Short Films

Short Films

The cover of 'Short Films' by Tate Fountain. The title and author's name are printed in a white Serif font and arranged to frame the top left and bottom right corners. In the background, Anna Higgins's 'Flower Arrangement' (2018).

Tate Fountain’s Short Films is a lush bouquet of poems. This stunning debut reads at times like a film script, a letter to a lover, or a series of richly pigmented vignettes. Desire blooms alongside a tender love of film, art, and literature. In this playful, punny book, Fountain experiments with form and feeling, with poems that are smart, evocative and full of heart.

Published by Tender Press, out now in bookstores and online.

Poetry

‘(LIVE IN PARIS, ’85)’ – Sweet Mammalian Issue 9

‘Countdown’ – No Other Place to Stand (AUP)

‘A New Star Rising’ – In The Mood Issue 4

‘Love Poem’ – eel Edition 1

‘Sunday, 7 November’ – NZ Poetry Shelf

‘Heading Out’ – Aniko Press Magazine Issue 3

‘break/fast and mend/slowly’ & ‘Iterations’ – Starling Issue 11

‘Transcript of a Monologue [Internal]’ – NZ Poetry Shelf

‘tfw the tenth muse is blowing up yr [m/n]otifs’ – The Agenda Issue 2

‘The Abridged Letters’ & ‘Save the Date’ – Starling Issue 10

‘COLOUR THEORY (PRIMARY)’ – Min-a-rets Annexe

‘Q & A’ – Starling Issue 9

‘Dolores’ & ‘Sylvia’ – Starling Issue 8

Prose and Responses

Live performance coverage for bad apple:

‘Five-Year Plan’ – Stuff/The Sunday Star-Times (Competition, Highly Commended)

Response to Moth Hour by Anne Kennedy – Min-a-rets Apocrypha

Classic Poem: Tate Fountain picks Emma Barnes’s ‘White Tuxedo’ – NZ Poetry Shelf

Press, Reviews, and Testimonials

‘Tate Fountain’s Short Films is a scintillating colour wheel, swatches of sweetness layering as words drift like wedding bouquet petals away from the left margins and into more daring shapes of erasures and landscape pages.’ – Rebecca Hawkes, Cordite

‘A skilled writer, Fountain’s language remains evocative, intelligent, and intimate throughout … I haven’t read a collection quite like Short Films. Some poems read like film scripts, others as letters, revised notes, or vignettes. It will have you switching between portrait and landscape to devour each poem…’ – Kyra Lawler, reviewing Short Films for bad apple

‘Tate’s linguistic agility is spellbinding. Her language is alive, mobile, playful, inventive, active … Tate is taking a form, a convention and then playing with it, pushing it further … Short Films is, as Anna Jackson and Emma Barnes say on the back of the book, wonderful. It is a terrific cinematic experience, Maya Deren flashed in my head, where rhyme feeds motifs and subject matter, and rhythm performs the syncopation of daily life, of love life, of heart life. Utterly wonderful.’ – Poetry Shelf review Tate Fountain’s Short Films

Episode 6: Tate Fountain – Poetry Snaps Podcast

‘Tate’s audience of devoted readers grows with every poem she releases’ – The Spinoff

‘Particularly compelling’ – Oddfeather Review: Aniko Press Issue 3

The Future of New Zealand Poetry – Newsroom NZ

Issue 3: Interview with Tate Fountain – Aniko Press

‘The on-the-page writing here is standout. Tate Fountain is a real writer, with a real knowledge of the classic and genuine chops … This feels like an auspicious start to this writer’s career’ – The Black List

‘This is a skilled writer who knows their craft’ – Stuff

‘Tour-de-force … this poem electrifies’ – Poetry Shelf Review: Starling 8, Winter 2019