About the book
A man and a woman—complete strangers by any regular measure yet, inexplicably, not strangers, too—cross paths at an exhibition opening one snowy night in upstate New York. As if in response to some pre-scripted prompt, they embark on a conversation that will alter each of them in ways neither could 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.
‘Brave, angry, tender writing and always breathtakingly beautiful.’—Carolyn McCurdie
‘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
‘It’s marvellous. A compelling story, the imagery translucent.’—John Allison
‘For When Words Fail Us is starlight, sunlight, shadow and stone. It is what poetry at its most sublime can do: tell, heal, transform.’ —Kirstie McKinnon
Claire Beynon is an artist and writer living in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her poetry, flash fiction and short stories have been widely pub-lished and anthologised in Aotearoa and abroad. She has been a runner-up in the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition and in 2002 was the winner of the NZ Poetry Society’s International Poetry award. In 2021 her poem ‘Today’s Sky’ was awarded the Takahē Monica Taylor Poetry Prize.
