Naming the Beasts

Overview

Naming the Beasts is a menagerie of poems about the gnarlier aspects of being a creature of this world. Within these pages wilderness and suburbia collide. The ‘I’ in these poems takes many forms: a wolf, a waterbuck, a bird ‘stuck circling the carnage.’ Whether soaring above or prowling through the neighbourhood, Morton’s beasts bear witness to an unremitting vision of pain and ecological damage. As the flames climb higher, the beasts in this collection are left to wander and live out their lives. There is love and loneliness, passivity and rage. Yet there is always hope. Hoof and hide, fang and gut, these images and insights are those of an artist in a war zone intent on chronicling beauty in a world that’s falling apart. Morton’s poems take a bite out of the world around us, as they explore reality through the vitality and immersiveness of their imaginative powers.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Morton grew up in suburban Auckland. Her poetry and prose have been published in New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and online. She holds an MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. Morton has accrued many literary acknowledgements for her work, and her previous collection of poetry, This is Your Real Name (OUP, 2020), was longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry in the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The manuscript of Naming the Beasts was shortlisted for the 2021 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award.