change, healing and empowerment. It takes the words, slurs, insults and labels that are used to diminish women every day and breaks them down and tears them apart. It transmutes and rewrites these words - sometimes with all of the pain they trigger, sometimes in the form of positive affirmations, mantras and poems - all told in acrostics. With their underlying meditative rhythms, these acrostics are also a remedy for healing wounds and empowering women to have the confidence to be their true selves. You can dip in and out, or read it cover to cover. You can come back to, and work through, any words that resonate with you. Lexy also offers clearing meditations at the back of the book to help you tackle the words that hurt you most, helping to remove them from your past, present and future. This title is illustrated by the hugely talented illustrator and print maker Margaux Carpentier. Margaux creates pictures using a symbolic language, so each piece has its own unique message for every individual. Her work is inspired by all the incredible colours of the world. She adapts her illustrations in 3D and large-scale murals, the most recent of which is currently on display in Brown Hart Gardens in Mayfair, London.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 128

Dimensions: 131 x 174 mm

Publication Date: 20-08-2021

In a pet dog you have your own personal trainer, your most loyal companion, your friendliest welcome, your uncritical friend. Yes, there are the muddy paws, the walks in the rain, the wet fur and the chewed footwear ... but let's look at the big picture! In a tribute to Man's Best Friend, Anna Levin's delightful short poem is a homage to our pet dogs, each line illustrated with a moving photograph of someone's mutt: funny, heart-wrenching, loving, exasperating and paying back their owners a hundred times over.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 128

Dimensions: 143 x 168 mm

Publication Date: 02-09-2021

She gripped lightly with her knees, as she’d been taught. She didn’t want wings. She wanted to fly on the thunder of hooves, feel muscles surging beneath her. The word in her head, matching stride – free-ee-dom, free-ee-dom, free-ee-dom – as she bent low over the withers, pressing her cheek against the finial’s neck, her own hair a mane, streaming wild in the wind. – From the poem ‘Silks’ This remarkable second collection by award-winning poet Joanna Preston charts a course for the journey from child to woman. Her bold and original voice swoops the reader from the ocean depths to the roof of the world, from nascent saints, Viking raids and fallen angels to talking cameras and an astronaut in space. Always, the human heartbeat is at stake, as Preston explores love, loss, longing and lust – how we stumble, how we soar. tumble is a beautifully crafted collection that traverses traditional forms, the lyric and free verse. It is earthy and embodied, while at the same time woven through with myth and magical realism.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 88

Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 15-11-2021

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

More Than A Roof is about housing. It's about nostalgia, anger, contentment, longing, fear and much much more. It brings together voices from across the spectrum - from those with no homes, those in emergency accommodation, in caravans, in cars, on boats, in rentals, or in their own houses. Drawing together well-known writers and first-time poets, it's a unique and timely collection. Each poem lets us in to a personal viewpoint and narrative that gently and inevitably leads to a self-reflection of what makes up our own home. A welcome respite to the endless editorials on the housing crisis and who is to blame. – Vic Crockford and David Zussman, Community A house, a home, to be homeless, to be at home in the world… I guarantee you’ll be moved by the stories in this collection, lavish in its multiplicity of voices. It’s beautiful and heart-warming, and at times it will move you to tears. A wonderful read. – Bernadette Hall

Bind: paperback

Pages: 218

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 20-11-2021

Poems greet Kevin Ireland in the morning with a crafty smile, or fly into his kitchen out of nowhere. Some dream themselves into his mind, or twist a bottle-cap and offer to share a cup of friendship. Lively words vie for places in his poems, or catch alight from cheerful thoughts. They are never predictable, because... Incongruity lies at the heart of poetry. Words in verse so often can suggest a kind of double-take on what we think we’ve seen – and aim to open up our minds to the uncustomary. Kevin Ireland’s 27th collection is brimful of poems that do all this and more. Whether he is writing about writing, ruminating on the mixed blessings of ageing, or reflecting on love and other viruses, Kevin’s poems are peppered with wry humour and celebrate a sparkling pleasure in life, with all its contradictions, balls-ups, mysteries, happiness and richness.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 80

Dimensions: 160 x 235 mm

Publication Date: 04-11-2021

… Between-times, there’s silence to attend to, setting an edge on hearing, for what happens – dokadok-dok, freight wagons heading north; then that diesel thrum, a fishing vessel, and the first truck, changing down, clears its throat. Soon, the city-stir will say Start here as graylight brings Level 2. What happens now? Today. Then today. And then, today. – From ‘At Last – Level 2’ Writing from the eighth and ninth decades of his life, Alan Roddick’s third collection of poetry, Next, examines the past, observes the present and speculates on the future. Anchored in the action of daily life – whether it be a ride in a mirrored elevator or a roadside conversation with a friend – his poems speak of migration, family, friendship, aging and mortality. Next is marked by a rare blend of uncompromising vision and deep compassion. Here is poetry that delights in warmth, humour, wit and grace, that revels in the beauty of the world, that insists on ‘anticrepuscular rays’ at twilight even as it’s asking the niggling question: ‘Tomorrow, though? …’Roddick’s most simple poems are also his most potent. – Elizabeth Morton, in NZ Poetry Yearbook, 2018 AUTHOR Alan Roddick was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and emigrated to New Zealand in 1952. He is the literary executor for Charles Brasch and has edited numerous books including Charles Brasch: Selected Poems (OUP, 2015). Next is Roddick’s third book of poetry: his first collection, The Eye Corrects, was published in 1967 and was followed 49 years later with Getting It Right (OUP, 2016)

Bind: paperback

Pages: 82

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 28-01-2022

Chuck open the curtains slap of sun clothes sworn never to be worn again put on that nipple revealing pocketless top buttoned to the neck these thrush egg blue pajama pants extra large elasticated waist extravagance deranged lights pulled free of browned green tree rubbish ornaments find a respite with the League of Nations dolls packed away on a case by case basis Palestine Kashmir Timor Darfur Parihaka rearrange the furniture so the kids don’t feature eat up the fruit − ‘Xmas–New Year’ The Pistils is a dispatch from the cusp of change. It appears at the severing of a 40-year relationship following the illness and death of poet Janet Charman’s partner during the Covid restrictions. Here, she chronicles her experience with transition – to the digital age, to single life, to carbon neutral. She dissects her Pākehā sensibilities towards colonizing privilege as well as her gender-critical feminist’s astonishment at attacks from allies in the realm of sexual politics. In The Pistils, Charman regards her separation from her grown children in the light of her own parents’ deaths. And she looks to a future in which the crises she anticipates, both personal and environmental, are treated as no less inevitable than they will be mysterious. AUTHOR Janet Charman is one of New Zealand’s sharpest and most subversive writers. In 2008 she won the Montana Book Award for Poetry for her sixth collection, Cold Snack. In 2009 she was a Visiting Fellow at the International Writers’ Workshop of Hong Kong Baptist University. In 2014 she appeared as a Guest Reader at the Taipei International Poetry Forum. Her collection 仁 Surrender (2017, OUP) chronicles her writing residencies in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This is her ninth collection of poetry

Bind: paperback

Pages: 84

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 11-03-2022

It’s a clear night. Hamish and Wiremu crack stubbies of Waikato Draught. Burn what’s left from the outdoor season. Words between them are slow in coming. When they do come, they are spare and pointed. Tomorrow they will load rams on the Isuzu into a holding pen made from old pallets, for a man in Weymouth to fatten for Ramadan. It’s a clear night. Orion hurls his belt and sword into a pool of creosote. For Hamish, it will always be The Dipper. The beer is warm. The weed makes them cough. On the town side of the city border gridded fields of diodes glow and hum. – Dropped Pin: Razorback Road, Pōkeno Winner of the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award 2021, poet Michael Steven’s Night School explores the gap between fathers and sons, the effects of toxic masculinity, how power corrupts and corrodes, and whether weed, art and aroha can save us in a godless world. ‘This is the poet as pilgrim, traveller, and astonished survivor. His sonorous verse has an impeccable lapidary quality, each word fitted like a stone in a wall. Phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, writing with a lucid precision, Michael Steven patiently builds up his world view, always making sure we are with him, always allowing us to share the understanding.’ – David Eggleton, Judge’s Report Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award 2021

Bind: paperback

Publication Date: 25-03-2022

Naming the Beasts is a menagerie of poems about the gnarlier aspects of being a creature of this world. Within these pages wilderness and suburbia collide. The ‘I’ in these poems takes many forms: a wolf, a waterbuck, a bird ‘stuck circling the carnage’. Whether soaring above or prowling through the neighbourhood, Morton’s beasts bear witness to an unremitting vision of pain and ecological damage. As the flames climb higher, the beasts in this collection are left to wander and live out their lives. There is love and loneliness, passivity and rage. Yet there is always hope. Hoof and hide, fang and gut, these images and insights are those of an artist in a war zone intent on chronicling beauty in a world that’s falling apart. Morton’s poems take a bite out of the world around us, as they explore reality through the vitality and immersiveness of their imaginative powers.

Bind: paperback

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 15-07-2022