Towards the end of last year, I very excitedly shouted that ‘Kane had got a hat trick’ – nothing to do with football, no, something far more important.
In truth, I’d just read an early cut of Gaynor Kane’s ‘Venus in pink marble’ for the first time and knew that it was going to make a truly special book.
The hat trick of course was that it would mean that Gaynor had been published three times by Hedgehog – her beautiful wee Stickleback, ‘Circling The Sun’, her stunning pamphlet ‘Memory Forest’ and now this her first full collection, and what a collection it would be.
Maria McManus, author of Available Light , described it as,
“Kane’s poems are Ulster poems; authentic, lived, and as intimate as Super 8 films. Close reading gives us glimpses of the domestic and the near-past, reel on reel, frame by frame. As readers we are inside the poems, part of a narrative distinctly of place, of community, and of the familial. Days out, work, ancestry, landscape; these things are peopled with the weight of history and happenstance. The context she exposes is affectionate, but it is always also navigating rules, code and the complexities of a place and people riven with its distinct, hardwired contradictions; the past and the contemporary, cheek by jowl.”
Whilst Eileen Carney Hulme, author of The Stone Messenger said,
“In Venus in pink marble, Kane takes the reader on an honest journey through her own personal history and experiences. It is at once powerful and far reaching, unafraid to tackle big political themes or to offer a tender and loving exploration of family and relationships. The final section includes bold and imaginative perspectives on artwork moving the poems from inward to outward.”
As ever, we encourage you to support our poets by buying their work directly from them and Gaynor has put together a couple of options that mean you can get copies of ‘Venus’ along with her other titles if you have missed them somehow so far.
You can order a copy direct from Gaynor HERE
As is the way at the moment, if you do buy a copy from Gaynor in the next fortnight, you will also be eligible to a FREE ENTRY to any one of our competitions.
But you need to be quick.
To enter the competition, by the 8th of September 2020 you need to:
- Buy a book from Gaynor HERE
- Email your Competition entry along with the payment receipt to the email address on the relevant competition page.
It is as simple a that.
To be clear – You need to buy the book and enter the competition within the next fortnight – i.e. by midnight on Tuesday the 8th of December 2020.
About Gaynor Kane
Gaynor Kane fell into writing accidentally. At forty, instead of buying a mid-life crisis sports car, she started a degree with the Open University. She finished her BA (Hons) in Humanities with Literature in 2016, with a module on creative writing. Since then, she has been widely published and has been placed in several poetry competitions. Now, at fifty, she is happy to be publishing her full collection, Venus in pink marble. It was always her aspiration that this collection would come into the world in 2020, she just didn’t think it would be amid a global pandemic. Gaynor has two other publications with The Hedgehog Poetry Press, they are Circling the Sun (2018) and Memory Forest (2019). You can read more about them at www.gaynorkane.com.
Follow Gaynor at –
Facebook: @gaynorkanepoet
Twitter: @gaynorkane
- Title: Venus in pink marble
- ISBN: 978-1913499310
- Pages: 98
- Order from Amazon HERE
- Order signed and annotated copies direct from Gaynor Kane at her web site HERE
Following the success of her thematically focused pamphlet Memory Forest, Gaynor Kane’s debut full collection of poems opens outwards as she explores her personal history. Venus in pink marble takes the reader on a narrative journey from heritage and place, through family and relationships, to poetry inspired by culture. Venus in Pink marble is poet and public servant, protector and rebel, proposition and paradox, with feminine strength.