The Scarlet Ibis: Poems


Susan Hahn - 2007
    The resonance of this image grows through each section of the book as Hahn skillfully employs theme and variation, counterpoint and mirroring techniques. The ibis first appears as part of an illusion, the disappearing object in a magician’s trick, which then evokes the greatest disappearing act of all—death—where there are no tricks to bring about a reappearance. The rich complexity multiplies as the second section focuses on a disappearing lady and a dramatic final section brings together the bird and the lady in their common plight—both caged by their mortality, their assigned time and role.  All of the illusions fall away during this brilliant denouement as the two voices share a dialogue on the power of metaphor as the very essence of poetry. bird trick iv It’s all about disappearance. About a bird in a cagewith a mirror, a simple twiston the handle at the sidethat makes it come and go at the magician’s insistence. It’s all about innocence.It’s all about acceptance.It’s all about compliance.It’s all about deference.It’s all about silence. It’s all about disappearance.

Pandemonium


Armando Iannucci - 2021
    It tells the story of how Orbis Rex, Young Matt and his Circle of Friends, Queen Dido and the blind Dom'nic did battle with 'a wet and withered bat' from Wuhan.

Lightduress


Paul Celan - 1970
    Once again this bilingual volume, translated in this edition for the first time in English, reveals the importance of the great Romanian-German poet, who lived for most of his life in France. Translator Pierre Joris has achieved a great feat in bringing these three volumes into the English language.

The Bright Side of My Condition


Charlotte Randall - 2013
    After escaping from the Norfolk Island penal colony on a whaling ship, Bloodworth and his three fellow convicts are left on a remote southern island by a captain who promises to pick them up in a year's time.It will be many years before they see another ship.Durign that time four men, with nothing in common but a desire to escape and a need to survive, live together in cramped and freezing isolation. Slangam believes hard work will see them though, Toper puts his faith in the divine, Gargantua leans on his learning and Bloodworth watched – both his fellow felons and the inhospitable environment.Based on the true story of four convicts who spent more than nine years on the Snares Islands in the early years of the nineteenth century, Charlotte Randall's latest novel is a riveting, intelligent and powerful work of fiction.

beyond rock bottom


Kara Petrovic - 2017
    These poems give a look into the heartbreak, anguish, and ultimately, acceptance that comes to those afflicted with Mental Illness. Spanning across three years, they are an anthology of her relationships -- with those who loved her, those who did not, those whom she loved and the way she tried to love herself.

As the Earth Turns Silver


Alison Wong - 2009
    It is the early 1900s and brothers Yung and Shun, immigrants from China, eke out a living as greengrocers in Wellington. The pair must support their families back home, but know they must adapt if they are to survive and prosper in their adopted home. Meanwhile, Katherine McKechnie struggles to raise her rebellious son and her daughter following the death of her husband, Donald. A strident right-wing newspaperman, Donald terrorized his family, though was idolized by his son. One day, Katherine comes to Yung's shop and is touched by the Chinaman's unexpected generosity. Over time a clandestine relationship develops between the immigrant and the widow, a relationship Katherine's son Robbie cannot abide ...During the First World War, as young men are swept up on a tide of macho patriotism, Robbie takes his family's honour into his own hands. In doing so, he places his mother at the heart of a tragedy that will affect everyone and everything she holds dear. Powerful, moving and utterly unforgettable, "As the Earth Turns Silver" announces the arrival of a bold new voice in contemporary fiction.

Magnolia, 木蘭


Nina Mingya Powles - 2020
    Nina Mingya Powles is a poet and zinemaker from Aotearoa New Zealand, currently living in London. She is the author of a food memoir, Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai (The Emma Press, 2020), and several poetry pamphlet collections including Luminescent (Seraph Press, 2017) and Girls of the Drift (Seraph Press, 2014). In 2018 she was one of three winners of the inaugural Women Poets' Prize, and in 2019 won the Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing. She is the founding editor of Bitter Melon苦瓜, a risograph press that publishes limited-edition poetry pamphlets by Asian writers.

Fireflies at 3 am


Danni Thomas - 2020
    It’s a book with the flow of poetry but the ebb of short stories – rightfully called “Shoetry”. This creation takes you to the roots of humanity - stripping back the veneers of life, society and interaction to see people and their ways in an entirely new light.

A Killer Harvest


Paul Cleave - 2017
    Joshua is convinced there is a family curse. It's taken away his biological parents, robbed him of his eyesight, and is the reason his father Logan, the detective who raised him, is killed while investigating the homicide of a young woman. The suspect, Simon Bowers, is killed by Logan's partner Ben, whose intentions are murkier than expected. After this tragedy Joshua is handed an opportunity he can't refuse: a new pair of eyes. But a mishap during the surgery leads to Joshua unknowingly getting one eye from his father, and the other from Simon. As Joshua navigates a world of sight, he gets glimpses of what his eyes might have witnessed in their previous life. Memories, truths, and lies Joshua discovers a world darker than the one he has emerged from. What else has he failed to see? Meanwhile, Simon's accomplice Vincent is bent on revenge, going after the loved ones of those involved in Simon's death and Vincent is drawing closer and closer to Joshua. Thriller virtuoso Paul Cleave is back with another riveting story of hidden secrets and unspeakable horrors that will keep readers guessing until the very last page.

The Abridged History of Rainfall


Jay Hopler - 2016
    In lyric poems by turns droll and desolate, Hopler documents the struggle to live in the face of great loss, a task that sends him ranging through Florida's torrid subtropics, the mountains of the American West, the streets of Rome, and the Umbrian countryside. Vivid, dynamic, unrestrained: The Abridged History of Rainfall is a festival of glowing saints and fighting cocks, of firebombs and birdsong.

Drysalter


Michael Symmons Roberts - 2013
    These poems offer a similarly potent and sensory multiplicity, unified through the formal constraint of 150 poems of 15 lines.Like the medieval psalters echoed in its title, this collection contains both the sacred and profane. Here are hymns of praise and lamentation, songs of wonder and despair, journeying effortlessly through physical and metaphysical landscapes, from financial markets and urban sprawl to deserts and dark nights of the soul.From an encomium to a karaoke booth to a conjuration of an inverse Antarctica, this collection is a compelling, powerful search for meaning, truth and falsehood. But, as ever in Roberts’ work – notably the Whitbread Award-winning Corpus – this search is rooted in the tangible world, leavened by wit, contradiction, tenderness and sensuality.This is Roberts’ most expansive writing yet: mystical, philosophical, earthy and elegiac. Drysalter sings of the world’s unceasing ability to surprise, and the shock and dislocation of catching your own life unawares.

Aroha: Maori wisdom for a contented life lived in harmony with our planet


Hinemoa Elder - 2020
    Discover how we can all find greater contentment and kindness for ourselves, each other and our world with more Aroha in our lives.Through 52 whatatauki - traditional Maori life lessons - Maori psychiatrist Dr Hinemoa Elder shares the power of Aroha and explores how it could help us all every day.Family, community, a sense of place, looking after each other, living in tune with the natural world are all fundamental to traditional Maori culture. Aroha gives the All Blacks pride, unity and heart. It is understandable that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern chose to call her daughter Neve Te Aroha.The 52 life lessons are arranged into 4 chapters that introduce the different, important facets of Aroha: Manaakitanga (kindness); Kaitiakitanga (love for our world); Whanaungatanga (empathy); and Tino rangatiratanga (what is right).Respected Maori psychiatrist Dr Hinemoa Elder offers a uniquely insightful perspective that can help us all in our daily lives. Ki te kotahi te kakaho ka whati, ki te kapuia, e kore e whati. When we stand alone we are vulnerable but together we are unbreakable.

East in Eden


Izabela Shopova - 2009
    I never perceived our life in New Zealand as exile and emigration as martyrdom, as it is the custom (and pretty much a patriotic obligation) in the Bulgarian cultural and literary tradition. Our life in Aotearoa was a challenge and a lifetime adventure, a love affair and a hilarious comedy (with just the tiny bit of drama) in a land, regarded by the rest of the world as the last Eden on Earth. This book is my humble attempt to tell the story of our hardship and joy, suffering and fun, the mundane and the extraordinary, the adventurous and the banal, that we faced during our six years in New Zealand. It is about the friends we found. The clichés we wrestled. The wonders we witnessed. The people we met. The lessons we learned. The country we reluctantly, but helplessly fell in love with. About Aotearoa - The Land Of The Long White Cloud. About New Zealand - at the end of the world.

Jamie's World: They Let Me Write A Book!


Jamie Curry - 2015
    I'm Jamie, I'm 19-years-old. I make videos on the Internet, and enough people watched them that they let me write a book. I know. What is life?"Inside these pages is my life so far, and what I've learnt - or haven't learnt - along the way. Read about my cowboy hat years, the year I dug a big hole, and the time I pulled down my pants at a badminton game.I'll tell you my top travel tips (drink water), how to have fun at a school ball (don't go) and how to be an adult (eat an oyster). And I'll talk about YouTube, because I suppose that's what got us into this mess in the first place ...

Blackbird and Wolf: Poems


Henri Cole - 2007
    I want nothingto reveal feeling but feeling--as in freedom,or the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond,or the sound of water poured in a bowl.--from "Gravity and Center" In his sixth collection of poetry, Henri Cole deepens his excavations of autobiography and memory. "I don't want words to sever me from reality," he asserts, and these poems--often hovering within the realm of the sonnet--combine a delight in the senses with the rueful, the elegiac, the harrowing. Many confront the human need for love, the highest function of our species. But whether writing about solitude or the desire for unsanctioned love, animals or flowers, the dissolution of his mother's body or war, Cole maintains a style that is neither confessional nor abstract. And in Blackbird and Wolf, he is always opposing disappointment and difficult truths with innocence and wonder.