He’s so MASC
Chris Tse
Auckland University Press, $30.00,
ISBN 1781869408879
The Facts
Therese Lloyd
Victoria University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9781776561810
Dark Days at the Oxygen Café
James Norcliffe
Victoria University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9781776560837
Dear Neil Roberts
Airini Beautrais
Victoria University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9780864739735
How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes
Chris Tse
Auckland University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9781869408183
Both collections under review here act as witness to politically charged historic events. One pivots on a suicide, one on a murder. Despite the way each book edges towards psychological release, the deaths of Joe Kum Yung and Neil Roberts unsettle still, as if shadows could whisper: “Listen: / there’s a hunger in the air. It’s reciting prophecies” (‘(Static, Spool)’, How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes).