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 versatile writers, Fiona Farrell has published four collections of poetry over 25 years, from Cutting Out (1987) to The Broken Book (2011). Noun, verbs, etc. collects the best work from these books, and intersperses them with other poems thus far ‘uncollected’. The themes are wide ranging: political and personal, regional and global, including love and birth and death, war and emigration, history and landscape. The poems mix lyricism with the flat and plainspoken mode of Kiwi vernacular; they channel voices infrequently heard in poetry in traditional song and ballad forms. They are well crafted but unpretentious, jokey yet illuminating, self-deprecating but wise, sad and funny and deeply human. Fiona Farrell’s poems look light and lyrical and tidy on the page, which is the way they manage the storms of feeling that race along their lines. These are poems that know how much we yearn for terra firma yet how often we must deal with broken things. They care about family. They speak against injustice. They also know how to rescue the heart and let it sing. – Bill Manhire

Bind: hardback

Pages: 212

Dimensions: 130 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 29-10-2020

Oh Christ, a bloody ½ witted student, for purposes of an essay, has just come in to ask me what I and Baxter write verse for, and if we mean what we say, or is there something deeper; could we write better verse in England, or here; or do the critics and professors just read a lot into what’s said that isn’t there? So much. And I have been very rude indeed. – Letter to John Reece Cole, 16 August 1949 Nothing about this excerpt from a letter by Denis Glover will surprise anyone who knows him by reputation. He – and his letters – could be witty, intelligent, alarmingly frank and frequently highly entertaining. A widely admired poet, honoured naval commander, gifted printer and typographer, Denis Glover was founder of the Caxton Press in Christchurch. For 15 years from 1935 he directed a publishing programme that did much to define New Zealand literature for its day, and for much of the rest of the century. His literary work was suspended for war service in the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, during which he earned a DSC for his activities in the Normandy landings. But he was also a serial philanderer and prodigious drinker, and his private life increasingly disintegrated around him, more and more publicly. And yet his energy as a correspondent appeared never to wane, and almost to the end he confided openly, prolifically and entertainingly to hundreds of acquaintances and confidants. In this magnificent volume Sarah Shieff presents around 500 of Glover’s letters to around 110 people, drawn from an archive of nearly 3000 letters to over 430 recipients. Many now recall Glover as little more than a misogynistic old fart, a court jester. These letters should give readers the opportunity to revise – or at least complicate – those dismissive categorisations.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 800

Dimensions: 230 x 150 mm

"The work of a poet who knows how important people and places are… I kept thinking, too, about life’s voyagings. I found the whole very affecting — touching, tender, rueful at times… And all the more impressive for being unsentimental." - Brian Turner We are unmoored by circumstances that set us adrift from our normal lives into unknown waters. The poems in this debut collection range from the luxury of certainty, through the loss of a partner, to establishing a new life in a different part of the country. But nothing is secure, and a global pandemic again threatens to disrupt the familiar. Through it all, there is reassurance in recognising the perfection in arising and passing away. About the author: Bridget Auchmuty was born in Britain in 1951, came to New Zealand to visit her sister, and never went home. She spent more than thirty years in the Nelson region, where she and her partner lived on ten acres in the Motueka Valley. After his death, she shifted to the Ida Valley in Central Otago, where she lives in a yurt. The core of this collection formed one component of the author’s Master’s degree in Creative Writing at Massey University, and several of the poems have appeared in prominent poetry journals.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 88

Dimensions: 160 x 235 mm

Publication Date: 01-10-2020

A collection of contemporary creative writing from emerging and celebrated writers. In A Vase and a Vast Sea, poetry and prose rustle against the window, scatter palm fronds across the road and sneak off to the movies on a Tuesday. There are moments of nostalgia blended with dangerous undercurrents and domestic life. This collection is a reunion of writers such as Renée, Maggie Rainey-Smith, Barbara Else, Rata Gordon, Tim Jones, Anahera Gildea, and Adrienne Jansen, and is an essential keepsake of New Zealand literature and a much-loved writing course.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 146

Dimensions: 125 x 186 mm

Publication Date: 05-10-2020

Far from dead, our ghosts live within us always … Poet Siobhan Harvey’s latest collection is about migration, outcasts, the search for home, and the ghosts we live with, including the ones who occupy our memories, ancestries and stories. It begins in a contemporary inner-city suburb where a poet starts to chart the regeneration she witnesses, its difficulties and opportunities. Along the way, the collection moves across time-zones, oceans and continents, breaking down personal and political walls, and unleashing ghosts everywhere. Ultimately, Ghosts is a work concerned with dislocation, rejection, homelessness, family trauma and how we can give voice to the lost souls inside us all.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 112

Dimensions: 230 x 150 mm

What defi nes a place like Tītahi Bay? The rolling waves, the turning tide, the crescent-cleft coast? It is the people. It is the stories handed down through generations. It is this rugged beauty that links us to each other. These are not your usual beach poems. An African refugee staggers from the ocean; Van Gogh is painting boatsheds; a violinist plays in a dinghy to an audience of gulls. Roll & Break is a collection full of surprises, and a celebration of the beaches at the heart of our Aotearoa life.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 58

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 03-10-2022