Friday

Tesseract (2026)


Cover design: Scarlett Robinson-Kean (2026)


Tesseract. Illustrated by Scarlett Robinson-Kean. ISBN 978-0-473-78266-5. Auckland: Paper Table, 2026. 110 pp.


Robert A. Heinlein: “– And he Built a Crooked House –.”

“What's a tesseract?”
“Didn't you go to school? A tesseract is a hypercube, a square figure with four dimensions to it, like a cube has three, and a square has two. Here, I'll show you …”

– Robert Heinlein, “– And he Built a Crooked House –.” Astounding Science Fiction (1941)

Robert A. Heinlein: “– And he Built a Crooked House –.”


Contents:

  1. No time but the present (24/5-7/10/22)

  2. Mutual Forgiveness (12/11/22-27/5/23)
  3. Soft (22/9/22-5/7/23)
  4. The key (3/12/22-27/5/23)
  5. My partner (10/9/22-14/3/24)
  6. Pick-ups (19/10/22-23/2/24)
  7. The cat’s ritual (5/11/22-9/5/23)
  8. The Ballad of the Great Storm (23/11/22-5/7/23)
  9. Heavy Rescue 401 (5/12/22-8/3/24)
  10. Our backyard (13/9/22-3/2/24)
  11. Big pink (26/10/22-11/7/2023)
  12. Rain (30/10/22-27/2/24)
  13. The Great Impostor (26/9/22-13/2/24)
  14. Under the knife (10/11/22-3/3/24)
  15. An evening’s viewing (28/11/22-6/3/24)
  16. Power cut (27/11/22-27/5/23)
  17. It was so and not so (19/6/24)
  18. Spartacus (19/9/22-2/5/23)

  19. Chocolate Weetbix (6-7/4/22)

  20. Nice (20/9/22-7/2/24)
  21. So does this mean World War III? (18/11/22-11/7/2023)
  22. Insignificance (30/9/22-15/2/24)
  23. When people are anxious (14/11/22-11/7/2023)
  24. Gallowglass (6/9/22-28/1/24)
  25. India twenty years ago (29/9/22-14/2/24)
  26. The Sixties (23/10/22-24/2/24)
  27. Get out of the way! (29/10/22-26/2/24)
  28. Wolf (21/9/22-5/7/23)
  29. Strangers on a train (12/10/22-20/2/24)
  30. From Russia with Love (18/10/22-22/2/24)
  31. The Basketballathon (20/2/22-15/10/23)
  32. Towards the end (24/10/22-25/2/24)
  33. I miss it sometimes (15/11/22-11/7/2023)
  34. The inverse ninja law (17/11/22-11/7/2023)
  35. Bronwyn (8/12/22-5/7/23)
  36. My mother’s rose bushes (18/9/22-2/4/23)

  37. Time in Poetry (27-28/4/22)

  38. Zealandia (11/9/22-2/2/24)
  39. Scurvy Grass (6/2-22/7/21)
  40. Coming in from the cold (25/10/22-11/7/2023)
  41. All that you love will be carried away (17/9/22-7/2/24)
  42. Rear Window (8/10/22-17/2/24)
  43. Kimono (1/10/22-15/2/24)
  44. Is time travel possible? (25/9/22-12/2/24)
  45. Pizzagate (14/10/22-20/2/24)
  46. Coming Forth by Day (15/10/22-21/2/24)
  47. Déjà vu all over again (3/11/22-28/2/24)
  48. In my dream last night (21/10/22-5/7/23)
  49. The House on the Strand (3/10/22-16/2/24)
  50. Weather (17/10/22-22/2/24)
  51. Living history (4/12/22-8/3/24)
  52. Prisoners of K. Rd. (14/9/22-3/2/24)
  53. Last days (20/11/22-4/3/24)
  54. Catullus 101 (12/9/22-28/5/23)

  55. No wars but in words (24-25/5/22)

  56. Why do you write? (2/11/22-28/2/24)
  57. Gaslighting (29/11/22-5/7/23)
  58. Crash (26/11/22-5/3/24)
  59. You need to get a job (28/10/22-26/2/24)
  60. The Bard (22/10/22-24/2/24)
  61. The usual suspects (5/10/22-16/2/24)
  62. I used to quote (16/11/22-11/7/2023)
  63. Not everything is an anecdote (20/10/22-23/2/24)
  64. Mnemonics (31/10/22-8/5/23)
  65. Houseboat Days (22/11/22-12/7/2023)
  66. Emotionally labile (13/10/22-4/1/23)
  67. The Killing Floor (7/12/22-5/7/23)
  68. Experimental (9/12/22-8/2/24)
  69. Frack away (4/11/22-29/2/24)
  70. Bronwyn asked me (25/11/22-5/7/23)
  71. Catfish or cats? (6/12/22-27/5/23)
  72. Just Like the Others (27-28/10/20)




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Blurb:

Each of us is made up of stories – family stories, work stories, relationship stories – even stories about trying to buy a revolving bookcase in Paeroa … Stories, too, about the country and the world we live in.

If you put them all together, the lines begin to connect up into the shape of a life: not a simple geometric figure, but the outline of a particular location in spacetime – a line, then a square, then a cube, then finally a four-dimensional hypercube, a tesseract.

An earlier version of this, Jack Ross’s latest poetry collection, was longlisted for the Kathleen Grattan award in 2025. He’s happy to present it here with a book design and lively illustrations by 2025 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Springboard recipient, Scarlett Robinson-Kean.

'What makes this book resonate so deeply with me is movement. Physical and emotional movement. Not on a grand over-the-top flare of sentimentality but in small measured steps that favour contiguity. I relish the shift between what is easily witnessed in the everyday and what is much harder to fathom, what is retrieved in glimmers and shards across time. it is a collection that warrants a prolonged sojourn. Glorious.'

- Paula Green on Jack’s The Oceanic Feeling (2021)


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Jack Ross is the author of six poetry collections, four novels, and five books of short fiction, most recently Haunts (2024). He edited Poetry New Zealand / Aotearoa from 2014-2020, along with many other books, anthologies, and literary journals over the years.

He and his wife, crafter and art-writer Bronwyn Lloyd, share their house in Mairangi Bay with a regal three-legged cat named Mila.




Sources & Acknowledgments:

Thanks, above all, to Bronwyn Lloyd for your invaluable advice throughout the process – and also for giving me permission to take your name in vain in so many of the poems.

Thanks, too, to my brilliant illustrator and book designer Scarlett Robinson-Kean. This book would be a very different thing without your vivid sense of colour and form.

Many of the pieces included here have been previously published. Thanks to the editors and publishers of all those anthologies, journals, and websites for permission to reproduce them here. For further details, please visit https://ovidius-naso.blogspot.com/2026/03/notes-to-tesseract.html.


Lisa Baudry: Paper Table logo (2017)


Abstract:

Many of the 72 poems here have been published previously in periodicals or online. A complete list of these is available here. The book also features four artworks by New Zealand graphic novelist and illustrator Scarlett Robinson-Kean, painted specifically for this project.

The poems, too, are grouped into four sections. The first, 'No time but the present', gives an overview of my basic social and family setting.

The second, 'Chocolate Weetbix', goes back further in time. There are stories here about travels abroad and around New Zealand, and the effect they've had on me.

The third, 'Time in Poetry', expands the lens further. There are poems here about geological deep time, as well as other social and political implications of time.

The book concludes with a final section called 'No wars but in words.' Here I think more specifically about the reach of poetry and writing in general: the insights it offers us, and the limitations on its power.

The whole, I hope, adds up to a kind of 'representative life' - told, inevitably, by the person living it, since much of the information included here is privileged. By analogy, though, I hope it invites collaboration and comparison from the people who read it.


Lisa Baudry: Paper Table logo (2017)


Available:

Paper Table
Attn: Bronwyn Lloyd
6 Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
Auckland 0630

RRP: $NZ 40.00 (+ $12 postage)


Lynley Edmeades, ed.: Landfall Tauraka 250 (Spring 2025)


Reviews & Comments:


  1. Mel Stevens, email (October 13, 2025):

    Kia ora Jack

    I’m writing with thanks for submitting your manuscript for the 2025 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award. I’m pleased to let you know that your work was longlisted this year – warm congratulations! It’s a wonderful achievement to have your manuscript recognised among such a strong and diverse field of entries.

    The winner will be announced later this week, along with details of the forthcoming Landfall Tauraka 250 issue, which will carry the judge’s report.

    Thank you again for sharing your work with us and for contributing to this year’s competition. We wish you all the very best for your ongoing writing.

    Ngā mihi nui,

    Mel Stevens
    Landfall Tauraka
    Otago University Press



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