Back Before You Know / Murray Edmond

Poems by Murray Edmond

A reimagining of the colonial ballad for contemporary Aotearoa through two dark, incantatory narratives that probe the violent origins of settler society. ‘The Ballad of Jonas Bones ‘transposes Robert Penn Warren’s American frontier tale into 1880s Waikato, where a family of shopkeepers turns murderous on the King Country line. ‘The Fancier Pigeon’ spirals through decades and cities—from provincial New Zealand to Sydney’s harbour—tracking lovers, dealers, and dreamers caught in cycles of desire and dissolution.

Published April 2019
Softcover, 80 pages
Handbound edition of 200
ISBN 9780994112392

Original price was: $20.00.Current price is: $15.00.

Praise

The paired allegorical poetry tales in BACK Before You Know take on history and the perky fatalized body—as ‘The Fancier Pigeon’ sprightly-deathly observes, “The world is fixed / in ice and fire” and symmetry and entropy “go together / like two girls in a bar.” Edmond writes with a wry deliciousness in a pace from which one can’t turn away – we stop in the heart and we can’t stop anything in these forward cantering loops through fabled destiny.
– Lisa Samuels (author of Foreign Native)

Murray Edmond joins the rich tradition of late modernist folk poetry, which also includes Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger and Tom Pickard’s The Ballad of Jamie Allan. Wistful and riotous by turns, these two startling fables radiate with human warmth. They ring beautifully true.
– Steven Toussaint (author of Lay Studies)

The Author

Murray Edmond

Poet, playwright, editor, critic, and dramaturge. His poetry collections Letters And Paragraphs (Caxton Press, 1987), Fool Moon (AUP, 2004), and Shaggy Magpie Songs (AUP, 2015) were finalists for the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry. He has worked extensively in theatre as a writer, actor, director and dramaturge, notably for 20 years with Indian Ink’s Jacob Rajan and Justin Lewis on the creation of all that company’s scripts.