Over the summer months Poetry Shelf is hosting a series of readings from the incredible range of poetry collections published by mainstream and boutique presses in Aotearoa in 2024. It’s my Poetry Shelf toast to local poetry.

Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit, Emma Neale
Otago University Press, 2024
cover artwork by Laura Williams, design by Fiona Moffat

Emma Neale’s poetry is rich in connections, experience, visual and aural delights. Like many other poets, her ink is imbued with personal life, with a deep concern about the state of the planet, injustice, humanity. More than anything, Emma writes with heart, her words agile on the line, her poems lingering in the mind as you move though the day. I will be posting a review of her new collection in January, in my summer season of reviews and readings.

Scapegoat

Once, a stranger on a long coach ride
showed me the birthmark beneath her sleeve
as if it was a cherished photo
in a delicate heirloom locket.
It looked a little like a red-inked crowwith stooped head and slim, folded tail.

She told me that far back along
the cobweb lines of family history,
was another woman whose honest body
shared the mark and who like a weather vane
was made to spin in the bitter gale of men’s fears.

Turn around. Show your skin. Lay your breast bare.

When what they saw
made them weak at the knees
as if thighs, waist, nipples were not soft
but struck like rock against the flint
of their thoughts, they used words
like camouflage to distract and dissemble:
that mole, that smatter of freckles were

the bite, the thumb print of the devil —

her port-wine birthmark
the warm place they might themselves
have stained with a bruising kiss
blunt and crimson as trodden geranium
or blackberries crushed on the tongue, so

Witch, they lied. Witch.

Emma Neale
from Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit
This poem was shortlisted in the Bridport Prize (judged by Liz Berry) this year. 

Photo credit: Caroline Davies

Emma reads ‘Spare change’

Emma reads ‘&’

Emma Neale is the author of six novels, seven collections of poetry, and a collection of short stories. Her sixth novel, Billy Bird (2016) was short-listed for the Acorn Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award. Emma has a PhD in English Literature from University College, London and has received numerous literary fellowships, residencies and awards, including the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a Distinguished Contribution to New Zealand Poetry 2020. Her novel Fosterling (Penguin Random House, 2011) is currently in script development with Sandy Lane Productions, under the title Skin. Her first collection of short stories, The Pink Jumpsuit (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2021) was long-listed for the Acorn Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her short story, ‘Hitch’, was one of the top ten winners in the Fish International Short Story Prize 2023 and her poem ‘A David Austin Rose’ won the Burns Poetry Competition 2023-4. Her flash fiction ‘Drunks’ was shortlisted in the Cambridge Short Story Prize 2024. The mother of two children, Emma lives in Ōtepoti/Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she works as an editor. Her most recent book of poems is Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit (Otago University Press, 2024).

Otago University Press page

The Summer Readings

David Gregory reads here
Gail Ingram reads here