First taste - poetry

I mentioned in my last post that I'm releasing a poetry collection soon and at first I was going to make you wait until next week to find out more, but I thought I'd be nice and share some details today. Woot!

I guess the best thing to share first is the cover.

Before you ask, yes, it is a photograph of me. It's actually one my dad took, and I'm pleased to have been able to include him in some way. I just know he'd love it.

Jenny Chapman designed the superb cover. Ashley Capes was nothing short of fabulous as my editor and helped me learn heaps. And I'm sure you'd like to know what people are saying about 'First taste' already, and who am I to withhold such information?

First Taste is brimming with domestic luminosity. These poems explore the terrain of love and desire, parent and child, ecstasy and death and reveal the depth of Johnson's voice. Her poems teach us not only to accept, but to feel blessed by the complexity of humanity, the terrible mysteries of life. You will not forget 'The facts' nor that 'first taste of butterscotch sauce'. Johnson renders her secrets in language vivid and strong. Graham Nunn

Tiggy has pierced my heart, with butterscotch sauce... her poems are both earthy and ravishing. Uplifting, voracious words with a side of suburban voltage. Love it. Alicia Sometimes

With a heart pierced by butterscotch sauce, Tiggy Johnson introduces us to the joys and perils of daily life—what it means to be a woman, partner and parent amid birth and death, memory and loss, coffee and cake with citrus tang. And in considering the bitter-sweet, it’s as if this, her first collection, still comes out wearing its own Life-Be-In-It t-shirt. She is a straight-talking emerging poet with a vision all her own. Nathan Curnow

Copies of First taste will be in my hot little hands before I leave for the big trip, although I won't have a proper launch until later in the year, probably November. If you don't want to wait that long, drop me an email and I'll let you know how you can get a copy. You can email me at 'tiggy' at 'pageseventeen' dot 'com' dot 'au'. So, if you just have to find about the butterscotch sauce, you know what to do.

For those of you in Adelaide, I'll bring copies to Friendly Street on Tuesday 6th July, when I'll be the featured poet.

If you're lucky enough to be going to the Queensland Poetry Festival in August (the program will be released next week), you can grab a copy then, or the following week at SpeedPoets.

Meanwhile, please join me in a virtual celebratory drink tonight, or whenever you read this, knowing that I'll be having White Frontignac and/or a sip (cough) of Tokay.