Alison Glenny’s Antarctic-themed collection of prose poems and fragments The Farewell Tourist won the Kathleen Gratton Poetry Award for poetry and was published by Otago University Press in 2018. Her most recent book is Bird Collector, published by Compound Press. Both books were longlisted for New Zealand Book Awards. She has also published in journals and anthologies, including Out Here: An anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa, edited by Chris Tse and Emma Barnes, and No Other Place to Stand, an anthology of climate change poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific, forthcoming from Auckland University Press. She lives on the Kāpiti Coast.
Glenny comments: '"Footnotes to a history of the reliquary" comes from Bird Collector, published by Compound Press in 2021. Many of the pieces in the book re-use fragments of the past, together with "found forms" such as footnotes, to voice current concerns about topics like extinction and ecological grief. The book is also literally re-purposed, as Compound Press makes books from recycled materials. This piece seems to be more about objects with surprising interiors.'
Links
Bird Collector, Compound Press website
Alison Glenny poems on Amberflora and Wasafiri