Book Launch Invitation - Song of the Ghost in the Machine by Roger Horrock

Victoria University Press warmly invite you to the launch of Song of the Ghost in the Machine by Roger Horrocks at 5.45pm, Wednesday 13 May at Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland St, Auckland. This brilliant new collection of poetry will be launched by Murray Edmond. Books will be available for purchase courtesy of Time Out Bookstore. $25, p/b. Roger will be available for signing. All welcome. About Song of the Ghost in the Machine Song of the Ghost in the Machine is a free-wheeling philosophical poem that emerged during the walks Roger Horrocks took over a year of his life. In this striking, one-of-a-kind work, he seeks to engage as directly as possible with the basic elements of life – the self and the body, sleeping and waking, death and belief, and above all the strangeness of thought (‘the ghost in the machine’). Along the way, in his curious look at life from unexpected angles, he draws upon state-of-the-art science and philosophy. Cover painting by Tom Kreisler, "A Brush with Death", 2001 (courtesy Tom Kreisler Estate). Roger Horrocks's previous work as a poet includes The Auckland Regional Transit Poetry Line (1982) and the libretto for the highly successful Len Lye: The Opera (2012) with music by Eve de Castro-Robinson. He has been a contributing editor to noted literary magazines such as And, Splash and Parallax. He is a filmmaker who founded the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies at The University of Auckland. He worked as Len Lye’s assistant in 1980 and later wrote a biography of Lye which was a finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards. He has been involved in many areas of the arts and in 2004 was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.