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L I B R A R Y > > >
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WRITING
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My manuscript For When Words Fail Us | A small Book of Changes has been accepted for publication by The Cuba Press, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Launch date: Thursday 5 December 2024 Venue: Dunningham Suite, Dunedin Public Library Time: 5.30 for 6.00pm. |
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'A woman meets a man. With the language of a poet and the gaze of a painter, Claire Beynon explores the contradictions of the relationship that develops between these two strong, complex individuals. The hints of impending calamity grow more intense as the woman must struggle to safeguard the ground of her authenticity. This is brave, angry, tender writing and always breathtakingly beautiful.'
- Carolyn McCurdie |
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If the years
alter our capacities by increments and by grace our capacities alter our understandings Claire Beynon © |
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* "I read the manuscript through in two sittings, walking by the river between. It’s marvellous. A compelling story, its imagery translucent. And well-made (what by Claire is not?). She lets the words work to make a shape that holds the world."
-John Allison |
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"Both fierce and gentle, these poems investigate the dialectic of living through the lens of a dramatic and exposing experience and are, unavoidably, an untangling of necessary things: attraction and repulsion at a molecular level; stories sometimes parallel, sometimes intersecting; the cerebral, corporeal and sensual self. Personal yet reaching beyond words on the page, this collection invites us into a deeply vulnerable space, bringing us to the brink and back.
A startling and unforgettable story." - Michelle Elvy |
LINKS to NEW & RECENT WRITING:
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Poetry New Zealand 2022
Cumulus | An Anthology of skies | Edited by Kirstie McKinnon & Steve Smart | Caselberg Press 2023 Poetry for the Planet: An Anthology of Imagined Futures | Ed Julia Kaylock & Denise O'Hagan | Litoria Press, Australia, 2021 Twelve Poems About Ice | NZ Poetry Shelf | Curated by Paula Green Adapting to Crisis | Ten Notable Writers Talk with Penelope Todd | Down in Edin Magazine | Issue 24 | Dec 2021 Professor Bebop advises | Love in the Time of Covid | 2021 Shudder | Love in the Time of Covid | 2021 Coral Arranging | Flash Frontier | December 2021 Waiting for the New Song to Rise | A visual & written essay | Down in Edin Magazine | Issue 21 | July 2020 FIFTY-ONE | Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand | A Conversation with the Artist | WORD Christchurch |2020 Singing The Blues | Flash Frontier | In Conversation with Michelle Elvy | 2018 Many as One - A Global Honeycomb | Flash Frontier | 2019 Love | Flash Frontier | April Issue 2019 |
A selection of READINGS
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Getting to know you, Venice | A short story/poetry reading
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4.43AM, Venice
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Three poems
from For When Words Fail Us | A small Book of Changes |
OPEN BOOK | Poetry & Images
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Support for OPEN BOOK:
“Claire Beynon already has standing both as a poet and as a visual artist working in a variety of media. But she is rare in being one of the few able to bring their own words and images together in a striking and memorable way. If there is one word I would use for her work, it is 'innovation' and her new book has that in spades.” - Philip Temple “Here is a project that is adventurous in both conception and execution: the absence of pagination suggests one continuous page that will enchant the audience. In Claire Beynon’s OPEN BOOK the artifice of wit is set alongside (not against) the unsteady pressure of the personal. Here words are historical burs that, like the rough edges of lines made by an engraving tool, catch the world and turn it around. They enlarge our sense of what's possible. As she observes of earth and air: ‘Theirs is a relationship refined by this curiously lyrical insistence.’” - David Howard “This is poetry that is assured, confident and rich in imagery. It is poetry with a sense of both what is present, on the surface of things, and of what is imagined in undercurrents and layers. Claire’s writing has a lyrical, musical and sensory quality. She has an enviable ability to vividly recall and evoke place and sensations...” - Kay McKenzie Cooke “Poems to carve on the palm…” - Penelope Todd |
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A wall-mounted installation of the original pages for OPEN BOOK was a finalist in the 2005 National Wallace Art Awards and won the competition's Peoples' Choice Award.
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LITERARY CV
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TODAY'S SKY
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belongs to Tiepolo. A wisp of a man now with nicotine-stained teeth
and wine-soaked breath, he lives alone in a white house with blue windows and a wide view across the water. His angels of old have long since flown, yet still he paints and scumbles, fusses beneath his frescoed dome. Some mornings, a flock of whisper-thin sparrows hovers and on warmer days the bumblebees visit. He says it’s the blue they like which is reason enough to keep his windows open. Even when he forgets, the bumblebees find a crack and make their way in, stripe his house yellow and black. They don’t stay long, he insists, just long enough to tap dance on my walls and sills, resting awhile on my purple cushions and sometimes on the medieval throne in the hallway. Claire Beynon © [Winning poem, Takahē Monica Taylor Prize, 2021] |