Ashleigh Young
Ashleigh Young lives in Wellington. Her first book of poems, Magnificent Moon (Victoria University Press), was published in 2012. Her poems and essays have appeared in Sport, Hue & Cry and Griffith Review.
Young comments: ‘The speaker in this poem isn’t me, but I suppose he’s someone I can imagine being. He’s not very approachable or friendly and he’d be terrible to live with. He thinks people blow cigarette smoke in his face, but in reality, if you met him, he’d be the one blowing the smoke. He sees himself as both the centre and the periphery of his world, and I wanted that odd dual perception to inform the way he sees things around him. I also wanted him to seem quite muttery, talking to himself in short bursts or sparks, the way that thoughts can come at you in fragments that begin to connect. Even though he’s insufferable, I have sympathy for this guy. He doesn’t want to go to the party, but his love for his brother takes him there.’
