Thursday night at Unity Books saw the launch of Marilyn Duckworth’s collection of new and selected poems. Hot on the heels of a 2016 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for fiction, ‘The Chiming Blue’ is Duckworth’s first book of poetry to be published by Wellington’s Victoria University Press and was greeted with great anticipation by a full house that included three generations of the author’s family mingling with a host of Wellington’s literary great and good. Microphone malfunctions could not distract a rapt audience as the diminutive lady of letters held her audience in attentive thrall, deploying in person all the warmth and charm familiar to devotees of her writing.
Thanks go to Fergus Barrowman of VUP and Fiona Kidman for her kind words in introduction.
Marilyn Duckworth
Fiona Kidman
VUP’s Fergus Barrowman with author Ashleigh Young
Marilyn Duckworth reading from ‘The Chiming Blue’.
Marilyn Duckworth thanks Fiona Kidman for a heartfelt tribute.
Marilyn Duckworth with family. back row (l-r): Helen Duckworth, Mia Farlane, Marilyn Duckworth, Anna Macfarlane, Sarah Duckworth front: Gabriella Ketterer, Scarlett Mackay, Sophie Ketterer
You can purchase Marilyn’s book Chiming Blue: New & Selected Poems here as well as in store, including limited signed copies.
Words and pictures by John Duke.
