Tuesday, November 24, 2015

New and edgy: Mary Jane Thomson’s Lonely Earth


Title: Lonely Earth
Author: MaryJane Thomson
ISBN 978-0-473-33973-9
Price: $30.00
Extent: 90 pages
Format: 148mmx210mm
Publisher: HeadworX

About the Book

Sounding out the tip of the square earth,
every country on the edge at an angle.
Too much detail would be when
   it is all seeming a bit much
   from the air,
lonely planet up there.
                        (‘Lonely Earth’)

The poems in MaryJane Thomson’s second collection, Lonely Earth, show an important development since her debut collection Fallen Grace.

Moving from a more personal and ‘confessional’ poetry, the poems in Lonely Earth take the reader out into the urban streets of the 21st century. An urgent political and public voice is at work in these poems with hints of reggae, hip-hop, soul, folk and blues driving the musicality and the rhythm of the lines. Shorter, minimalist poems transmit, like antennae of the world, concise imagery and deep thought.

Lonely Earth is a diverse, edgy read grappling with contemporary issues like care of the environment, humanity’s past, its wars and consumerism. At the heart of Thomson’s poems is a committed voice that cares deeply for the world and its people.

About the Author


MaryJane Thomson, a Wellington writer, artist and photographer, is the author of the memoir Sarah Vaughan is Not my Mother (Awa Press, 2013) and the poetry sequence Fallen Grace (HeadworX/The Night Press, 2014). 
Her poetry is featured in Outcryer (USA) and has appeared in Black Mail Press, Valley Micropress and broadsheet.

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