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Dance-Floor Romance
Brief Description
Plot a lifetime of joy.Begin with a niece discovering how to dance;end with a poet weeping happy tearsnext to water. — from ‘On joy’ Unfolding in the strobe-lit landscape of the club, this latest collection from Chris Tse reflects on joy, nostalgia and legacy – and...
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September 2026
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Dance-Floor Romance
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Anthems to art and transformation, from past Poet Laureate, Chris Tse.
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Description
Plot a lifetime of joy.
Begin with a niece discovering how to dance;
end with a poet weeping happy tears
next to water.
— from ‘On joy’
Unfolding in the strobe-lit landscape of the club, this latest collection from Chris Tse reflects on joy, nostalgia and legacy – and what it means to make a vocation of vulnerability. Words hit the page like light on a mirrorball as Tse takes us from come-up to comedown, between the spotlight and the shadowy corners, penning both sadbangers and straight-up bangers that are generous, alive and shot through with the magnetic urgency of a club classic.
But when the lights come up after the last dance, how do we brace ourselves to face the world outside? Dance-Floor Romance is poetry that seeks answers from the art we turn to in times of uncertainty, that ‘Holds the present as much as it / holds a whisper of the future’, and amplifies it. Someone hand Tse the AUX cord.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781776712588
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 10 September 2026
Country: New Zealand
Imprint: Auckland University Press
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 162.0mm
Height: 240.0mm
Weight: 200g
Pages: 112
About the Author
Chris Tse is a writer and editor living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. He studied film and English literature at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, where he also completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. He is the author of three poetry collections published by Auckland University Press: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (winner of the 2016 Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry), HE’S SO MASC and Super Model Minority (a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and longlisted at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards). Alongside Emma Barnes, he edited Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (Auckland University Press, 2021). In August 2022, Chris was appointed Aotearoa New Zealand’s thirteenth Poet Laureate; he completed his term in August 2025.
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