NZSA Best First Book of Poetry 2009

The World's Fastest Flower - Charlotte Simmonds

Victoria University Press, ISBN 978-0-86473-576-8, $25.00 pbk

The Propaganda Poster Girl - Amy Brown

Victoria University Press, ISBN 978-0-86473-574-4, $25.00 pbk

What emerges from this collection, without ever leaning on the familiar modes of confession, is a compelling self-portrait. Where other young poets might have found only feelings, Amy Brown finds images and scenes to carry the burden of disclosure. Rather than endless interiors, there’s a palpable, recognisable world in the work. This is a thoughtful, mature and provocative collection.
– Damien Wilkins

NZSA BEST FIRST BOOK OF POETRY 2009

Everything Talks - Sam Sampson

Auckland University Press, ISBN 978-1-86940-411-6, $24.99 pbk

If the poems in this collection by Sam Sampson are mysterious, they are also as true to immediate fact – informed by a particularly New Zealand nostalgia and sense of loss – as the poet can make them. In these poems of history and geography, of ships and sky, of flotsam and jetsam in an imaginary sea, many different voices may be heard . . . everything talks.