Shamfeign

Shamfeign
poetry by Alice Hooton

Monday, March 7, 2011

BF Publishing are proud to announce the launch of Shamfeign by prize-winning poet Alice Hooton shall be in April 2011.

Please let us know if you'd like an invitation, there will be one launch on the North Shore of Auckland then  also, a reading at The Happy Tea House, Grey Lynn with the other Eye Street Poets.

Alice Hooton's generous nature is obvious in these spare, carefully crafted poems which elegantly tell so much about people and history.  Here is the blurb from the back of this book -

today I paint a picture
of islands

a clipped blue sea
jostling windsurfers in the bay

a ragbag of home talk
lest they forget ...

Frank, heartfelt stories from immigrants who settled America through Ellis Island around 100 years ago; then Hitler's war through the frayed senses of embattled soldiers abroad and also, their loved ones at home in New Zealand; along with narratives threaded around circus life, the tensions and rewards of family connections; achingly beautiful descriptions which result from love of a place and people. Polished verses linked to family oral literature and an extraordinary understanding of world history. Facts artfully revealed, not obscured by what people may selectively want others to hear and yet, how delightful and mysterious it may appear to realise we're rarely entirely free of cut-crystal affectations, embroidered tales and fancy notions.
Shamfeign - the duplicity of glamour and a play on the word, champagne. (Alice Hooton invented this word in conversation at Eye Street Poets, Grey Lynn, Auckland, NZ).
A highly original first poetry collection from the winner of the Inaugural Kathleen Grattan IWW Poetry Award 2009.


ISBN 978-0-473-18062-1

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