A couple of lovely reviews have come out. (Well, one review and a couple of public mentions.)
The latest OUP newsletter showcased the three of us OUP authors being longlisted – me for tumble, Siobhan Harvey for Ghosts, and Alexander McKinnon for Come Back to Mona Vale, (which sounds absolutely fascinating!) Yay us!
And more recently I’m one of the books Bryan Walpert mentions in What I’m Reading in the NZ Herald. (Behind a paywall, but I have spies …) He picks out the imagery of The cold, darkening for praise, which pleases me greatly. It’s one of those small poems that people either get or don’t get, but I like it a lot.
Then there was Nicholas Reid’s review in the February 5th 2022 issue of The Listener, a really positive (if brief) analysis. For one thing, he picked up on the feminist angle: And the relationship of woman to man is one of Preston’s major concerns, often emphasising the sexual power of women and men’s resistance to it. Yay, he got it! But the review gets even better, ending with words I feel tempted to have tattooed somewhere –
Encompassing many different forms of poem, from traditional stanzas to prose poems, Tumble is a very polished collection by somebody who really knows what the craft of poetry entails.
A good review is lovely. A review that actually shows that the person read, understood, and appreciated what you were trying to do … beyond price.
A Dark Feathered Art 
Congratulations!
That is absolutely wonderful – esp Reid, who is one of the very few NZ reviewers who talks about a book rather than the feelings a book inspires in him – I inow these things come and go with fashion, but still…
Anyway, well done, you – I shall continue to send up praises
Mary Cresswell mary.cresswell@outlook.co.nz PO Box 201, Paraparaumu 5254, New Zealand Book Council profile: http://www.read-nz.org/writer/cresswell-mary/