Urgent, witty and unnervingly beautiful, Oscar Upperton’s first collection takes familiar language and makes it uncanny. Suns detach. The ocean climbs a mast. Someone forgets where their haunted house is. These poems are vitally human and consoling; they reframe the ordinary as something to yearn for.

Oscar Upperton was born in Christchurch in 1991, and grew up in Whangārei and Palmerston North. He now lives in Wellington. In 2019 he was awarded the Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary. His work has been featured in Sport, The Spinoff, Metro and Best New Zealand Poems.