Hoof
Author:
Kerrin P. Sharpe
Publisher:
Te Herenga Waka University Press
ISBN:
9781776921225
Date published:
12 October 2023
Pages:
96
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$25.00
Hoof by Kerrin P. Sharpe arrives with new urgency and longing. These are poems about a father who can only remember one word, ponies that grow hooves of basalt as they pull Scott and Shackleton around Ōtamahua in sledges, and a woman named Johanna living in a small village in Greenland. She writes about the strange places that watch over our parents, and the delicate but brutal mechanics of surgery. Famous people appear here too: Leonard Cohen, Ted Hughes, William Blake, and Benedict Cumberbatch at a bus stop.
Hoof is an invitation to travel by train through the poet’s world. The trains that begin each of the three sections in the book give the reader time to stop and stare.
Endorsements:
‘‘One of the most original and idiosyncratic voices currently writing in New Zealand.’ —Lynley Edmeades, Landfall
‘Kerrin P. Sharpe is a very fine poet whose previous books hooked me with their agility, their lightness of touch, their grounding. . . . Entering the poem is like entering a show both magical and wondrous, and you just want to get another ticket and go through again.’ —Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
About the author:
Kerrin P. Sharpe is the author of four previous poetry collections, most recently Louder. Her poems have appeared in local and international literary journals including Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, POETRY (US), Blackbox Manifold, PN Review and Stand. Her work has been anthologised in Best New Zealand Poems six times, Best of Best New Zealand Poems, Oxford Poets 2013, 150 Essential New Zealand Poems and A Game of Two Halves: The Best of Sport 2005–2019. In 2021 she held a writing residency at the Michael King Writers Centre.
