iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

I have a new essay/memoir piece, centering around a childhood friendship, up at North & South magazine. I hope it finds the readers who need it. 💛🌟💛🌟 #pukapuka #memoir #aotearoa #creativenonfiction #nonfiction northandsouth.co.nz/2025/04/23/s...

Photo of two young girls balancing on a ledge or slope together, against a sunset.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

My new book of poems, Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit is launching this Thursday. Published by Otago University Press. Gorgeous cover art by Laura Williams. Design by Fiona Moffat. Edited by Anna Hodge. #pukapuka #Aotearoa #poetry #otagounipress

Cover image of Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit: poems by Emma Neale

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 24/06/2024

Apopros of nothing other than the love of an Elizabeth Bishop poem (and the fact that it's winter here in the southern hemisphere):

Image of 'Cirque d'Hiver' by Elizabeth Bishop: the page is pinned down by a small ceramic figurine of a unicorn.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 18/04/2024

Nowt so queer as taste: this is a beautifully sensitive work on grief, giftedness, intimacy and madness which, to my mind, would knock at least one other novel off the Ockham short list. Don’t forget about the long list, book lovers!! #aotearoa #pukapuka

Cover image from Anna Smaill’s novel Bird Life. It shows a crow in flight.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 13/04/2024

A strong, bite-sized novel, or a narrative in poetic struck-matches. It reminds me of Janet Frame’s comment, that she thought of all her novels as experiments. Maybe genre-categories will turn to ash, too, in the hands of this short but punchy publication. #pukapuka #aotearoa

The cover of Louise Wallace’s book Ash; it shows a colourful, chaotic basket of laundry with a volcanic explosion in the distance.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 03/02/2024

A stunning, measured sequence I’m late to: it’s full of compassion, restrained anger, each poem quietly controlled and deftly laid down so it’s all like a winning hand in a high stakes card game. Wow. #poetry #writers #CorneliusEady

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

Little snapdragon seed pods that look like riroriro or tiny finches. (3 of the beaks are pencil enhanced here, confession.)

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 08/01/2024

I first learnt that excellent word cryptid when writing about Bu in Fosterling: Māori legend of the maero, a yeti, a new species, or a young man with a genetic disorder? It’s been years now but I still have a soft spot for him. (Haven’t re-read the novel for ages, though!)

Cover image of the novel Fosterling: image of a tall biped walking towards the light in a tunnel made of trees

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 02/01/2024

I hoped to see orca or a southern right whale as an auspicious sign today on some birthday outings. And what I got was … this magnificent stinkhorn!

A brown goop filled, red tentacled, fungal stinkhorn!

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 31/12/2023

A wonderful book: a mojito of drollery, honesty, poignancy, wit & the bittersweet spectre of looking after elderly loved ones; all stirred in with wicked craft advice. ‘I don’t think writing is that hard, as long as you’re comfortable with failure on every single level.’

Book cover of Elizabeth McCracken’s The Hero of this Book

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 24/11/2023

A small good thing happened in a pretty rank week: I’ve been sent copies of the anthology Happiness Delayed: one in Dutch, one in Frisian … my first ever print copies of my work in translation. #books #writers #pukapuka #aotearoa #Leeuwarden #Dunedin #Cityofliterature

Book cover images of Dutch and Frisian editions of the short story anthology Happiness Delayed.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 13/11/2023

😍😍 A tiny, confused, cacophonous pihipihi/wax-eye who stumbled into our foyer. It’s reunited with the trees now. 🌳🌳

Beautiful green birdling showing its silvery feather shawl

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 09/11/2023

Signs and wonders / a sign to make you wonder, Broad Bay, Dunedin/Ōtepoti … (I’ve touched electric fences but it didn’t make me lose my teeth!)

A photo of a sign on a paddock fence: it reads ‘Electric Fence! Do not touch! Tooth fairy signs.’ It’s written in black ink on a yellow piece of plastic that might be from an ice cream container. Is that a tooth fairy reference too?!

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 08/11/2023

I keep thinking about Adam Shatz's article on Gaza in the LRB. Specifically his quote from Franz Fanon: 'hate is not an agenda'. The whole piece is worth reading time. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Cover image of The London Review of Books for 2 November 2023.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 02/11/2023

An antidote to all kinds of blues: the blues of literary limbo, the blues of best-laid plans scuppered; blues of scraggy sleep & parental melancholy @Elizmccrack.bsky.social fair crackles with a kind of sneaky, dry, sad-bitten wit. My new book crush!

The cover of The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken: which has the image of a pale blue balloon poodley sort of dog on a Coleman’s mustard yellow background. Sounds gross, but it works!

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

They came from Pencilvania. (Yes, I’m struggling to write a report 😬)

A sketch of two vampire-bulldog critters whose batwings are pale pencil shavings. Someone is distracted.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

Sharing this on our 30th wedding anniversary. (🙏🏽to Bridport Prize anthology 2018 & The Pink Jumpsuit (QWP, 2021) )

A micro/flash fiction/prose poem: choose your flavour!

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 27/10/2023

This memorial gathering/ reading for Dunedin/Ōtepoti poet Peter Olds today was wonderful: full of bittersweet moments, great poetry, eccentric weirdness (from audience & readers), then what looked like an incredible cake-banquet: all things Dunedin does so well. Goodbye, gentle colleague-friend.

Black and white photos of poet Peter Olds, one as a young hipster, one of him in his classic bucket hat: both part of a memorial gathering invitation.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 23/10/2023

The voice in this poem makes me think of the woman in this Gary Larson cartoon!

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 18/10/2023

Two cobalt blue irises with tiger yellow hearts, standing in spring-onion-green stems smart as suit pants, wave their birthday pennants. (It’s my Louise Glück garden.) #poetry #gardening

Two irises burst out of a nasturtium patch without so much as a by your leave!

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 10/10/2023

Happy to help celebrate Katherine Mansfield in her birthday month with this piece. The posters are an initiative supported by At the Bay| I te Kokoru & Phantom Billstickers. If you spot mine in the wild, please say! #microfiction #Aotearoafiction #poetry #KatherineMansfield

A blue poster of a micro fiction/poem in recognition of Katherine Mansfield's October birthday.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 07/10/2023

A poem that grew out of running a writing workshop at the DPAG - in response to the 'baby umlaut' and owl sculptures and the wall label in the Emily Floyd exhibition. (Thank you to the artist and ngā mihi to Hana Pera Aoake!)

Image of ODT poetry editor Hana Perea Aoake and a poem by Emma Neale

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 06/10/2023

This is so freaking fabulous. I’m almost scared to finish it, in case it doesn’t sustain its vivid intensity and grimly comic, painfully honest glare into the tornado of early motherhood. I’ve got the Part 3 ‘will she, won’t she?’ tension … can it stay on that artistic tightrope?!

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 05/10/2023

My author’s freebie pile of this prize anthology is down to two now: does anyone out there in NZ want one? My shortlisted story ‘Hitch’ appears in it: no re-publication of it allowed until July 2024. If you’re keen, & have an address you can safely share here, let me know. I’ll post it to you. 🥳🤩🥳

Photo of the cover of the 2023 Fish Anthology of short stories, poetry and memoir.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 04/10/2023

A lucky four-leafed clover in my coffee-grounds! Is it a prediction … or a scam from my own brain? How long would you give your luck to turn? Is there a statue of limitations on tea leaves & coffee grounds???

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 23/09/2023

I took a wrong turn yesterday but it was worth it.

Photo of a street mural of people playing a sort of joyous leapfrog — or is it limbo? — on bicycle & moped

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 23/09/2023

Someone at home asked if this was my friend Michael sharing his pavlova recipe.

A photo of a postcard of a painting by Domenico di Michelino (1417–1491): painting title ‘Dante e il suo Poema’ / Dante and his poem.

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Emma Neale @emenspace.bsky.social · 20/09/2023

Yes and 😣ouch 😫 Harriet Allan’s redundancy still makes me feel a double kick in the guts: as both her freelance colleague & one of her former writers.

A photo of an article by Jenny Patrick reproduced from the Listener.

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