Bones in the Octagon

Description

Carolyn McCurdie hails from the deep south and her poems are made at the hem of a mother's checked tablecloth, the rim of a rain-starved garden and the raw edges of a southern landscape where the elements collide with myth. She pulls on her boots to go out into the world and write of it - acute observation of what she finds combines with her feeling that in the places of heat and light where people gather, there is magic. Compassionate and subversive, these poems speak of a wild world where rules are made to be broken and spiderwebs are made to be kept, and women with foreheads 'like untidy knitting' dance with holy exuberance. A long-awaited first collection.

Carolyn McCurdie is a Dunedin writer with many strings to her bow. Winner of the NZ Poetry Society's International Poetry Competition and the Lilian Ida Smith Award, she is a long-time contributor to New Zealand's leading poetry journals, and has published an ebook of short stories and a children's fantasy novel. Carolyn is a member of the Octagon Poets Collective and helps to organise live poetry events in Dunedin. 'Right there in a place where words so frequently stop, Carolyn's lines are memorable.' Paula Green