LK Holt, Stages of Balthazar

Balthazar is a donkey practitioner of amor fati. Followed and neglected by his chorus, Balthazar goes about his small village life, bearing a great love. 'Two coarse scrubbing brushes/ stored bristles inwards and snarled together:/ this is his soul/ and Marie’s'. Orphic or pastoral, the suite of poems is inspired loosely by Robert Bresson's 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar.

LK Holt lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her previous full-length collections are Man Wolf Man (2007), Patience, Mutiny (2010), and Keeps (2014). She is a recipient of the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Grace Leven Prize, and has been longlisted for the Literature Society Gold Medal.