First winner of the Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry, this book reveals an exciting new Australasian voice.
The Summer King a book of poetry tells stories exploring the world we inhabit and our relationships with the other. Myth, catastrophe, family, strangers, sex, sport all are featured in this 'fine and fierce first collection' (Gillian Clark). The book contains two sequences: Cowarral, about poet Joanna Preston's family farm in the Forbes Valley of New South Wales (Australia), and Venery, which was inspired by the collective nouns that first appeared in the Book of St. Albans. Joanna Preston, an exciting new Australasian voice, was the inaugural winner of the Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry, which is New Zealand's richest poetry prize. Her warm, accessible, and moving poetry shows technical skill, originality, verve, wit, and humanity.
