Deep Colour, by acclaimed poet Diana Bridge, is a fiercely sensory and meticulously crafted collection. These poems respond with graceful precision to the immediate physical world, and meditate on time, beauty and the nature of being. Whether remembering a friend, describing a child’s first steps, or observing her surroundings – a tree, a painting, the flashing fin of a goldfish, a simple everyday object like a lamp or a bowl – Bridge is finely attuned to the here-and-now. ‘While it lived,’ she writes, ‘it was intensity itself.’ These prismatic poems, which include some exquisite translations of poems by the fifth-century Chinese poet Xie Tiao, are fully immersed in the world, vividly alive to the dance of light and shadow, movement and stillness, sound and silence. Few poets see so clearly or write so luminously. Bridge’s poems return us to the daily round with our senses heightened, our minds alert and our hearts made tender.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 84

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 20-04-2023

At the Point of Seeing is the extraordinary debut collection from Ōtepoti Dunedin poet Megan Kitching. Poised, richly observant and deftly turned, Kitching’s poems bestow a unique attention upon the world. Her eye is finely attuned to the well-trodden yet overlooked – the places between ‘dirt and thumb’ or ‘together and alone’ – and especially the weedy, overgrown and pest-infested places where the human impulse to name, control and colonise meet nature’s life force and wild exuberance. These compelling poems urge the reader to slow down and give space to the living, moving, breathing environment that surrounds them. … the garden is making something of you, situated on the border of dirt and thumb, the corner with its stepover wall where two streets grow neighbourly and flora and animal meet. ...from ‘Growing Advice’

Bind: paperback

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 22-06-2023

Strong Words 3 showcases the best of the best of Aotearoa New Zealand’s contemporary essays from 2021 and 2022. Selected from entries into the Landfall Essay Competition, these essays are explorative, illuminating, provocative, beautifully written and – most of all – inspiring. Strong Words 3 is packed with Aotearoa New Zealand’s most compelling new writing on contemporary issues. It is essential reading. A central part of New Zealand’s literary landscape since 1997, the annual Landfall Essay Competition is Aotearoa’s most prestigious essay writing competition. Every year these essays open up new avenues of thought, explore new ways of looking at contemporary issues and bring new narratives to the forefront. Past winners include Airini Beautrais, Ashleigh Young, Gregory O’Brien, Diana Bridge, Elizabeth Smither, Tracey Slaughter, Laurence Fearnley and Alie Benge. The biennial Strong Words series was launched in 2019 and gathers the most powerful winning, shortlisted and commended Landfall Essay Competition writing within the covers of one book. Among the rich reading featured in Strong Words 3 are the 2021 and 2022 Landfall Essay Competition winners: ‘The New Man’ by Andrew Dean, a politically and socially complex piece that traces Dean’s ancestry and examines New Zealand’s shamefully long record of anti-Semitism; and ‘Lumpectomy’ by Tina Makereti, a personal and political exploration of the body and its boundaries, and health care (and its boundaries) in Aotearoa. Other essayists featured in Strong Words 3 tackle topics such as grief, lost language, poetic childhood recollections, gender, the long aftermath of colonisation, the nature of traumatic memory, and working as a comedian while solo parenting. CONTRIBUTORS Maddie Ballard, Tīhema Baker, Rachel Buchanan, Jayne Costelloe, Lynn Davidson, Andrew Dean, Charlotte Doyle, Jessica Ducey, Susanna Elliffe, Bonnie Etherington, Norman Franke, Gill James, Claire Mabey, Tina Makereti, Alexis O’Connell, Sarah Ruigrok, Maggie Sturgess and Susan Wardell

Bind: paperback

Pages: 240

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Publication Date: 26-07-2023

In this electrifying debut, Rushi Vyas untangles slippery personal and political histories in the wake of a parent’s suicide. ‘When my father finally / died,’ he writes, ‘we […] burned, / like an effigy, the voiceless body.’ In this tough and tender, gently powerful collection, grief returns us to elemental silence, where ‘the wind is a muted vowel in the brush of pine / branches’. These poems reach into this deep silence and bring back evidence of life as well as loss. This language listens as much as it sings, asking if it is possible to recover from the muting effects of British colonialism, American imperialism, patriarchy and caste hierarchies. Which cultural legacies do we release in order to heal? Which do we keep alive, and which keep us alive? A monument to yesterday and a path to tomorrow, When I Reach for Your Pulse reminds us of both the burden and the promise of inheritance. ‘[T]he wail outlasts / the dream,’ but time falls like water and so ‘the stream survives its source.’

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Pages: 124

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 01-09-2023

Tung is the keenly anticipated debut collection from award-winning Ōtepoti-Dunedin poet, Robyn Maree Pickens. Earth-centred and life-affirming, these poems offer sustenance and repair to a planet in the grips of a socio-ecological crisis. Pickens is an eco-pioneer of words, attuned to the fine murmurings of the earth and to the louder sound and content of human languages (English, Spanish, Japanese and Finnish). She finds and draws out the beauty in both. Hers is a unique response, linguistically rich and innovative, pushing at received notions, challenging the zeitgeist, alive with innovative typographic and sonic creativity. Tung is not afraid of new shapes or new rhythms, orchestrating a gorgeous score that testifies to the shared relationship between the human and non-human worlds. Over the roar and the din, Robyn Maree Pickens creates her sound. And it sounds like hope.

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Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2023

Bees work hard, and there is something in their diligence that touches us. Most of us see only a fraction of their absorbing routines but their ‘bee-lines’ through our parks and gardens are more than enough to suggest their dedication: “…they make a life for themselves that knows no let-up through hours of exploration and return, their thighs golden with pollen…” from ‘Back they sputter’ by Eamon Grennan. Here are poems about getting stung and about a bee-keeping Divinity master in a boarding school whose hives are far more appealing than PE lessons. This heady mix of poems is sure to please anyone who delights in bees, flowers and gardens – or indeed the golden taste of honey! The selection is introduced by environmentalist and broadcaster Brigit Strawbridge Howard. Poems by Ciaran Berry, David Briggs, Miriam Darlington, Heid E. Erdrich, Eamon Grennan, Selima Hill, Carola Luther, Paula Meehan, Pascale Petit and Jean Toomer.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 24

Dimensions: 163 x 217 mm

Publication Date: 01-05-2019

There is probably more poetry about birds than about any other insect or animal, as if there’s something in the nature of a bird that makes it particularly suited to the small and intense space that is a poem. This delightful anthology is a second edition of one of our most popular titles and includes some beautiful new poems. It opens up a captivating world that exists in parallel to our own and will be relished by birders and poetry lovers alike. The ten selections are little miracles in themselves, capturing the quirks of habit or appearance that distinguish one species from another. Never anthropomorphic, they imagine what the vivid life of a bird must be, or tease out what it is that thrills or moves us when we’re surprised by a bird as we hurry about our lives. For Kathleen Jamie the wheeling flight of swallows captures a life lived in brightness and freedom, while for Katrina Porteous a skylark is: “…all the music the heart needs, Full of its sudden fall, silent fields.” from ‘Skylark’ by Katrina Porteous. Poems by Elizabeth Bishop, John Clare, Emily Dickinson, Paul Farley, Rebecca Goss, Kathleen Jamie, Michael Longley, George MacBeth, Katrina Porteous and Lynne Wycherley.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2017

Cats have provided writers and artists with inspiration for as long as they have been winding themselves purring round their owners’ legs and fixing them with their big, green eyes. The poems in this pamphlet are evidence of some wonderful cats and their amusing and endearing ways, from Thom Gunn’s kittens galloping like a re-enactment of Ben Hur along the corridor, to Jen Hadfield’s cat asking to be let in at the kitchen door…then out again… . It goes without saying that this pamphlet is best enjoyed with a cat on your lap. “Puss with delight beyond expression, Surveyed the scene and took possession.” from ‘The Retired Cat’ by William Cowper. Poems by Elizabeth Coatsworth, William Cowper, Thom Gunn, Jen Hadfield, Walter de la Mare, Grace Nichols, Anne Stevenson, Anna Wigley.

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Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2011

Ten Poems about Dogs pays tribute to man’s – and woman’s – best friend. Introduced by much-loved broadcaster and author Dame Jenni Murray, the poems reveal the great affection people feel for their dogs (and dogs for their owners). In amongst alternately poignant and hilarious accounts of dog-ownership, are some slightly unsociable aspects, like the neighbours’ dog in Billy Collins’ poem, which barks loud and long every time they go out… Whether you are a dog-lover or need a peace-offering for your neighbours these poems make a wonderful introduction to the canine world as documented over the centuries in poetry. As Dame Jenni Murray says in her Introduction, “It’s such a relief to find wonderful poems like these and realise you’re not alone in your canine passion.” The Dog The truth I do not stretch or shove When I state the dog is full of love. I’ve also proved, by actual test, A wet dog is the lovingest. by Ogden Nash. Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, Billy Collins, Susan Hamlyn, Ogden Nash, Linda Pastan, Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson, Siegfried Sassoon, Stevie Smith and Paul Yandle.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 24

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2011

The poems in this selection take us on an exhilarating canter through our friendships with horses. Along the way, we meet an edgy stallion waiting for his winter bale and a pony picking her way across paddocks after having her hooves trimmed: “…she sidled through the silver air pretending to shy at shadows each hair of her coat standing upright with joy.” from ‘The Grey Pony’ by Dorothy Hewett. There are also encounters of a quieter kind – a moment lingering at a field gate as horses decide whether to come over and say hello. The poems beautifully illustrate that humans and equines are always equals. We can learn as much from them as they from us. Alison Brackenbury is an award-winning poet who has kept and loved horses for most of her life. Poems by Alison Brackenbury, Jane Commane, Tony Curtis, Sally Goldsmith, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Jen Hadfield, Dorothy Hewett, Geoffrey Holloway, Maxine Kumin and Robert Wrigley.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-01-2019