Sugar Magnolia Wilson + Gregory Kan Double Poetry Launch

Join Unity Books and Auckland University Press for the double launch of 'Because a Woman’s Heart is Like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean' by Sugar Magnolia Wilson and 'Under Glass' by Gregory Kan.

All welcome!

'Because a Woman’s Heart is Like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean'.

A first collection from a significant new voice in New Zealand poetry. Through fun and gore, love and monsters, Sugar Magnolia Wilson’s riveting first collection takes readers inside a world where past and present, fiction and fact, author and subject collide. Playful and yet not so sunny, these poems invite you in with extravagant and surprising imagery, only to reveal the uneasy, Frankenstein world within.

About the author
Sugar Magnolia Wilson is from a valley called Fern Flat in the Far North of New Zealand. She completed her MA in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington in 2012. Her work has been published in the literary journals Turbine, Shenandoah, Cordite, Food Court, Landfall and Sport. In 2014 she co-founded the journal Sweet Mammalian, with Hannah Mettner and Morgan Bach.

'Under Glass'
A colossal jungle. Two suns. The sea on fire. If the mind were a place, what might it look like? Under Glass is an ambitious new collection by one of the most exciting young poets writing today.

‘The things that are really big and really close are too big and too close to be seen.’

Gregory Kan’s second book is a dialogue between a series of prose poems, following a protagonist through a mysterious and threatening landscape, and a series of verse poems, driven by the speaker’s compulsive hunger to make sense of things. Kan’s explorations of the outer and inner landscapes frequently cross paths but leave the reader in doubt – this is a collection full of maps and trapdoors, labyrinths and fragmented traces.

Under Glass opens up new ways of telling stories – while questioning the value of storytelling itself. Beautifully crystalline and emotionally powerful, this poetry collection takes readers on a journey that is frightening yet tender, imperfect but triumphant.

About the author:
Gregory Kan’s work has featured in literary journals such as Atlanta Review, Cordite, Jacket, Landfall, New Zealand Listener, Sport and Best New Zealand Poems, as well as art exhibitions, journals and catalogues. His first book of poetry, This Paper Boat, was shortlisted in the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.