Into the Woods

​'A funny, painful, powerful story about the strange ways grief moves through us. Helen's path of recovery, from a bed she doesn't want to leave towards a natural world she doesn't know, is full of recognisable difficulties and unlikely connections. This frank and bracing little book has a bass note of personal tragedy but a top note of surprising joy.'                
     Damien Wilkins

It was during the spring the kaka arrived that I first noticed a grey warbler fledgling outside my window who couldn't get the tune quite right. He'd start singing, get a note wrong and falter, then try tentatively again. Like a child learning the recorder, I thought. 
     Like a child...

And the Birds Fled to the Bush

The leaves of the books are birds. The tightly scrunched ponytails of the girls are birds. The dreadlocks of their pothead boyfriends are birds. The doilies on the windowsills are birds. The Dominion Post held by an old man becomes a flock of birds and starts to fly away. The prescriptions for the sickness beneficiaries are birds caught in the down draft. The white paper bags that held raspberry cream donuts are birds. The receipts for reconditioned tyres are birds. The posters for a d-dub concert are birds. The Jackson’s Café and Burger Bar wrappers, the Dolla $ave plastic bags, the Wainuiohine Library Teen-Zone fliers are birds.
The valley’s calm, quiet, waiting. Mrs Henderson thinks it’s earthquake weather but she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to make a fuss. It’s probably nothing. No one else notices it’s quiet, too quiet, until everyone does at the same moment, like at a party when everything goes silent and no one wants to be the first to speak.
All the birds take flight at the sound of Mike’s motorbike backfiring. They lift, for a moment, suspended.
Everyone turns and stares. Will they fly? Will they soar? Will they scatter? Like confetti? Like polystyrene beans from a burst beanbag? Or will they all move together as one? A rising, folding, sweeping, blossoming, murmuration?
All the birds are airborne, and the whole valley holds its breath. 

Warblish, Chirpish, Ticktocklish, & Animalopoeia

There is a little-known phenomenon of interpreting the sounds of birds, insects, animals, and inanimate objects as intelligible yet onomatopoeic human words. Common examples include the Yellowhammer’s song being rendered as, ‘A little bit of bread and no cheese, please’ and the Bushcricket saying, ‘Katy did, Katy didn’t’. 

Despite being widespread across languages and cultures ‘birdsong mnemonics’ have rarely been written about and never in this depth. This ground-breaking book brings together 1500 examples from 62 languages, for the first time brings together the sound imitations of birds, insects, animals, and objects; examines what these imitations have in common; and argues for the use of new terminology and classification of these examples.

Oracles & Miracles & Zombies (with Stevan Eldred-Grigg)

The time between the two World Wars was dominated by poverty and pandemic. The virus which surfaced in 1918 turned the infected into biters and hunches, and the later 'cure' turned biters into lurkers. But who's the most dangerous?  

Biters: Biters have been infected by a virus and want to eat your brains. They don't talk much but they'll eat your ear off.

Hunches: Hunches have been infected but don't chase you down the street. They're slow and hunched over but mostly harmless. Just keep them fed.

Lurkers: The government discovered a 'cure' which turns biters into lurkers. Lurkers are passive, quiet, and a cheap source of labour. 

Uninfected: There's not much life in the biters but it's not much of a life for the uninfected either. They still have to find money for food, for rent, for barbed wire fences, and for sharp knives.