Realia

Realia, Kate Camp's second collection of poetry, confirms her place amongst the best and brightest poets in New Zealand. Her seemingly light-hearted poems offer a sharp and often wry perspective on life's big issues – life, love and lime milkshakes.

‘Realia is a bittersweet collection that maintains an exquisite balance of playfulness and haunting imagery throughout.’ —Rebecca Palmer, Otago Daily Times

‘What I like about Camp’s poems is their light but not weightless touch – her observations on the world we live in are recognisable, immensely enjoyable, comic but never pointless.’ —Lydia Wevers, NZ Listener 

‘Poets show us the way and Camp’s way is eloquently articulated in long cadenced sentences that indicate those slippages between the personal or private and the rest of the world.’ —Art News

‘Edgy, intense, experimental, charming, self-ironising’ —Evening Post

Kate Camp was born in 1972 and lives in Wellington. Her first collection of poetry, Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars, won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry at the 1999 Montana NZ Book Awards. Her fourth book, The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls, won the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards Best Book of Poetry, and in 2011 Camp held the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer Residency. During this time she wrote Snow White’s Coffin, which was a finalist in the poetry category of the 2013 NZ Post Book Awards. Camp was the recipient of the 2017 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship.