Bird Collector:
Alison Glenny with Pip Adam (SOLD OUT)

Come to Katherine Mansfield's house for a special evening of conversation and readings from Bird Collector, a startling new collection of poetry by Alison Glenny with illustrations by Carrie Tiffany. Hosted by writer and podcast host Pip Adam. Entry includes an after hours look at the Still Life | Wild Places exhibition inspired by the life and writings of Katherine Mansfield, with installations by contemporary female artists, including taxidermists, jewellers and painters. Limited Capacity. Refreshments included in your ticket.

Reading Bird Collector is like walking through the rooms of a nineteenth century house, filled with curiosities but also with a deeper sense of buried trauma: both on a personal and an environmental scale. The fragmentary pieces invite the reader to search for a narrative at the same time as they frustrate this desire—much like the appearance and disappearance of ghosts or spirits. Alison Glenny’s writing suggests a literary lineage that includes Gertrude Stein and Anne Carson. There is a mastery of technique and a skilled repurposing of language and text. I am very much in awe of this work.

—Airini Beautrais

I often think of Emily Dickinson when I read Alison Glenny. There are the same provoking gaps and absences, the same particular gaze; and always — to adapt one of Alison Glenny’s own phrases — the steady habit of turning starlight into song.

—Bill Manhire