Killer Rack *Staff Pick 2024*

In their generous and often euphoric first book, Sylvan Spring is constantly and irresistibly in motion. These are poems for the sad bitches, the silly billys, the divine transsexuals, the girls who were first to get piercings not in their ears, the ones who dream of dissolving into a river, the Cocteau Twins obsessives, the average bros, the immaculate twinks, the retired popstars turned chicken farmers, and fans of 2001 masterpiece Charlie's Angels. 'Killer Rack unearthed bits and pieces of my brain that I couldn’t put language to until reading it. Good poetry gives you access to somebody else’s, great poetry gives you access to your own, the best makes you laugh while doing it. Killer Rack is the best.' —Sam Brooks, Dramatic Pause 'Killer Rack intertwines the caustic and the poignant, the mundane and the glimmering, rotting vegetables and truths for staying alive amidst the rot. . . . In this collection, you’ll find connection and aloneness, healing and pain. You’ll also find a strong dose of hope, as shown in the final words of this book: “MY LIFE IS JUST BEGINNING.”' —Amber French, North and South 'a wonderful blend of silly and seriously astute, making it a must read for lovers of both sexy and unabashedly honest poetry.' —Jo Bragg, Bad Apple 'Curious, generous, effervescent, electric . . . A beautiful book.' —Melissa Oliver, RNZ ‘Exploding in Queer joy, this beautiful, visceral experience of a book is precise and magnificent in its craft, expansive and affecting in its content, somehow intimate and communal in the same breath, wild and compassionate. I fucking love this book and weep with gratitude and excitement every time I remember it’s in the world.’ —Pip Adam, author of Audition and Nothing to See Sylvan Spring is a Pakeha writer and occasional music-maker who has spent most of their life in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Their work has appeared in The Spinoff, Turbine Kapohau, Sweet Mammalian, Stasis, Peach Mag and Bad Apple. Cover: Axel Deventer Olsthoorn