One Human in Height
Wholesale $13.00 + GST
RRP $25.00
ISBN 9780473257569
Rachel O'Neill’s debut collection is a book of exuberant and at times irreverent prose poems that fuse remembered experience, family life, and relationships with broader human legacies, from popular culture, and social history, through to digital technology. The book includes a thief who plays a musical interlude on an oboe before getting down to business, a botanical species, the Kafka Diver, that lures in guests for an unusual holiday on the sub-alpine platform, a talent show called Wicked Witch Idol, and a parachutist who free-falls to her family reunion. ‘We all sift through the drift of inheritance to find what is magnetic, useful and active. I wanted the poems to do the same – to lend freshness to our habits of looking and thinking,’ said O'Neill.
Rachel O’Neill is a writer, filmmaker and artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. A widely published author of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, Rachel has received a range of writing grants, residencies and commissions. Recently, she was awarded a SEED Grant (NZWG/NZFC) to write a feature film and held an Emerging Writers Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre. She holds a BA/BFA Conjoint Degree from the University of Auckland/Elam School of Fine Arts, a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and a Poupou Huia Te Reo Certificate, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Aotearoa.
Published by Hue & Cry Press, 2013
Text by Rachel O’Neill
Soft cover
144×215mm, upright
Wholesale $13.00 + GST
RRP $25.00
ISBN 9780473257569
Rachel O'Neill’s debut collection is a book of exuberant and at times irreverent prose poems that fuse remembered experience, family life, and relationships with broader human legacies, from popular culture, and social history, through to digital technology. The book includes a thief who plays a musical interlude on an oboe before getting down to business, a botanical species, the Kafka Diver, that lures in guests for an unusual holiday on the sub-alpine platform, a talent show called Wicked Witch Idol, and a parachutist who free-falls to her family reunion. ‘We all sift through the drift of inheritance to find what is magnetic, useful and active. I wanted the poems to do the same – to lend freshness to our habits of looking and thinking,’ said O'Neill.
Rachel O’Neill is a writer, filmmaker and artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. A widely published author of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, Rachel has received a range of writing grants, residencies and commissions. Recently, she was awarded a SEED Grant (NZWG/NZFC) to write a feature film and held an Emerging Writers Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre. She holds a BA/BFA Conjoint Degree from the University of Auckland/Elam School of Fine Arts, a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and a Poupou Huia Te Reo Certificate, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Aotearoa.
Published by Hue & Cry Press, 2013
Text by Rachel O’Neill
Soft cover
144×215mm, upright
Wholesale $13.00 + GST
RRP $25.00
ISBN 9780473257569
Rachel O'Neill’s debut collection is a book of exuberant and at times irreverent prose poems that fuse remembered experience, family life, and relationships with broader human legacies, from popular culture, and social history, through to digital technology. The book includes a thief who plays a musical interlude on an oboe before getting down to business, a botanical species, the Kafka Diver, that lures in guests for an unusual holiday on the sub-alpine platform, a talent show called Wicked Witch Idol, and a parachutist who free-falls to her family reunion. ‘We all sift through the drift of inheritance to find what is magnetic, useful and active. I wanted the poems to do the same – to lend freshness to our habits of looking and thinking,’ said O'Neill.
Rachel O’Neill is a writer, filmmaker and artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. A widely published author of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, Rachel has received a range of writing grants, residencies and commissions. Recently, she was awarded a SEED Grant (NZWG/NZFC) to write a feature film and held an Emerging Writers Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre. She holds a BA/BFA Conjoint Degree from the University of Auckland/Elam School of Fine Arts, a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and a Poupou Huia Te Reo Certificate, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Aotearoa.
Published by Hue & Cry Press, 2013
Text by Rachel O’Neill
Soft cover
144×215mm, upright
Praise
‘I think of the poems in this lovely book as an installation, a series of windows in a long wall. The view is constantly flexing and shifting. It's all about perspective. What's out there may be in miniature or expansive like the geography of galaxies. It may be the tragi-comedy of father hiding under a rug or massive tides that “flood the shore with jilted gowns”. Whatever it is, it's bound to be a surprise. And a question arises, something to do with how are we to locate ourselves. In the stuff of our lives, the attic clutter, the absurdity, the “really creepy shocks of inheritance”. In the twists and tricks of language. In “fluctuations of light”.’
—Bernadette Hall
‘...The balance between the matter-of-fact tone, the surreal situation and the yearning for human contact is stunning ... O’Neill’s tongue sings, her eye is objective, her heart compassionate.’
—NZ Listener
‘...witty, clever and self-referential, its rhythms, rhymes and half-rhymes deserve to be heard aloud.’
—NZ Books
‘Unarmed is the perfect word to sum up the sensation generated by reading Rachel O’Neill’s clever, thought-provoking first book.’
—Siobhan Harvey, Beattie’s Book Blog
‘This is a glorious debut. These poems show the way you can hold any occasion, object, person or place in your mind and, like a prism, watch it shimmer and shine with little stories that hook tufts of truth and fabrication, self and knowing, illusions and strange kinks, and everyday bric-a-brac. I am in love with this book.’
—Paula Green