Calamities!
Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023
Cover by Darcy Woods
Longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, at the Ockham NZ Book Awards 2024
In her second, spine-cracking collection, Jane Arthur wants ‘to get morbid’. Moving with ease between the cerebral and the ethereal she measures her anxieties against a cosmic canvas – taking in everything from meteorites and distant planets to pomanders and cat’s ears. Whether contemplating time, regret, or the end of the world, these poems don’t flinch. But in writing against hope, Arthur also writes against hopelessness, and finds, at the heart of it all, a bear, sleeping soundly – or perhaps dead.
'Calamities! is a compelling book of the unsettled and unsettling, set in a world where comfort is an endangered animal and the apocalypse lurks outside our front doors. Jane Arthur’s perceptive and all-too-relatable poems are what we need in these uncertain times – they make me an even bigger fan of her already astonishing body of work.'
— Chris Tse
'Something that strikes me every time I read a Jane Arthur poem is how authoritative her poems feel, even when they come from a place of self-doubt or surrender. And I mean authoritative in the sense that we can trust Jane the poet – there are no agendas or soapboxes. As a reader, I am enamored by her ability to articulate what is true and real about the world we live in, and that even when she gets morbid she doesn't lose that sense of why we need to keep our hope alive. As a poet, I marvel at how she manages to pull this off poem after poem.'
— Chris Tse, from his launch speech
In her second, spine-cracking collection, Jane Arthur wants ‘to get morbid’. Moving with ease between the cerebral and the ethereal she measures her anxieties against a cosmic canvas – taking in everything from meteorites and distant planets to pomanders and cat’s ears. Whether contemplating time, regret, or the end of the world, these poems don’t flinch. But in writing against hope, Arthur also writes against hopelessness, and finds, at the heart of it all, a bear, sleeping soundly – or perhaps dead.
'Calamities! is a compelling book of the unsettled and unsettling, set in a world where comfort is an endangered animal and the apocalypse lurks outside our front doors. Jane Arthur’s perceptive and all-too-relatable poems are what we need in these uncertain times – they make me an even bigger fan of her already astonishing body of work.'
— Chris Tse
'Something that strikes me every time I read a Jane Arthur poem is how authoritative her poems feel, even when they come from a place of self-doubt or surrender. And I mean authoritative in the sense that we can trust Jane the poet – there are no agendas or soapboxes. As a reader, I am enamored by her ability to articulate what is true and real about the world we live in, and that even when she gets morbid she doesn't lose that sense of why we need to keep our hope alive. As a poet, I marvel at how she manages to pull this off poem after poem.'
— Chris Tse, from his launch speech
'Jane Arthur’s second collection, Calamities!, is a glorious translation of being, of existence in an unsettled world. . . . This is poetry of tilt and tremor and one reading wasn’t enough.'
— Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
'[Each] poem, as I go through the collection, [has the] effect of knocking me sideways: either a little off-kilter — or entirely, expectations and assumptions dishevelled and clattering ... Jane’s work can be slangy and witty, merge the rhythms of pop or nursery rhyme with bleak yet also knowingly over-the-top declarations ... Reading Jane’s poems, I often felt like my heart was a stuck cork, and the poems were corkscrews, winding deeper and deeper: until eventually some tension popped, and the release at the end was like a tiny, reluctant birth. Reluctant because it is painful to acknowledge some of the psychological states in the collection, and yet we must, if we’re to make any amends as individuals, or even a species. Yet Jane never seems to lose faith in art or language; poetry itself is a site of renewal, of energy and inventiveness, of confiding and human connection.'
— Emma Neale, from her launch speech
'Calamities! is another wonderful collection that manages to be both serious and funny, accessible and experimental, personal and universal, often all in a single poem. As the title with its exclamation mark suggests, these poems explore issues that fill Arthur with a sense of urgency, from the impending apocalypse: “…more boring/than Hollywood had prepared me for” to the changes that manifest as we grow older: “I’m starting to get/budget-brand headaches.” The wit and astuteness in every line will provoke shouts of recognition and nods of agreement. Our struggles are mostly beyond us, but Arthur finds the hope: “…We’re all/doing okay. We’re doing really well.”'
— Catherine Robertson, The Post, June 2023
'Calamities!, Jane Arthur’s second poetry collection, pulses with both humour and an impatient fatigue. Wrought with tension, splayed over a wide canvas from as far away as the planets right down to the minute details of dead flies, the 34 poems in the book contemplate climate change and the end of the world, the space we take up and the space between things under the sun. Anxiety and the relentlessness of life are evident throughout.'
— Kete Books, May 2023
'There is something about Jane Arthur’s poetry that soothes my soul. It feels like she is inside of my brain and is putting onto paper exactly what I am thinking and how I am thinking about it. Her use of language and style are to die for. Calamities is like a big existential sister in a book form.'
— Melissa, Unity Books Wellington
'This book is brave, droll, quiet, keen-eyed, and not soothing, not at all. Its poems are dense with wry and unsettling details, ranging from the minutiae of sleep in Viola’s eyes, to men with offensive baseball caps, to a fly dead in an unwashed glass, to Arthur’s own increasing headaches and irritation at domestic pets, to the rumbling dread of a world addled by sickness and on the brink of ecological collapse. In poems in Calamities! lines quietly and inexorably inflate to near-sublime levels and then pop. An assumed pose of indifference or detachment fails to disguise a gathering sense of imminent personal disaster, which is what makes Calamities! so witty and endearingly self-mocking.'
— Loveday Why, Landfall Review Online, June 2024 (https://landfallreview.com/without-us-there-is-no-memory/)
— Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
'[Each] poem, as I go through the collection, [has the] effect of knocking me sideways: either a little off-kilter — or entirely, expectations and assumptions dishevelled and clattering ... Jane’s work can be slangy and witty, merge the rhythms of pop or nursery rhyme with bleak yet also knowingly over-the-top declarations ... Reading Jane’s poems, I often felt like my heart was a stuck cork, and the poems were corkscrews, winding deeper and deeper: until eventually some tension popped, and the release at the end was like a tiny, reluctant birth. Reluctant because it is painful to acknowledge some of the psychological states in the collection, and yet we must, if we’re to make any amends as individuals, or even a species. Yet Jane never seems to lose faith in art or language; poetry itself is a site of renewal, of energy and inventiveness, of confiding and human connection.'
— Emma Neale, from her launch speech
'Calamities! is another wonderful collection that manages to be both serious and funny, accessible and experimental, personal and universal, often all in a single poem. As the title with its exclamation mark suggests, these poems explore issues that fill Arthur with a sense of urgency, from the impending apocalypse: “…more boring/than Hollywood had prepared me for” to the changes that manifest as we grow older: “I’m starting to get/budget-brand headaches.” The wit and astuteness in every line will provoke shouts of recognition and nods of agreement. Our struggles are mostly beyond us, but Arthur finds the hope: “…We’re all/doing okay. We’re doing really well.”'
— Catherine Robertson, The Post, June 2023
'Calamities!, Jane Arthur’s second poetry collection, pulses with both humour and an impatient fatigue. Wrought with tension, splayed over a wide canvas from as far away as the planets right down to the minute details of dead flies, the 34 poems in the book contemplate climate change and the end of the world, the space we take up and the space between things under the sun. Anxiety and the relentlessness of life are evident throughout.'
— Kete Books, May 2023
'There is something about Jane Arthur’s poetry that soothes my soul. It feels like she is inside of my brain and is putting onto paper exactly what I am thinking and how I am thinking about it. Her use of language and style are to die for. Calamities is like a big existential sister in a book form.'
— Melissa, Unity Books Wellington
'This book is brave, droll, quiet, keen-eyed, and not soothing, not at all. Its poems are dense with wry and unsettling details, ranging from the minutiae of sleep in Viola’s eyes, to men with offensive baseball caps, to a fly dead in an unwashed glass, to Arthur’s own increasing headaches and irritation at domestic pets, to the rumbling dread of a world addled by sickness and on the brink of ecological collapse. In poems in Calamities! lines quietly and inexorably inflate to near-sublime levels and then pop. An assumed pose of indifference or detachment fails to disguise a gathering sense of imminent personal disaster, which is what makes Calamities! so witty and endearingly self-mocking.'
— Loveday Why, Landfall Review Online, June 2024 (https://landfallreview.com/without-us-there-is-no-memory/)
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