To the Occupant, Paperback

Emma Neale creates shape-shifting poems that confound prejudices and subvert expectations. The striking imagery and emotional range of her work challenge the open and latent violence of contemporary life, from refugee crises to rape, poverty, and mental illness to climate change, while revealing the extraordinary in the everyday. Whimiscal typographical experiments and prose poems sit next to reimagined fables, deliciously light-handed satire, and quietly powerful insights into the contemporary political terrain.

Emma Neale has published six novels and five poetry collections, and edited several anthologies. Neale was awarded the Kathleen Grattan Award for 2011 for her poetry collection The Truth Garden, and was a finalist for the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2017 for her novel Billy Bird. Since 2018 she has been editor of Landfall journal.