In the Half Light of a Dying Day: Catullus 2023

An old friend, a new character - C. K. Stead is scribe to love and grief in this beautiful new collection. In two sequences the poet plays with the lines of history and love, the fictional and the autobiographical. Reflecting on a long career and familiar faces, the first sequence walks the reader from classical Rome to contemporary Aotearoa. Then in the shade of Parnell begins a tender address to a new character, Kezia, lover and friend just lost. Lyrical and deeply moving, In the Half Light of a Dying Day is a late-career masterpiece.

C. K. Stead is an award-winning novelist, literary critic, poet, essayist and emeritus professor of English at the University of Auckland. He was the New Zealand Poet Laureate from 2015- 2017, has won the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction and is a Member of the Order of New Zealand.