Emma Neale
Emma Neale is the author of four novels and three collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Spark (Steele Roberts, 2008). She was a recipient of the Todd New Writers’ Bursary in 2000, and acted as selecting editor for Creative Juices: new writing (Auckland: Flamingo 2002) and for Best New Zealand Poems 2004. In 2008 she releases an anthology called Swings and Roundabouts: Poems on Parenthood (Random House), which includes work from poets such as Jenny Bornholdt, Les Murray, Seamus Heaney, Brian Turner and Lauris Edmond. Emma lives in Dunedin with her husband and their son, where she works for Longacre Press, and coordinates the University of Otago poetry workshop.
Neale comments: ‘ “Kid Gloves” came about in response to two separate things. One was a remark from a colleague, who said she found she was in love with teapots during the final months of her pregnancy; the other was seeing a photo of the Eion Stevens painting, “White Glove”. These two things seemed to draw each other together into a poem. It’s a little fiction that grew from a mother and a father fact.’
Poem: Kid Gloves
