The Rooster has Landed

The Glass Rooster is a poetry collection by Janis Freegard, published by Auckland University Press.

The poems in the book explore the spaces inhabited by humans and other creatures – not just natural ecosystems like deserts or the alpine zone, but cities and outer space.

Our guide on this journey is a glass rooster – observer of stars and lover of hens – who first popped up in Janis Freegard’s poetry years ago and wanders unchecked through the book. There are poems about art, about places, about unusual expeditions, and about love.

Each of the eight sections (or ‘echo-systems’) in the book – The Damp Places, Forest, Cityscape, The Alpine Zone, Space, Home & Garden, Underground and In the Desert – is introduced by a triolet, a French poetic form with repeated lines. Other poems are arranged in pairs, each echoing something about the other, whether desert plants, the presence of balloons or the dangers of working in a mine.