Description
“These pieces are richly strange, often funny and poignant, full of memories and contradictions, magic and rationalism, romance and science. Reading them you climb over peaks and fault-lines, leap between realism and expressionism, negotiate mysterious deaths and strange obsessions, and travel from Aotearoa to its antipodes. Stories are disputed and rights are stolen; danger lurks at the edges, sometimes in comic guise. ‘Morning will determine whether scene from thriller or screwball comedy,’ reads one character’s journal entry: the same, Strait
Men suggests, could be said of life.” — Emily Perkins
About the author
Murray Edmond was born in Hamilton in 1949. He has published thirteen books of poems: Letters and Paragraphs (1987) and Fool Moon (2005) were New Zealand Book Awards finalists. His latest volume of poems is Shaggy Magpie Songs (2015) from Auckland University Press. His collection of critical writings, Then It Was Now Again: Selected Critical Writing was published by Atuanui Press in 2014. A study of Noh theatre and the Western avant-garde, Noh Business, was published by Atelos Press in California in 2005 and the long poem A Piece of Work was published by Tinfish Press in Hawai‘i in 2002. He co-edited the anthology Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960–1975 (AUP, 2000), and is the editor of the peer-reviewed online journal Ka Mate Ka Ora: A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics.
Since the 1970s, Murray has been active in experimental and innovative theatre companies and for over 25 years taught theatre and drama at the University of Auckland, retiring from his position as Associate Professor of Drama at the end of 2014. He works as the dramaturge for Indian Ink Theatre Company, whose latest play, Kiss the Fish, was awarded Best New Play of 2014 in the Chapman Tripp Awards.
