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This edition first published in New Zealand by Victoria University Press 2016
First published in Great Britain in Penguin Books 2017
Copyright © Hera Lindsay Bird, 2016
All rights reserved
Cover photograph © Russell Kleyn
ISBN: 978-0-141-98741-5
WRITE A BOOK
MIRROR TRAPS
MONICA
WAYS OF MAKING LOVE
HAVING SEX IN A FIELD IN 2013
IF YOU ARE AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PHARAOH
HATE
CHILDREN ARE THE ORGASM OF THE WORLD
WILD GEESE BY MARY OLIVER BY HERA LINDSAY BIRD
BISEXUALITY
THE EX-GIRLFRIENDS ARE BACK FROM THE WILDERNESS
PLANET OF THE APES
LOST SCROLLS
LOVE COMES BACK
THE DAD JOKE IS OVER
EVERYTHING IS WRONG
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
HAVING ALREADY WALKED OUT ON EVERYONE I EVER SAID I LOVED
KEATS IS DEAD SO FUCK ME FROM BEHIND
NEW THINGS
PAIN IMPERATIVES
FOLLOW PENGUIN
for Angelo
‘By turns bleakly hilarious and peppered with pitch-perfect similes … [Hera Lindsay Bird] has made me, like many others, more excited about poetry than I have been in a long time’
Lucy Rhiannon Coslett, Guardian
‘On more than one occasion, while working through a poem, I have found myself asking, “what would Hera Lindsay Bird do?” There should be bumper stickers. Bird’s debut, the self-titled Hera Lindsay Bird is an exhilarating read, but what most enthrall me are her extravagant and cartoonish images … Bird is an enfant terrible’
Lucy Tunstall, Poetry
‘Much has been made of the sexual nature of her writing, but really, Bird’s tendency to feed the reader mildly pornographic images … is the least interesting thing about her. Her sexual references are often sly jokes, the punchlines delivering a sharp jolt that opens you up for lovelier lines that lie scattered all around. It’s a cunning trick, giving the illusion of reckless intimacy, as if the reader’s being dragged into the poet’s very bedroom. But really, Bird is nowhere near the bed. She’s over at her desk, scribbling furiously, thinking hard, quite possibly laughing to herself. Or maybe she’s out in the sitting room, watching sitcom reruns and shouting at her telly … Bird bangs vivid images against one another and jump-cuts from the intensely intimate to the casually conversational … she is perhaps our own fledgling Frank [O’Hara]: loose and sloppy and spirited and sincere, a gifted show-off who’s plugged into the life-giving voltage of pop culture and blessed with a bloody good sense of humour’
Grant Smithies, Sunday Star Times
‘[Bird] shows a rare, self-effacing self-reflexivity in an age of narcissism … this is a poet who is not just using language as a tool, but as an art form … The depths of the emotional space in this work – taken to the realms of the ridiculous – are extraordinary to fathom and relish as a reader’
Kelly Malone, Cordite Poetry Review
‘Even in the most sombre poems, Bird’s language is surprising and delightful … [She] draws revelation from the mundane … there is a satisfying defiance in Hera Lindsay Bird, the poet positioning herself against conservatism and authority … Her work acknowledges that everything is absurd, the system is fucked, but we – indefatigable – will keep making art and we will do it how we want’
Jessica Alice, Kill Your Darlings
‘Garrulous … impressive … Somewhere about halfway during my first reading, I found myself laughing until it hurt’
Airini Beautrais, Listener