BITER

Claudia Jardine has an MA in classics with distinction from Victoria University of Wellington, where she won the 2020 Alex Scobie Research Prize and a Marsden Grant for Masters scholarship. Her first chapbook, ‘The Temple of Your Girl’, was published in AUP New Poets 7. Her ancestors are from the British Isles and the Maltese Archipelago, and she lives in Ōtautahi. There are lots of wonderful things about living in Ōtautahi – for example, have you ever seen the royal spoonbill, or kōtuku ngutupapa, feeding in the estuary at dusk? Marvellous.

Claudia’s epigrams are sprinkled throughout the collection like sherbet, they fizz in your mind, little fascinations, so sweetly formed, and then, invitingly, hook you into the enduring power and reach of love, sexuality, hunger, recognition.’ – Paula Green‘Jardine doesn’t hesitate to play with form; pantoums and sonnets rub shoulders with free verse. . . . The collection is a celebration of many facets of love through many eyes.’— Erica Stretton‘It’s rare that a book has both such precise silliness and wonky sexiness, but Biter revels in it. The pages will flip themselves, and the poems will stay with you for a long while.’ — harold coutts