Pins

Description

At the centre of this book-length poem is a sister's disappearance, and a peculiar inheritance: an obsession with pins. Pins held between the teeth to tell a fortune, a downpour of a thousand pins, precious pins borrowed for an art installation. In this intelligent, intimate and often comic depiction of two sisters and their family, Natalie Morrison gathers together many tiny pinpricks of loss. Part poem, part letter, part inventory - but not limited to any one of these categories - this is a mesmerising debut. 'I found Pins extraordinarily witty, perceptive, and moving. The family narrative unspools around two sisters whose pointed obsessions bring us something that echoes Wallace Stevens' 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' and Anne Kennedy's 100 Traditional Smiles.' -James Brown

Natalie Morrison has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, where she received the Biggs Family Prize for Poetry in 2016. She lives and works in Wellington. Pins is her first book.

"I found Pins extraordinarily witty, perceptive, and moving. The family narrative unspools around two sisters whose pointed obsessions bring us something that echoes Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird and Anne Kennedy's 100 Traditional Smiles." - James Brown