Book Launch | ‘A Long Road Trip Home’ by John Allison & ‘Night Shifts’ by Pat White

Join us and Cold Hub Press to celebrate the launch of two remarkable new collections of poetry! A Long Road Trip Home by John Allison, introduced by James Norcliffe; and Night Shifts by Pat White, introduced by Doc Drumheller. All welcome, refreshments provided. Arrive from 5.30pm for a 6pm start.

This event is free to attend – please RSVP to rsvp@scorpiobooks.co.nz for catering purposes.

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ABOUT THE BOOKS:

The poems in A LONG ROAD TRIP HOME go to the heart of the matter. ‘Invention,’ says poet Michael Harlow, ‘is one thing, knowing is another. John Allison knows that the wisdom of experience leads to poems of discovery and revelation. These are poems whose governance is the reality of the imagination and the imagination of reality. It is all there in the language. By turns insightful, thoughtful, tender and reflective. Since feeling is first, these are poems of heart-warming care, whose intelligence is the thoughtfulness that fills that deep hole behind words. They also ask that inevitable and archetypal question: How is it that we are so mysterious to ourselves and to the world at large?’

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NIGHT SHIFTS is a new collection of poems from Pat White, (1944–), poet, essayist, memoirist and artist whose work often directly reflects his interest in rural life and the natural environment. His poems have been described by Jack Ross as ‘beautiful, unassuming and perfectly paced, all at the same time’ (Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2020). Reviewing his previous collection Watching for the Wingbeat, Janet Hughes wrote of a poet ‘attuned to the natural world and rural environments as settings for deep and wide reflection, filtered through scholarship‘ (New Zealand Review of Books, Autumn 2019). Pat’s first collection of poetry, Signposts, was published in 1977; the most recent was his new and selected poems Watching for the Wingbeat (Cold Hub Press 2018).