The Dancing Bicycle
Jenna Heller
The Dancing Bicycle
by Jenna Heller
Available December 2025
ISBN: 978-1-0670252-0-5
paperback; 88 p.
135 mm x 216 mm
rrp: $25
From the USA to NZ, from four distinct seasons along the Connecticut River to the coastal wetlands of New Brighton, The Dancing Bicycle charts shifting landscapes of identity and inheritance, moving between worlds both familiar and far, bringing a searching intelligence and dry wit to the questions that face us all – what am I? Where do I belong? Who are my people? And “Hypnos/ son of night/[…] god of dreams,/tell me, asshole,/ why so elusive?”
Jenna Heller grew up in the United States, but has lived her entire adult life in Aotearoa New Zealand in Diamond Harbour, Banks Peninsula, and New Brighton, Christchurch. She was runner-up for the 2021 Caselberg International Poetry Prize, and has had poems shortlisted for the NZSA Heritage Awards and the takahē Monica Taylor Poetry Prize. Her short fiction has won National Flash Fiction Day and the Australian CLA Best Prose Prize. The End of the Beginning, a collection of flash fiction, was published in 2024 by At the Bay | I te Kokoru. The Dancing Bicycle is her first collection of poetry.
like visiting a New York cemetery in November
from “in the ocean. He was there, then he wasn’t—”
trees nearly bare, day overcast, ground frozen.
You walk through brown leaves, pick your way
to his plaque. Read his name, his dates, breathe.
He is here. He is not. Physical remnants under
the grass where you stand.
These poems transport the reader from grief to love, from NZ to the USA, and from the windswept coast to the molten core of the earth. It’s a dazzling, ambitious and heartfelt first collection.
– OSCAR UPPERTON
I Came This Way Some Time Before – Selected Poems
John Allison
I Came This Way Some Time Before
– Selected Poems –
by John Allison
Available August 2025
ISBN: 978-1-0670252-3-6
paperback; 150 p.
148 mm x 210 mm
rrp: $30
In his later years I saw John as a fresco painter on his way to the monastery. I imagined him sizing up a moist plaster wall. He would brush his colourful images into the surface. As the wall dried, as its plaster set, every pigmented line John put there would join the lime and sand particles, becoming part of the structure rather than a surface decoration. His artistry, I thought, made things more solid.
– DAVID HOWARD
Don’t Stop This Old Spell
Juliet McAra
Runner-up in the 2024
John O’Connor Award
Don’t Stop This Old Spell
Juliet McAra
Available September 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7385824-9-5
paperback; 78 p.
148 mm x 210 mm
rrp $25
Juliet McAra’s work is as open and clear as a view from a hilltop. Her poems tell the truth about increasingly difficult subjects until they confront us with raw grief and absence, and then we realise that this is what the book has been about all along. This is poetry that reminds us that there are some things we can’t avoid, and those are the things to sing about.
– ERIK KENNEDY
Which Witch Body
Melanie McKerchar
Which Witch Body
by Melanie McKerchar
Available 22 August 2025
ISBN: 978-1-0670252-1-2
paperback; 84 p.
160 mm x 225 mm
rrp $30
Embodied. Potent. Hypnotic. Melanie McKerchar’s poetry “spin[s] webs” circling tensions of the lived experience of disability, of bearing witness to the climate crisis, of speaking against the cynicism of controlling powers. As well as “going into the dark places”, the work thrums with defiance, stirring up the “blood magic” of survival; returning always to sea, sky, dirt and flesh.
– ANNABEL WILSON
The Girl Who Sings Islands
Catherine Fitchett
Runner-up in the 2024
John O’Connor Award
The Girl Who Sings Islands
Catherine Fitchett
Available: late February 2025
ISBN:978-1-7385824-8-8
paperback
rrp $25
The threads that Catherine Fitchett draws through this beautiful collection glitter and shine, seem woven from light itself. These poems are shutter-sharp on the fleet and elusive, on moments of transformation and points of connection.
– SUE WOOTTON
not everything turns away
Philomena Johnson
Winner of the 2024
John O’Connor Award
not everything turns away
Philomena Johnson
Available: 23 August 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7385824-7-1
paperback; 96 p.
rrp $25
An extremely resonant, well-turned collection, quick with observation and insight. … moments of celebration are constantly underwritten by strong intimations of the sacramental, … but we are also never allowed to forget or ignore what it is to be ‘a huddle of bones’, subject to ‘bruised memory’, the salt of grief, ‘an ache for open sky’. These are poems which will make you pause and reflect as you read, and will continue to work on you long after you’ve closed the book.
– HARRY RICKETTS
Based on a True Story
David Gregory
Based on a True Story
David Gregory
Available: June 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7385824-6-4
paperback; 76 pp.
rrp $25
The most underrated poet in Aotearoa New Zealand delivers again. David Gregory’s work is special because it manages to be perfectly built but also consistently unpredictable — a theoretically-possible balance of order and chaos that isn’t often encountered in the wild.
He writes with certainty and humility. These are sharp portraits of hard-won experience, tinged with the warm light of life’s autumn.
– ERIK KENNEDY
Sudden Valley Press 