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Order direct from The Cuba Press
The Womens Bookshop, Auckland
University Book Shop, Ōtepoti Dunedin
Unity Books, Wellington
REVIEW by Paula Green | POETRY SHELF | 6 March 2025
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FOR WHEN WORDS FAIL US | a small book of changes
Two strangers - a man and a woman - cross paths at an exhibition opening one snowy night in upstate New York. Neither of them intended being there; each had plans to attend a different event in the city that night. An unexpected blizzard blows in, disrupting rail services and causing mayhem across the region. As if in coordinated response to some ancient, pre-scripted prompt, they make their way to a small suburban gallery. There they embark on a conversation that will impact both their lives in ways neither of them could possibly have anticipated. A night like any other becomes a decade like no other. Criss-crossing between the US and Aotearoa New Zealand, Claire Beynon’s For when words fail us | a small book of changes is a spellbinding story of tenderness and obsession, art and the imagination, fracture and repair. Published by The Cuba Press || Poetry, Narrative verse, Creative Non-fiction |
There’s a phenomenon in quantum physics
called ‘spooky action at a distance’. Two apparently unrelated particles far from each other interact without any intervening mechanism manifesting their connection—a kind of subatomic telepathy. Such particle pairs are said to be ‘entangled’, which in physics does not have the usual negative connotations, but simply means they are mysteriously joined by a force that is observable but not understood. © CB |
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Over the years they sent each other
books; shelves-full of books she’d enter a burning house to rescue from flames. Cumbersome thing, baggage, but she’d risk the same for the two Canada goose quills delivered to her studio in a cardboard box one frosty mid-winter morning; lightly swaddled, they were, in bone-coloured tissue paper. From Five Rivers, the accompanying note read, for you to draw or to draw with. © CB |
What does he [do you] think?
Do we expand into all we are, or is the process more like a reduction, the way maple sap boils down to amber syrup? © CB |
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Praise for FOR WHEN WORDS FAIL US | A small Book of Changes:
I read the manuscript through in two sittings, walking by the river between. It's marvellous. A compelling story, its imagery translucent. The author lets the words work to make a shape that holds the world.
John Allison
John Allison
Both fierce and gentle, these poems investigate the dialectic of living through the lens of a dramatic and exposing experience and are, unavoidably, an untangling of necessary things: attraction and repulsion at a molecular level; stories sometimes parallel, sometimes intersecting; the cerebral, corporeal and sensual self. Personal yet reaching beyond words on the page, this collection invites us into a deeply vulnerable space, bringing us to the brink and back.
A startling and unforgettable story.
Michelle Elvy
A startling and unforgettable story.
Michelle Elvy
A woman meets a man. With the language of a poet and the gaze of a painter, Claire Beynon explores the contradictions of the relationship that develops between these two strong, complex individuals. The hints of impending calamity grow more intense as the woman must struggle to safeguard the ground of her authenticity. This is brave, angry, tender writing and always breathtakingly beautiful.
Carolyn McCurdie
Carolyn McCurdie
Claire Beynon's For when words fail us is a masterpiece. It's rare to read lines which play together like a symphony: compelling, whole and transformational. Claire's storytelling in poetry is as gripping as it is ultimately healing. There is space and light in the work as we move through relationship, trauma and the deep quiet places of forgiveness.
For when words fail us is starlight, sunlight, shadow and stone. It is the very best of art. It is what poetry at its most sublime can do: tell, heal, transform.
Kirstie McKinnon
For when words fail us is starlight, sunlight, shadow and stone. It is the very best of art. It is what poetry at its most sublime can do: tell, heal, transform.
Kirstie McKinnon
For when words fail us is not 'a small book'. It's the length of a novel... Beynon is spot-on in her analysis of the changing moods of two people who are intimate.
Nicholas Reid | The New Zealand Listener, February 2025
Nicholas Reid | The New Zealand Listener, February 2025
Beynon’s writing is poetic, expressive and lyrical, full of magical imagery and [has] a wonderful sensory quality. This is a beautifully written book, and one that readers who love narrative poetry can dip into at leisure and appreciate.
Reviewed by Bernadette Cassidy | Kete Books
Reviewed by Bernadette Cassidy | Kete Books
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At my writing desk in Katherine's home | Kalk Bay, Cape Town
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