{"id":40257,"date":"2022-05-23T06:30:46","date_gmt":"2022-05-22T18:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=40257"},"modified":"2022-05-22T18:02:39","modified_gmt":"2022-05-22T06:02:39","slug":"just-arrived-tumble-by-joanna-preston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2022\/05\/23\/just-arrived-tumble-by-joanna-preston\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Arrived: “Tumble” by Joanna Preston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very recently (11 May), Australian-born but Canterbury-based poet, Joanna Preston<\/a>, won the Ockham NZ Book Awards’<\/a> Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, 2022.<\/p>\n

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The Award was for Tumble<\/em><\/strong> (Otago University Press, 2021), which is Joanna’s second collection. Her first, The Summer King<\/em><\/strong>, was also published by Otago University Press (2009) and won both the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award<\/a> (2008) and Australia’s Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize<\/a> (2010.)<\/p>\n

I love The Summer King<\/em> and am a huge admirer of Joanna’s poetry generally, and have been privileged to feature a number of her poems on this blog. So I was always going to buy a copy of Tumble<\/em>—but the Ockhams NZ win definitely spurred me along. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to reading it very much.<\/p>\n

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Just to whet your poetic appetites, here’s what the back-cover matter has to say:<\/p>\n

“In tumble, Joanna Preston\u2019s bold and original voice swoops the reader from the ocean depths to the roof of the world, from nascent saints, Viking raids and fallen angels to talking cameras and an astronaut in space.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This beautifully crafted collection traverses the lyric, free verse and traditional forms. It\u2019s earthy and embodied, while at the same time woven through with myth and magical realism. Always, the human heartbeat is at stake, as Preston explores love, loss, longing and lust \u2013 how we stumble, how we soar.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I note that one of the poems in Tumble<\/em>, titled Earthrise<\/em>, was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2014<\/a>. I’ll leave you with the opening stanzas, by way of a promise for more on Tumble<\/em>, in due course:<\/p>\n

“Tethered by a thought, as much<\/em><\/span>
\nas by the slender umbilical<\/em><\/span>
\n— half a metre for every year of her life —<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

she hangs in space above<\/em><\/span>
\nthe slow-turning planet,<\/em><\/span>
\ntiny as a moth, orbiting …”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

from Earthwise<\/em>, (c) Joanna Preston, Tumble<\/strong>, Otago University Press, 2021
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very recently (11 May), Australian-born but Canterbury-based poet, Joanna Preston, won the Ockham NZ Book Awards’ Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, 2022. The Award was for Tumble (Otago University Press, 2021), which is Joanna’s second collection. Her first, The Summer King, was also published by Otago University Press (2009) and won both the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justarrived","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40257"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40266,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40257\/revisions\/40266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}