Bird - Hera Lindsay Bird

Mary Ruefle UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com. 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 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. Birds 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, Birds 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. Its a cunning trick, giving the illusion of reckless intimacy, as if the readers being dragged into the poets very bedroom. But really, Bird is nowhere near the bed.

Shes over at her desk, scribbling furiously, thinking hard, quite possibly laughing to herself. Or maybe shes 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 [OHara]: loose and sloppy and spirited and sincere, a gifted show-off whos 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, Birds 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

Hera Lindsay Bird has a MA in poetry from Victoria University of Wellington, where she won the 2011 Adam Prize. Her work has been published by The Toast, The Hairpin, Sport, Hue & Cry, The Spinoff, The New Zealand Listener and Best New Zealand Poems. In 2017 she won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry and the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize. Hera Lindsay Bird is her first collection; a Laureates Choice poetry pamphlet, selected by Carol Ann Duffy and titled Pamper Me to Hell & Back, will be published by smith|doorstop in early 2018. To be fourteen, and wet yourself extravagantly At a supermarket checkout As urine cascades down your black lace stocking And onto the linoleum Is to comprehend what it means to be a poet To stand in the tepid under-halo Of your own self-making And want to die .... To be fourteen, and wet yourself extravagantly At a supermarket checkout As urine cascades down your black lace stocking And onto the linoleum Is to comprehend what it means to be a poet To stand in the tepid under-halo Of your own self-making And want to die ....

Far away, in a field of wild orchids Is a backwards sentimentality Like a Christmas card with the robins scratched out Well, it was Oscar Wilde who said sentimentality is the desire to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it Like ................. when I masturbate and think of nuns Yet never go to church at Christmas? Now I have a Masters degree in poetry and no longer wet myself But I still have to die in antiquated flowers Does this make me sentimental? Well, whos to judge You can get away with anything in a poem As long as you say my tits in it But its a false courage to be so .......... modestly endowed And have nothing meaningful to say You might think this book is ironic But to me, it is deeply sentimental like ............ if you slit your wrists while winkingdoes that make it a joke? To be alive Is the greatest sentimentality there is And I live to be sentimental And I love to be alive Always weeping at the end of a movie Over the frosted carriages of yesteryear I wrote this book, and it is sentimental Because I dont have a right-sized reaction to the world To write a book is not a right-sized reaction To put all your bad thoughts on paper And make someone else pay for them My friend says its bad poetry to write a book And I agree with her I agree with her ........................................ in principle But I wrote a book anyway And I named it after myself My name is Hera Lindsay Bird This book is called Hera Lindsay Bird I wrote it, and I mean at least 75% of it And if thats not sentimental Well ...................................................... to be allowed to as you stare at me across the silence of your rare anti-camouflage & tell me what it is you have wanted

Its bad poetry to have a body and a bad life too to get everything you wanted but still walk away for no other reason but ........... the unspecified wrongness of your blood & all you can do is lie face down on the carpet & wait for the heart to finish buffering