The internet of things

9 March 2017

We need to accept that the world
is more intelligent than we are.
Like leaves on a tree we are something amazing
that behaves in predictable ways.

Kate Camp’s new book begins in John Lennon’s childhood kitchen, and ends at the prow of ship, surveying what has been and what is yet to come. The internet of things speaks to loss and hope, and to the stories we weave into the things around us. Kate Camp’s sharp eye for detail and refusal to avoid life’s desolate moments are balanced by her humour and empathy for the world and people in it.

Kate Camp was born in 1972 and lives in Wellington. She is a poet, prose writer and reviewer. 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 The 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 presents a monthly interview on Kim Hill’s Saturday Morning, ‘Kate’s Klassics’. She is the recipient of the 2017 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. The internet of things is her sixth poetry collection.

Cover: The kitchen cooker and shelves above at Mendips, Liverpool, childhood home of John Lennon. This is where John’s Aunt Mimi would cook him his favourite meal of egg and chips washed down with a cup of tea. © Dennis Gilbert/NTPL