• Book cover for 'No Good' by Sophie van Waardenberg, featuring a solid olive green background with bold pink title text and an illustration of a shell with a spider on it.
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Auckland University Press

No Good, Poetry by Sophie van Waardenberg

No Good, Poetry by Sophie van Waardenberg

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$25.00 NZD
$25.00 NZD
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No Good is the award-winning debut poetry collection by Sophie van Waardenberg, winner of the Best First Book Award at the 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

In summer when I picked dandelions
for the geriatric guinea pig I changed the world.
I killed a weed. I filled a mouth with gold.

 

Raw, tender and deeply human, No Good explores girlhood, grief, love, loss, distance and the pull of returning home. At its heart is the powerful Cremation Sonnets sequence, where van Waardenberg writes with remarkable emotional honesty and vulnerability.

I cannot accept this ending. I have fallen
from the highest ledge. I will never land.
So what if I am safe? I am not.

 

With lyrical precision and vivid imagery, these poems navigate heartbreak, memory and hope, asking what it means to remain open-hearted in the face of loss. No Good is a striking and unforgettable debut from one of New Zealand's most compelling new poetic voices.

About the Author
Sophie van Waardenberg is a writer from Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University, where she was editor-in-chief of Salt Hill Journal. Her first chapbook, does a potato have a heart?, was published in AUP New Poets 5 (2019). Her poetry has appeared in Cordite, Sweet Mammalian, The Spinoff, and Best New Zealand Poems.

 

Format: Paperback

Pages: 80

Published: 14 August 2025

Specs: 210 x 160mm

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