Kerrin P. Sharpe • 9 August 2018
image credit: Victoria Birkinshaw
Kerrin's latest poetry collection, Louder, is published this month by Victoria University Press (RRP $25).
The first book to capture my imagination was ...
A Little Golden Book version of Hansel and Gretel. My father kept adding his own words to the text when reading it to me, much to my annoyance!
The books and/or other writing that saw me through childhood were ...
Anything by Enid Blyton,The Ship That Flew by Hilda Lewis, and The Silver Sword by Ian Serrallier.
The character in a book I most wanted to be as a child was ...
Gretel in Hansel and Gretel because she tricked the witch.
The book I studied at school that has stayed with me most is ...
Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
The author I am most likely to binge-read is ...
Anthony Doerr. Not only is he an inspirational writer but also a very kind and sincere person.
The book I am most likely to press on a friend is ...
The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr; one of his short story collections.
The book I most wish someone would write is ...
I'm always wishing there were more books that examine in-depth the back stories to published poems. "Don't Ask Me What I Mean" (ed Clare Brown & Don Paterson), is a good example of this sort of book.
The book I keep meaning to get around to reading but somehow never do is ...
If there is something I mean to read, I usually do.
-"If there is something I mean to read, I usually do."
The book I have reread the most is ...
Wintering by Kate Moses - a novel about Sylvia Plath based on her poems.
The newspapers, magazines and blogs I can't do without are ...
I like the English newspaper The Daily Telegraph for news, obituaries and reviews. Sport is my favourite literary journal.
If I were stranded on a desert island and could have only one book with me, it would be ...
Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bate.
Bookmark, scrap of paper or turning down the corner of the page?
Scrap of paper that always gets lost somewhere in the bed.
The first 50 pages or bust? Or always to the bitter end?
I'll give up on reading a book I can't hook into rather than enduring it.
The book I am always on the lookout for in secondhand shops is ...
Anything on Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. I once met Ted Hughes at an Arvon residential writing retreat in Devon. He was quite a charmer!
-" I once met Ted Hughes at an Arvon residential writing retreat in Devon. He was quite a charmer!"
My favorite cinematic adaptation of a book is ...
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, the 2004 version with Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage.
The character in a book I'd most like to meet is ...
The hunter from The Hunter's Wife, a short story by Anthony Doerr.
A line of writing I can recite from memory is ...
"And all the balloons of Paris came down to Pascal, danced round him, entwining their strings and lifted him up into the sky" from The Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse.
My favorite 19th-century book is ...
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.
My favorite 20th-century book is ...
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
The book/s currently by the side of my bed is/are ...
Ring Cycle Alex Houen's first full length poetry collection; Mapping the Delta by George Szirtes; Holy Toledo by John Clegg, and Advice From the Lights by Steph Burt.
Kerrin's latest poetry collection Louder (VUP) is published in August 2018. She has previously published three previous collections of poetry with VUP: three days in a wishing well (2012), there’s a medical name for this (2014), and rabbit rabbit (2015). Her poems have featured in a range of journals and anthologies in New Zealand and internationally, including Sport, Landfall, Best New Zealand Poems, The London Grip, Oxford Poets 13, Blackbox Manifold and POETRY. Kerrin lives in Christchurch.
