Like a lot of contributors here I have adored reading Emma Neale‘s Tender Machines (Otago University Press). These are heartfelt, accomplished poems, buoyed by small details and big concerns.
Two other books which journeyed with me through 2015 were from the amazing HOOPLA series published by Makaro Press. Bryan Walpert manages to make the poems in his collection, Native Bird at once intimately familial and deeply contemplative encounters. I’m particularly in awe of how Walpert connects the personal to the universal, thematically linking migration to national ornithology.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jen Compton for the first time a few years ago when we were guests at the Queensland Poetry Festival. Her warm personality enshrines a magnificent poetic mindset as her latest Mr Clean and the Junkie proves. Like Neale’s Tender Machines, this book is presently long-listed for the Occam New Zealand Book Award. It’s easy to see why for it’s an astonishing mix of poetic dexterity, film scripting, examination of gender roles and a big story about everyday people connected to a seamy Sydney casino scam.
Siobhan Harvey
