Fertile ground
Apr 10, 2022
2 minutes
by NICHOLAS REID
MEAT LOVERS, by Rebecca Hawkes (AUP, $24.99)
Rebecca Hawkes’ is a brilliant debut from a writer whose work has so far appeared only in AUP’s series. Raised on a Canterbury beef and sheep farm, Hawkes knows intimately what it is to be part of a farming family. There are a few flashes of nostalgia, but is the lovers part, moving away from the farm and into some of the poet’s erotic desire. Good poetry, for sure, but somehow not as forthright as the farm poems, although there is some hard-nosed satire, as in her take on modish fads “denying that it was a phase”. There’s a really great talent here.
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