Synopses & Reviews
The poems in The Glass Rooster explore the spaces inhabited by humans and other creatures—from natural ecosystems to cities and even to outer space. Our guide on this journey is a glass rooster—observer of stars and lover of hens—who first popped up in Janis Freegard’s poetry years ago and wanders unchecked through the book. Each of the eight sections (or “echo-systems”) in the book—the Damp Places, Forest, Cityscape, the Alpine Zone, Space, Home & Garden, Underground, and In the Desert—is introduced by a triolet: a French poetic form with repeated lines. Other poems are arranged in pairs, each echoing something about the other, whether desert plants, the presence of balloons, or the dangers of working in a mine. The result is a tremendous, riotous exploration of an interconnected world.
About the Author
Janis Freegard is the author of the poetry collections Kingdom Animalia: The Escapades of Linnaeus and The Continuing Adventures of Alice Spider, and the coauthor of AUP New Poets 3. Her poetry has appeared in a wide range of journals and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas, including Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page, Best NZ Poems 2012, and Landfall. She won the BNZ Katherine Mansfield short story competition in 2001, and her story “Liking Eyes” was short-listed for the inaugural Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing in 2007.