{"title":"Greg McLaren","description":"\u003cp\u003eGreg McLaren's works immerse readers in the rich tapestry of Australian life, blending poetic narrative with sharp cultural insights. His writing explores themes of nature, community, and resilience, often reflecting on the subtle beauty and challenges of contemporary existence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThrough evocative storytelling and vivid imagery, McLaren offers a thoughtful journey into the arts and culture of Australia, inviting readers to engage deeply with the landscapes and stories that shape identity and place.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"windfall-by-greg-mclaren-9781925780130","title":"Windfall","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn his sixth book, Greg McLaren finds his stories in those of others, and others' in his. These poems seek, suspect, and deepen connection; they nod, wink, and pay, in nearly equal parts, homage and fromage. While \u003ci\u003eWindfall\u003c\/i\u003e includes responses and asides to, and satires of, contemporary writers, it also sees McLaren further exploring his interest in classical Chinese poetry. He takes these poets for a drive through new contexts, reimagining their poems, eking out connection across culture, history, experience, and space into a voice that is shared and his own.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis is a refinement of McLaren's poetic signatures - avian life, creative palimpsest and homage, the mythic melancholy of the Hunter Region and Sydney's inner west, laconic absurdity - to a new level. There is mastery in his fringing of gothic moods with dry humour, and his ability to go to the edge of self-questioning but always return with some awkward blossom or shiny bottletop.\u003c\/b\u003e - Bonny Cassidy\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEvery poet is a scavenging bird, but few have a beak as sharp as McLaren's. This book is a clean forage through seasons and our social world. He picks at place and culture, as well as the poetry landscape, with skilled variation and departure. If you took a road trip with McLaren nothing would escape him, not even a falling feather.\u003c\/b\u003e - Nathan Curnow\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47433330295020,"sku":"9781925780130","price":29.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781925780130.jpg?v=1774765142"},{"product_id":"australian-ravens-by-greg-mclaren-9781922186638","title":"Australian Ravens","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAustralian Ravens\u003c\/em\u003e is a book of mourning, celebration, family, misgiving, lies and caution. The three long poems in this book, 'Broken', 'Not being in Kyoto' and 'The Blue Gum', each extend the questioning of memory, place and the past that featured in McLaren's first collection, \u003cem\u003eThe Kurri Kurri Book of the Dead\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAustralian Ravens\u003c\/em\u003e reaches deeply into place, making it up, trying to forget it, remembering and misremembering in equal measure. It explores the family's stories, which are already falling into a wash of silence between the sea and the lake, drifting loose from their speech, a receding and beckoning shoreline.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47460242424044,"sku":"9781922186638","price":29.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781922186638-australian-ravens.jpg?v=1774946201"},{"product_id":"camping-underground-by-greg-mclaren-9781922571502","title":"camping underground","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSet around Cessnock in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, \u003ci\u003ecamping underground\u003c\/i\u003e is a brutal, lyrical and cinematic narrative that lays out the scattered fragments of Kelly Edwards's life before and after the political violence she is implicated in unleashes a viral pandemic and societal collapse. Surviving the wreckage, moving amid the chaos while searching for her niece Ruth, while she has time, a mute, traumatised Kelly responds with violence of her own, as conflict and control dance around in the aftermath of the virus.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMcLaren has written the Great Australian Apocalypse. \u003ci\u003ecamping underground\u003c\/i\u003e is a vernacular lament for our country's past, present, and possible futures, but it never succumbs to cynicism: it feels urgent, affectionate, and beautiful, full of despair and love and a biting sense of humour. I read it in one sitting, completely spellbound, and it made my heart both shrink and stretch.\u003c\/b\u003e - Fiona McFarlane\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMcLaren's verse grabs you like an accident, like the blood smell of metallic paint, or the flecks of hair and scalp behind a twisted steering wheel. His country towns, like his Australia, are human versions of a wrecker's yard, as if all the violence and unlived life of their inhabitants concentrated in that instant before death, and exploded. This poem is a record of that explosion.\u003c\/b\u003e - John Hughes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47470224048364,"sku":"9781922571502","price":27.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781922571502-camping-underground.jpg?v=1775214096"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/greg-mclaren.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}