Blue Hour
Blue Hour by Jo McNeice, published by Otago University Press in 2024, is a debut poetry collection that explores the interplay of light and darkness within the urban landscape of contemporary Te Whanganui-a-Tara. This 68-page work presents a series of intimate poems that delve into themes of love, madness, betrayal, desire, and recovery, reflecting a woman’s quest for understanding amid the complexities of her life experiences.
Readers will find that Blue Hour grapples with the intricacies of human nature, mental health, and relationships. The poems weave a tapestry where the fantastical meets the ordinary, featuring mermaids, angels, and wolves alongside everyday elements like sparrows and dandelions. Through this collection, McNeice invites contemplation on the irregularities of existence, allowing space for both the haunting and the familiar in her exploration of life’s profound questions.
Official synopsis Publisher
Set in the green spaces and urban grit of contemporary Te Whanganui-a-Tara, this award-winning debut collection from poet Jo McNeice unfolds like a Gothic fairytale. Darkness and light ripple through these haunting, intimate poems, which draw on themes of love, madness, betrayal, desire and recovery to tell the story of a woman searching among the images and events of her life for answers – sometimes finding them, sometimes not.
Blue Hour grapples with the complexities of human nature, mental health and relationships. ‘You know,’ writes McNeice, ‘we are irregular verbs. / You know the universe is harsh.’ In the remarkable universe created by these poems, the irregular is allowed. Here, mermaids, angels and wolves share space with everyday sparrows in plum trees and dandelions on the lawn.
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