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June 2021
Longlisted for the Peter and Mary Biggs Award for Poetry 2022
Excuse the mess
I wasn’t expecting guests
But that’s another joke
I expect you
always
Sam Duckor Jones’s first poetry collection was a tour of small towns, overgrown lawns, and giant clay men. In Party Legend he turns once again to questions of existence but at an even bigger scale. These are poems about creation, God, intimacy, the surreality of political rhetoric, misunderstandings at the supermarket – and they are fearless in form and address. Though Party Legend is often wildly funny, it is also, in its Duckor-Jonesian way, tender-hearted and consoling.
'Blending outrageous tales and borrowed moments with surprising results, Party Legend is the work of a poet unafraid to get a little weird to show us a good time. I am utterly bewitched by this sexy, playful and curious book.' —Chris Tse
'It’s this duality — ephemera, mash-ups, gossip on the one hand (True Stories has lines blacked out as if redacted) and a fearless, questing mind on the other that makes Party Legend such an enduring delight.' —Greg Fleming, Kete Books
'The poetry of Sam Duckor-Jones is a refreshing gust in my head. It’s audacious and funny and real. It’s mind-roaming, and heart-attaching, and blisteringly good.' —Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
‘Bloody fantastic.’ —John Campbell
Cover illustration: Arrangement, Mel Odom, 1979
Paperback, 210x138mm, 96 pages
Sam Duckor-Jones is a sculptor and poet. In 2017 he won the Biggs Poetry Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. His first book was People from the Pit Stand Up (VUP, 2018).
