“Cadence Chung’s poems are bursting with sensory imagery: the noise of cicadas, the pulse of blood, the smell of wooden cabinets. Obsessed with dissection and vivisection, they feature specimens brimming with heart, but also with spleen, brains, intestines and liver. This collection is a cabinet of curios, from the museum-worthy to the mundane, from opals to antique lockets, from Byron’s iPod to a discontinued eyeshadow. In its wanderings through reliquaries, libraries and natural history stores, it is also very much alive: opulent, rich, unafraid and dangerous. It is a seamless, full-volume, full-colour experience, showcasing a striking new voice.” —Airini Beautrais “This collection is a curiosity cabinet stacked with stolen Rembrandts, dangling stamens, discontinued eyeshadows and dismembered cicada wings. In Cadence Chung’s bewitching museum, the poems glimmer like pinned insects ready to buzz back into frantic, glittering life. Her poetry brims with sensation – from the tenderness of mushroom gills to a specimen begging for vivisection. At turns self-conscious and radiantly unhinged, Chung’s anomalia contemplates the love and loneliness of anomalous subjects, inviting her reader-creatures to examine life from the other side of the glass.” —Rebecca Hawkes “Cadence Chung’s finely-wrought, lyrical observations gave me a bright new lens on contemporary Aotearoa.” —Miranda Harcourt “anomalia is a book of poems that overflow their structure and boundaries. As an unnamed scientist attempts to pin down and catalogue the titular anomaly, she explodes any attempt at definition, letting glitter pen gel, pink eyeshadow and Sufjan Stevens lyrics seep out through the cracks. Cadence Chung is one of the most exciting poets to announce herself in recent years, and anomalia is glorious debut, full of excess and charisma.” —Francis Cooke

Cadence Chung is a poet, student, and musician from Wellington. She began writing from an early age and started being published in her teen years. She has also produced two demo albums, as well as her original musical In Blind Faith which was first put on at Wellington High School in August 2021. anomalia is her first poetry book and was written during her final year of high school. Her writing takes inspiration from Tumblr text posts, antique stores, and dead poets.