The Book
and how it looks, and how I feel about it, and where you can buy it
Hello to you! You probably already know this, but I will tell you again: in just over a month, my first full-length book of poetry, No Good, will be published by Auckland University Press. I am at least 10% delighted about this. (10% is quite high for something as potent as delight.)
The book is called No Good because I thought that sounded good. Titles are very tricky for me. My friend Anna came up with this one and it stuck when nothing else did. I needed the title to be a bit of a joke because I sort of find the whole thing, the idea of having written enough poems for a book and for that book to be published and available for purchase, a bit of a joke. It would be a shame to take it too seriously.
Because people keep asking me what the book is about and I don’t really know how to answer concisely, here is a list of some things you will find in No Good:
Royal Tenenbaum of the Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
A whole bunch of sonnets about adolescent grief
A poem called ‘Why Did You Decide to Join Lesbianism?’ in which I finally give you all the answers
An oblique reference to an early episode of The Simpsons
Poems about growing up and being far away, leaving and leaving again
Bits of Syracuse and New York, including squirrels, cream cheese and two filthy rivers
Poems about love and ‘the end of love’ I guess
An oblique reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail
I don’t really know the Sophie who wrote the book, and reading it again now is odd. The first poem in the book is one I wrote when I was twenty two! That’s silly. So I am trying not to read it. But I have held it in my hands and I think it is rather handsome.
If you would like a copy, either to read or just to hold in your hands (either option is fine), you can order one here or buy one in a bookshop1 once it has been launched.2 I am so grateful to Emma Neale and Francis Cooke for their endorsements. I am also very grateful to those of you reading this who helped me write or edit the book or who have simply listened to me go on about it over the past year or so. I’ll keep going on about it for a month or two more and then I’ll be very quiet again.
Hooray!
If you would like a copy and you are not in NZ, please let me know and I can probably send one to you. Otherwise you can wait until approx. January 2026 when the books will arrive in your country on a big ship…?
Launch details to come, but there will be one, probably on Thursday August 14th at The Open Book in Ponsonby. I’ll invite you :-)