Publisher party and book launch, Thursday 10 March, 7.30pm, Black Sparrow Bar, Embassy Theatre.

Victoria University Press warmly invites you to our Writers Week publisher party and book launch for Cold Water Cure by Claire Orchard Dad Art by Damien Wilkins Fits & Starts by Andrew Johnston on Thursday 10 March, 7.30pm–9.00pm. at Black Sparrow Bar, Ground floor, Embassy Theatre, Kent Tce, Wellington. Books will be for sale courtesy of Unity Books.

At the heart of Claire Orchard’s first poetry collection is Charles Darwin, during the intense period in which he was working on his controversial theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species. His world as traced in his notebooks and letters – his daily habits, his relationships, his health – is drawn out in full imaginative colour and echoed in unexpected ways in the poet’s own world 200 years later. $25, p/b. It’s Wellington, now. Acoustic Engineer Michael Stirling’s old life is gone. He’s on the dating scene, learning te reo Maori, living in an upmarket apartment complex, and visiting his father who has dementia. Wearing his online dating disguise, Michael meets Chrissie, the widowed mother of a young son. Then his beloved adult daughter arrives from Auckland with a new attachment, an artist whose project will push them all towards key moments of risk and revelation. $30, p.b Andrew Johnston’s mesmerising new collection weaves together fragments of dream, myth, memory and experience. With humour and melancholy, these poems draw upon the random treasures of the radio alphabet and the ancient contradictions of the Old Testament. At their centre, the mythical figure of Echo roams through an imaginary landscape. Hope, love, health and voice disappear and reappear, rescued by faith in poetry’s power to invent its own kind of sense. $25, p/b.