Saga

In Saga, the permafrost is melting and the secrets frozen within are emerging. Nothing is spared, from the old family recipe for pineapple cheesecake to the portrait of an ancestor, from the wife who sleeps with an axe under her bed to the tough heart of a man that beats beneath the skin. With an uneasy grace, these poems explore questions of love, sexuality, family, friendship and politics. They visit a childhood playground in a storm, women painted on the walls of churches, and the fjords and riot grrrls of Hannah Mettner’s history. They are woven through with wild blackberry and everyday magic. ‘Hannah Mettner’s poems are funny and clever and lusty. They make me want to go out and look at the world again, to conjure up eternal life, and to dip my toe into the lake of flame.’ -Morgan Bach, author of Middle Youth and Some of Us Eat the Seeds ‘So this is the nuclear family, as dazzlingly obliterating as a mushroom cloud. And this is hedonism for bi icons – women sneak doomed smiles over their Wicca circle while men speak in reverence or fear of their spells. Mettner’s witchy new work summons ghosts through a bloody heredity of mothers and daughters; menageries of lost and found lovers; spectres raised in twists of lipstick. Saga haunts like a mother’s perfume, or an ex’s sweat still somehow on your skin – whichever woman hurt you best, whoever’s stolen make-up you now touch to your lips.’ -Rebecca Hawkes, author of Meatlovers

Review: \”Hannah Mettner’s poems are funny and clever and lusty. They make me want to go out and look at the world again, to conjure up eternal life, and to dip my toe into the lake of flame.\” – Morgan Bach, author of Middle Youth and Some of Us Eat the Seeds

\”Give me true art, real desire, genuine darkness, or nothing. Even if the replicated cavern with its faux-dankness ultimately didn’t trigger the hairs at the narrator’s nape, this book reeks of realness. I’d give it five stars on Fragrantica.\” – Rebecca Hawkes, Newsroom

\”Delightfully wry. . . . This poet has important things to say, and she says them remarkably well.\” – Margaret Austin, Regional News

Format: Paperback
Imprint: Te Herenga Waka University Press
Publication date: 01/08/2023