BITER
Longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2024
Filled with hickeys, puttanesca and tart wit, BITER is an apt title for Claudia Jardine’s debut collection of verse. Fresh translations of erotic Greek epigrams are threaded through boozy sonnets, ecstatic odes and startlingly vulnerable love poems. Jardine weaves ancient and modern together into a rich, glitzy, idiosyncratic tapestry – and in doing so crafts a poetic voice that is at once classical and frisky.
“Claudia’s epigrams are sprinkled throughout the collection like sherbet, they fizz in your mind, little fascinations, so sweetly formed, and then, invitingly, hook you into the enduring power and reach of love, sexuality, hunger, recognition.” — Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
“Jardine doesn’t hesitate to play with form; pantoums and sonnets rub shoulders with free verse. . . . The collection is a celebration of many facets of love through many eyes.” — Erica Stretton, Kete Books
“It’s rare that a book has both such precise silliness and wonky sexiness, but Biter revels in it. The pages will flip themselves, and the poems will stay with you for a long while.” — harold coutts, Bad Apple
2023, Auckland University Press
Cover design by Philip Kelly
Anthologies
Te Whāriki: Reading Ten New Poets from Aotearoa edited by Anna Jackson, Dougal McNeill and Robert Sullivan
Chris Tse to Tayi Tibble – what New Zealand poetry looks like now.
In journals and pubs, on TikTok and the bestseller lists, the current generation of New Zealand poets is finding new voices, new platforms and new readers. It is a poetry of now: of emojis and hashtags, of bodies and flesh, of identity and aspiration.
How to take the measure of this new rush of poetic energy, invention and disruption? What new aesthetics emerge alongside these new voices? How might old forms and old questions take the pulse of the new? Te Whāriki provides a first reading of this exciting moment by weaving together the work of ten contemporary poets from Aotearoa with new critical writing that makes sense of these poets and their poems.
Pulling these strands together in one volume, Te Whāriki is as dynamic, various and engaging as New Zealand poetry is today.
Featuring poets Sam Duckor-Jones, Tayi Tibble, Claudia Jardine, essa may ranapiri, Rebecca Hawkes, Chris Tse, Oscar Upperton, Joanna Cho, Ruby Solly and Nafanua Purcell Kersel, with new critical writing by Amy Marguerite, Tru Paraha, Anna Jackson, Robert Sullivan, Mark Masterson, Stephanie Burt, Dani Yourukova, Dougal McNeill, Sophie van Waardenberg, Brigid Quirke, Robin Peters and David Eggleton.
2025, Auckland University Press
Short | Poto: The big book of small stories | Iti te kupu, nui te kōrero edited by Michelle Elvy and Kiri Piahana-Wong
Short, short stories, sometimes known as flash fiction or microfiction, are one of the trickiest forms to write. Create a resonant world in fewer than 300 words? Not so easy! In this collection of 100 stories, a range of New Zealand writers, both well known and emerging, deliver emotionally charged stories that punch well above their weight and length.
And there’s more! Each of the stories has been translated into te reo Māori (and some are written in te reo and translated into English) by some of this country’s most experienced translators, making this book a valuable contributor to our literary landscape that rewards repeated readings.
2025, Massey University Press
Selected Online Reading
AUP New Poets 7
From Apia to Parnell, ancient Rome to Aro Park and on to the furthest reaches of the internet, AUP New Poets 7 takes readers on an eye-popping journey through contemporary New Zealand poetry.
The collection opens with Rhys Feeney’s passionate take on contemporary global politics and ecological collapse. Next, Ria Masae leads us from a fale in Samoa to the pulsing streets of Auckland city in a voice rooted in the spoken word. And finally Claudia Jardine brings the startling images and unlikely facts from the classical world to echo around inner-city Wellington.
“Three extraordinary poets deep-delve into their various political, social and aesthetic concerns – from Rhys Feeney’s pliable, energetic grappling with late capitalism and climate change, to Ria Masae’s fast-talking, street-smarting, aching social commentary, to Claudia Jardine’s robust engagement with feminisms and the classics. At the same time, there’s a broad-spectrum dialogue going on here as these contemporary sayers hang together on what’s vital.… New Poets 7 continues AUP’s platform for what’s happening in poetry in Aotearoa.” – Anne Kennedy
2020, Auckland University Press
Zines
Taking the Auspices After a Miscommunication
2023, self-published
With illustrations by Lily Wenmoth
My Attempt to Remain in a State of Questioning
2023, self-published
With illustrations by Lily Wenmoth
North EP
2019, self-published
Accompaniment to the North EP audio recording
Designed and illustrated by Cosmo Bones