We are very pleased to be giving away three copies of C. K. Stead’s book ‘Say I Do This’, to our GrownUps members.
All you need to do to enter the draw is be a GrownUps member, make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter and fill in your details near the bottom of the page!
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About Say I Do This
A beautiful new collection from this country’s leading poet.
In this poignant new poetry collection, one of this country’s most significant voices reflects on home, on away, and on friends living and dead. ‘I lead a life of quiet medication’, the poet claims, ‘longing for foreign shores, adventure and death.’ But whether swimming to the yellow buoy or remembering an encounter in Belsize Park, in the thick of it or asking, ‘what next?’, Stead’s voice is intimate, amusing and always compelling.
Swimming in the dark I call on memory –
Rangitoto ahead, and those lights
of Kohi behind making
a cosy half-circle. Overhead the moon’s
a waka sailing west to escape
first light that will put it out.
I’m reaching blind fingers for the yellow buoy
and touch it only as the sun does
dimly through a bank of cloud
ENDORSEMENTS
‘Say I Do This resounds with intimations of mortality, compounded with reactions to a contemporary world of pandemic, climate change and war, but this collection is not in the least morose. Rather, the poetry is enlivening – concrete, particular, detailed and often playful. There is a wealth of sensory content, and each poem has its own satisfying shape, with easy idiomatic speech forming its special kind of rhythm. In this book a major modern poet continues to “live and sing”.’
— MacDonald P. Jackson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C. K. Stead is an award-winning novelist, literary critic, poet, essayist and emeritus professor of English at the University of Auckland. He was the New Zealand Poet Laureate from 2015–2017, has won the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction and is a Member of the Order of New Zealand.
Say I do this
Say I tell the accountant who does my tax,
or the IRD itself, that at eighty-nine
it’s too hard to get the numberings correct –
too much fiddle. Say I make them an offer –
a thousand, two at most. I was recalling
our neighbour Dr André at Maunsell Road
when a small fragment of steel got in my eye –
it was the weekend, he’d been drinking, and I watched
his instrument waver towards my eye – and stop.
‘Don’t move’ he said, loud, as if he meant it. Later
we had whiskey with Father Forsman looking out
on Pasifika kids playing in his school yard.
‘My Aegean Greeks’ he said, thinking of the War.
One K should do it. I’ve made fuck all this year.
Terms and conditions
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- You must be a GrownUps member and receive our newsletter to be eligible to win.
- Competition closes on the 21st March 2023, winners will be notified via email by 23rd March 2023.
- It is your responsibility to ensure you correctly enter a New Zealand postal address where the prize can be couriered. GrownUps will not take responsibility for prizes sent to incorrect addresses.
- Winners are drawn at random by the GrownUps administration team.
- GrownUps employees and family are not eligible to enter.
- By entering the giveaway, you approve for GrownUps to use your name on social media as winner of the competition.
- One entry per household.
- Prize is non transferrable.
- You must reside in New Zealand – the prize will only be posted within New Zealand.
- You must be over 50 years of age to enter, check your details are correct in your membership dashboard.