Distilling a 10-year writing practice onto the page, Frisk is a collection in pursuit of topics that loom large over us. Begun as a way to process (another) bad break-up in their 20s, Jo Bragg’s debut collection oscillates between poetry and image. Through death, sex, money, time, peace of mind, and power with a touch of humour, Frisk evolves beyond its inception as a post-breakup catharsis into a fully realised presentation of a lived tangata ira tāne experience. Frisk is frisky. Frisk will frisk you and find an out-of-date passport, Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Blu-ray, a Bic lighter, and a copy of Frisk by Dennis Cooper. In this book, Jo Bragg tells the story of a decade in a scattering of moments. We are left to recreate the narrative from fragments of memory. It’s the small details that are important: the Desperate Housewives of it all, the kind of ass that makes you forget your first name. I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time, and it has exceeded all of my expectations. — Always Becominging Born and based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Jo Bragg (Ngāti Porou) is a still- and moving- image-based visual artist, poet and arts writer. A co-founder of the artist-run initiative and gallery Meanwhile, their practice is informed by a Master of Fine Arts degree with a Major in Gender and Transfeminist Theory from Monash University. Bragg’s photographic works feature in the collections of both the Wellington City Council and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. Frisk is their first published collection.
