The Lobster's Tale

Description

Exploring the lobster's biology and its history in language, literature and gastronomy, The Lobster's Tale navigates the perils of a life driven by overreaching ambition and the appetite for knowledge, conquest and commerce. In conversation with the text, Bruce Foster's photographs navigate a parallel course of shadows and light, in which the extraordinary textures and colours of the natural world tell a darker story. The Lobster's Tale is a meditation on the quest for immortality on which both artists and scientists have embarked, and the unhappy consequences of the attempt to both conquer nature and create masterpieces. Meanwhile, below the waterline of text and images, a modest voice can be overheard whispering an alternative to these narratives of heroic and doomed exploration. The Lobster's Tale brings together award-winning writer Chris Price and distinguished photographer Bruce Foster. It is the third in the korero series of 'picture books' edited by Lloyd Jones, written and made for grown-ups and designed to showcase leading New Zealand writers and artists working together in a collaborative and dynamic way.

Chris Price's work often hovers around the intersections between literature and science. She is the author of three poetry collections including Husk (Best First Book of Poetry, Montana NZ Book Awards, 2002), The Blind Singer (2009) and Beside Herself (2016), as well as the hybrid 'biographical dictionary' Brief Lives (shortlisted, Montana NZ Book Awards' biography category, 2007). Chris is a former editor of the literary journal Landfall. Since 2009 she has convened the MA workshop in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Bruce Foster's work meditates on the dialogue between the natural and human-altered environments, and is held by major museums and art galleries throughout New Zealand. He was one of nine artists on the 'Kermadec Project: Lines Across the Ocean', an initiative to articulate the issues facing one of the few pristine ocean sites left on the planet.