The Facts

She is made of blood
she raises herself up
to be seen

The superb second book by the author of the acclaimed 2013 collection Other Animals traces the course of a failing marriage, while illuminating the ways in which art and poetry are essential to life. Deeply felt and lyrically arresting, The Facts offers poems that move with honesty and formal intelligence through matters of creativity and love.

‘Therese Lloyd goes deeper, weirder and darker than anyone else. She creeps me out. I love her for her uncomfortable honesty, her humour, and her fierce interrogation of living. The Facts is mesmerisingly beautiful, and shocking in its intensity. This is already one of my favourite NZ books. It won't make you feel any better.’ —Hera Lindsay Bird

‘Bright-edged, daring, humane poems. A remarkable book.’ —Anne Kennedy

'The Facts is a raw and “fierce interrogation of living” that explores the intersection between art and life. Lloyd states that “to write a poem is to complete a thought”, and if this is the case, her collection is articulated with “exploded doneness”. It is beautiful, diaphanous and startling.'—Metro review

Therese Lloyd’s poems have appeared in publications including Sport, Landfall, Hue & Cry, Jacket2, Metro, Turbine, and the AUP series New Zealand Poets in Performance. In 2007, having received a Schaeffer Fellowship, she spent a year attending the acclaimed Iowa Writer’s Workshop. In 2017, she completed a PhD at the International Institute of Modern Letters, in which she examined the role of ekphrasis in Canadian poet Anne Carson’s work. In 2018 Therese is Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato.

Cover: Heather Straka, Honey Trap 12