In poems by Sarah Lawrence, harold coutts and Arielle Walker, three fresh, vivid voices arrive. In ‘ Clockwatching’ , Sarah Lawrence hurtles us into a world full of friends and homes and things, and wonders what they all might leave behind: ‘ If it’ s toothache or budget / margarine or perhaps / another world altogether.’ harold coutts’ ‘ longing’ reflects on gender (‘ if gender is a taste i am cutting out my tongue’ ), bodies (‘ pubelessness’ ) and the rest (‘ there isn’ t a manual on when you’ re writing someone a love poem and they break up with you’ ). And in ‘ river poems’ Arielle Walker steps right into the water – because ‘ a poem is a fluid thing all wrapped up in fish skin’ – and finds stories of sealskins, harakeke and thistle, kanuka and manuka, alder and elder. Brimming with vivid beauty, the contemporary and the inflections of memory, AUP New Poets 9 shows just what new writing can open up.