{"title":"Kathy Fagan","description":"\u003cp\u003eKathy Fagan’s work invites readers into a richly textured world where language and emotion intertwine. Her writing navigates the complexities of experience with a lyrical precision, often exploring themes of memory, identity, and the subtle fractures beneath everyday life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWithin the Arts \u0026amp; Culture category, Fagan’s books offer a thoughtful, evocative journey that resonates with those who appreciate poetry and prose that challenges and comforts in equal measure. Expect a nuanced blend of introspection and sharp observation in every title.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"bad-hobby-by-kathy-fagan-9781571315458","title":"Bad Hobby","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom Kingsley Tufts Award finalist Kathy Fagan comes \u003cem\u003eBad Hobby\u003c\/em\u003e, a perceptive collection focused on memory, class, and might-have-beens.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn a working-class family that considers sensitivity a \"fatal diagnosis,\" how does a child grow up to be a poet? What happens when a body \"meant to bend \u0026amp; breed\" opts not to, then finds itself performing the labour of care regardless? Why do we think our \"common griefs\" so singular? \u003cem\u003eBad Hobby\u003c\/em\u003e is a hard-earned meditation on questions like these—a dreamscape speckled with swans, ghosts, and weather updates.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFagan writes with a kind of practical empathy, lamenting pain and brutality while knowing, also, their inevitability. A dementing father, a squirrel limp in the talons of a hawk, a \"child who won't ever get born\": with age, Fagan posits, the impact of ordeals like these changes. Loss becomes instructive. Solitude becomes a shared experience. \"You think your one life precious—\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAnd \u003cem\u003eBad Hobby\u003c\/em\u003e thinks—hard. About lineage, about caregiving. About time. It paces \"inside its head, gazing skyward for a noun or phrase to \/ shatter the glass of our locked cars \u0026amp; save us.\" And it does want to save us, or at least lift us, even in the face of immense bleakness, or loneliness, or the body changing, failing. \"Don't worry, baby,\" Fagan tells us, the sparrow at her window. \"We're okay.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47595764515052,"sku":"9781571315458","price":32.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781571315458-bad-hobby.jpg?v=1777906059"},{"product_id":"the-unbecoming-by-kathy-fagan-9781324131397","title":"The Unbecoming","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn a sketch of the Virgin and Child, Michelangelo instructed his young assistant, in shorthand Italian, to \u003cem\u003eDraw faster\u003c\/em\u003e, acknowledging that life lasts a moment, death—and art—far longer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs an ageing, bi, childless poet currently recognising the limits of her own life and that of our planet, Kathy Fagan has immersed herself in the intimate and urgent discovery that growth and decay are the same cycle, and that art and memory, made in the tumultuous rush of these, are the deeply human attempts to outlast them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFagan's luminous seventh collection, \u003cem\u003eThe Unbecoming\u003c\/em\u003e, begins with the sequence \"Listening to Others,\" and a command: Run, into a process that is, for all of us, a circle of becoming and unbecoming simultaneously. Favouring perspective over nostalgia and clarity over certainty, the poems are, then, memento mori, a loving reminder, a poet's reckoning with the rewards and losses of age, and with our painfully beautiful little lives \"rounded with a sleep.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom \"Listening to Others\":\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePeople used to say, soaking wet, they'd got caught\u003cbr\u003e\nin the rain: a sudden downpour: the pouring rain.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe rain is constant, I wrote in a postcard once,\u003cbr\u003e\nperhaps from here. I was fifteen, and on the tour bus,\u003cbr\u003e\nwhere I could crush on her best, was a girl named Rain,\u003cbr\u003e\nwho napped on her brother's shoulder as we drove. I didn't\u003cbr\u003e\nlong to be the shoulder: I didn't wish I were the girl:\u003cbr\u003e\nI needed a face for my own true soul, is how I'd put it\u003cbr\u003e\nto myself: and it was hers I wanted, not mine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67712352190700,"sku":"9781324131397","price":68.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781324131397-the-unbecoming-1.jpg?v=1791854808"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/collections\/kathy-fagan.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}