PAST LIVES

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NZ LISTENER Best Books of 2023

Grounded in the urgency of the moment – motherhood, housing precarity, politics – Past Lives also surges along on the nervous and joyful electricity of Leah Dodd’s voice, taking us from buses to poetry readings, rental bathrooms to Runescape, sometimes through the power of astral projection. These poems encounter domestic and feral creatures, mermaids, and men with terrible mullets. In form these poems are restless and spacious, constantly locating themselves, as the author herself does in her new life with a young child who shapeshifts daily. Most of all, these poems are about becoming – how, as we move toward the future, we turn our thoughts backwards towards the lives we have come from.

‘Leah’s poetry makes me vomit with joy. Everyone should read this fucking book.’ —Jordan Hamel

‘I suspect even those who don’t usually read poetry will enjoy Past Lives: it is so funny and tender and true.’ —Joy Holley, Metro

‘Another great debut. … She looks back wryly at her adolescence and when she takes to social satire, she is often uproariously funny.’ —NZ Listener

‘Past Lives is filled with a deadpan and undercutting comedic voice. Sharp and impressive, it’s wonderful, and often made me laugh out loud.’ — Louise Wallace

‘Leah’s poems pursue a romance with art as escape route from real life, while lovingly recording the dirt and disarray of the real. The narrators often seem to feel as if they are in the gutter but looking at the stars.’ —Chris Price

Cover: Charles Edward Perugini, The Goldfish Bowl, oil on canvas, c. 1870