‘Hannah Mettner’s poems are funny and clever and lusty. They make me want to go out and look at the world again, to conjure up eternal life, and to dip my toe into the lake of flame.’ —Morgan Bach, author of Middle Youth and Some of Us Eat the Seeds    ‘So this is the nuclear family, as dazzlingly obliterating as a mushroom cloud. And this is hedonism for bi icons – women sneak doomed smiles over their Wicca circle while men speak in reverence or fear of their spells. Mettner’s witchy new work summons ghosts through a bloody heredity of mothers and daughters; menageries of lost and found lovers; spectres raised in twists of lipstick. Saga haunts like a mother’s perfume, or an ex’s sweat still somehow on your skin – whichever woman hurt you best, whoever’s stolen make-up you now touch to your lips.’ —Rebecca Hawkes, author of Meatlovers

Hannah Mettner is a Wellington-based poet from Gisborne. Her first collection, Fully Clothed and So Forgetful, won the 2018 Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry. Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including Sport, Turbine and Cordite. In 2014, with Morgan Bach and Sugar Magnolia Wilson, she co-founded the online poetry journal Sweet Mammalian.