Tarot

Here are the cards. Put your hand on them,
Close your eyes. You don’t want to?
But you are blind with them open.

Jake Arthur’s beguiling second poetry collection opens with a tarot reader coaxing us into a reading over a cup of tea. And in a rush of vivid scenes and impressions, we begin to imagine episodes from different lives – a woman tries to train a robin; parents anxiously attend a teacher–parent interview; a man is cast overboard and wonders if he will ever be found. Each card prompts a new character to mull over their uncertainties, hopes, obstacles and joys.

Loosely inspired by the illustrations of the famous 1909 Rider-Waite tarot deck, with its riotous depictions of magicians, occultists, lovers, fools and angels, these poems have us grappling our way towards a clear path.

‘An enchanted and enchanting clamour. Intimate, wise, utterly glorious.’
—Catherine Chidgey, author of Pet and The Axeman's Carnival

'As beautiful as it is to be gifted Arthur’s poetry and his sense of place and image, it’s even more a pleasure to feel just a bit smarter, and richer after reading it.' —Sam Brooks, Dramatic Pause

'A joyful collection.' —Claire Mabey, RNZ

'Tarot is always deft in its movements between the mystical and the material, the poetic and the literal. Though the narrator seems initially to have reached a conclusion about the meaning of the image, the last word they have is used to doubt themselves in such a way that creates space for resonance, emotionality, and wonder.' —Dani Yourukova, badapple

Jake Arthur is the author of A Lack of Good Sons, included in the NZ Listener’s Best Poetry of 2023. His poems have appeared in Best New Zealand Poems, Sport, Mimicry, Turbine, and Sweet Mammalian. He has a PhD in Renaissance literature and translation from Oxford University.

Cover illustrations: Pamela Colman Smith, from the 1909 Rider-Waite tarot deck
Cover design: Todd Atticus