TAKE FLIGHT, A Poetry Collection

Seven poets who met, stayed and departed from Whangarei.

A collection of poetry by Michelle Elvy, Arthur Fairley, Vaughan Gunson, Jac Jenkins, Piet Nieuwland, Martin Porter and Aaron Robertson

A group of poets active together in Whangarei since 2011, and maintaining a connection despite some members moving to new places. The book collects some of the best 15 poems of each author.

All the collected poets have been published extensively in New Zealand poetry journals and magazines, as well in some cases internationally.

150 pages.

Soft cover quality printing.

Reviewed here by Erik Kennedy, Landfall Review Online, 21 October 2021.

To purchase Take Flight for $20 (including postage) send an email to vaughangunson@gmail.com

BIG LOVE SONGS

“With its raw honesty and starvation-rations of irony, Big Love Songs is entirely different to anything I’ve read lately. It is in-yer-face poetry, but it is also poetry that aches and is vulnerable. It is poetry that, like Northland citrus fruit, manages to be both bitterly pithy and sweetly personal.”
– Elizabeth Morton, Landfall Review Online

“One of the greatest achievements of this collection is how Gunson draws the reader in and creates this sense of intimacy… If you’re love-sick, Big Love Songs knows how it feels and is right there with you.”
– Joshua Morris, Poetry NZ 

“These poems flow nicely as a group. They are light – not lite, definitely not – and a pleasure to read, combining as they do serious emotion with almost a playful presentation.”
– Mary Cresswell, Takahe

“Gunson is deliberately crafting poems of elegance and restraint which, when read alone, pale somewhat into insignificance when compared to the cumulative effect of reading several, one after another…”
– Vaughan Rapatahana, A Fine Line, NZPS

To purchase Big Love Songs for $25 (including postage) send an email to vaughangunson@gmail.com

this hill, all it’s about is lifting it to a higher level

Published by Steele Roberts, 2012

This is a book I’ve been keenly awaiting. We’ve printed a number of Vaughan’s poems in Poetry New Zealand and I’ve come to admire and respect what he writes. His poems merge his concerns for the human and natural worlds into a unity that reflects the human condition and its expression in internal and external experience.– Alistair Paterson, Poetry NZ editor, ONZM

“Vaughan Gunson’s this hill, all it’s about is lifting it to a higher level is a startling collection of poetry. Buoyed by Gunson’s eye for the unusual and precise and his cadent tongue, the book mines new and familiar territory in surprising and exciting ways.”
– Siobhan Harvey

To purchase this hill, all it’s about is lifting it to a higher level for $15 (including postage) send an email to vaughangunson@gmail.com