Set in the green spaces and urban grit of contemporary Te Whanganui-a-Tara, this award-winning debut collection from poet Jo McNeice unfolds like a Gothic fairytale. Darkness and light ripple through these haunting, intimate poems, which draw on themes of love, madness, betrayal, desire and recovery to tell the story of a woman searching among the images and events of her life for answers – sometimes finding them, sometimes not.
Blue Hour grapples with the complexities of human nature, mental health and relationships. ‘You know,’ writes McNeice, ‘we are irregular verbs. / You know the universe is harsh.’ In the remarkable universe created by these poems, the irregular is allowed. Here, mermaids, angels and wolves share space with everyday sparrows in plum trees and dandelions on the lawn.
Meet me in the in-between
where the negative
is being developed.
From ‘Blue hour’
‘The voice is beautiful yet unsettling, aching yet funny, lyric yet gritty. Blue Hour is constructed in such a way that fragments, memories and allusions circle and surge, build and resound. It feels as if the poet is reaching across an almost impossible divide to show the reader what it’s like.’ – Anne Kennedy
'A muscular and melodic dissection of the human heart both unflinching and urgent. A shifting kaleidoscope of light and darkness, entrapment and escape. At every turn new visions slide into view, delicately balanced and shimmering on the edge of perception. An exquisite collection of resounding originality.' – Claire Orchard
