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Meat Lovers
In this dazzling first collection, acclaimed Wellington poet and Canterbury farm-girl Rebecca Hawkes takes a generous bite from the excesses of earthly flesh – first ‘Meat’, then ‘Lovers’.
‘Meat’ is a coming of age in which pony clubs, orphaned lambs and dairy-shed delirium are infused with playful menace and queer longings. Between bottle-fed care and killing-shed floors, the farm is a heady setting for love and death.
In ‘Lovers’, the poet casts a wry eye over romance, from youthful sapphic infatuation to seething beastliness. Sentimental intensity is anchored by an introspective comic streak, in which ‘the stars are watching us / and boy howdy are they judgemental’.
This collection of queasy hungers offers a feast of explosive mince & cheese pies, accusatory crackling, lab-grown meat and beetroot tempeh burger patties, all washed down with bloody milk or apple-mush moonshine. It teems with sensuous life, from domesticated beasts to the undulating mysteries of eels, as Hawkes explores uneasy relationships with our animals and with each other.
Tender and brutal, seductive and repulsive, Meat Lovers introduces a compelling new mode of hardcore pastoral.
‘Meat’ is a coming of age in which pony clubs, orphaned lambs and dairy-shed delirium are infused with playful menace and queer longings. Between bottle-fed care and killing-shed floors, the farm is a heady setting for love and death.
In ‘Lovers’, the poet casts a wry eye over romance, from youthful sapphic infatuation to seething beastliness. Sentimental intensity is anchored by an introspective comic streak, in which ‘the stars are watching us / and boy howdy are they judgemental’.
This collection of queasy hungers offers a feast of explosive mince & cheese pies, accusatory crackling, lab-grown meat and beetroot tempeh burger patties, all washed down with bloody milk or apple-mush moonshine. It teems with sensuous life, from domesticated beasts to the undulating mysteries of eels, as Hawkes explores uneasy relationships with our animals and with each other.
Tender and brutal, seductive and repulsive, Meat Lovers introduces a compelling new mode of hardcore pastoral.
92 pages, ebook
Published January 1, 2022
4 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
July 26, 2022
Farms are such strange nexuses of death, sex, meat, and work, and Hawkes' has an eye for the opulence hidden amongst the dirt and mire. Awkward pangs of teenage lust rub shoulders with the corpses of bloated ungulates, while sticky salt-lamps light up freezing Wellington bedrooms, where young love shivers in confusion.
Recommended for fans of the meaty poetry of Lara Glenum, the gooey excesses of painter Gregory Jacobsen, and all other lovers of imagery that straddles (and occasionally unites!) the gross and the gorgeous.
Recommended for fans of the meaty poetry of Lara Glenum, the gooey excesses of painter Gregory Jacobsen, and all other lovers of imagery that straddles (and occasionally unites!) the gross and the gorgeous.
June 3, 2022
I loved the incredible work here - the images in the poems and in the pictures. What a talent. I love this book, have been treating myself to just a couple of poems a day, here and there. Finally I had to finish it in one big bite. I will be returning to it. Often.
January 10, 2023
A flawless, inescapable lens focused on some of the most difficult aspects of life on a farm. Rebecca's maximalist style draws you in to reading about things that feel uncomfortable and terrible, in some ways romanticising them but also inducing massive stomach churns. Horror realism, wild teenage love, and nature poetry sit together in every page. I loved my brief stay in this book, and will return to it often.
May 11, 2022
Love the way that Mz Rebecca managed to elaborate tough subject of meat industry into such a rich and lavish language. Reflecting through life journey from farm girl, to teenager, love and erotic references at time make it so interesting to read. Being able to come out and talk about this in such a great tapestry of words is amazing, great work Mz. Rebecca!!
May 11, 2023
I wrote a really nice review but removed it because the author was mean to me on twitter.
February 28, 2023
I really liked this poetry collection. Although I will say that the ones in the first part, concerning meat and farm life, are very hard to read and rather gory at times.
March 20, 2025
My favourite poetry book. It took me so long to read the last few because I couldn't bear to have finished it. Good thing I can read them whenever 🫀
September 23, 2025
oh my god. this quite literally has changed my life. hawkes channels all the most abject elements of nature, twists and turns them into something beautiful, and allows it to root in our gut in the most visceral description. blending the pastoral with the erotic, the mundane with the manic, these poems created one of the most complex affects i've ever encountered in poetry. no notes.
April 15, 2022
OH HELL YEAH
June 10, 2022
‘The Flexitarian.’ I can feel the Cronenberg. It sets the collection up in a big way. With the repulsive feeling of animal farming and supermarket meat displays.
So far they’re all good. This is the kind of poetry I attempt. Narrative based, easy to understand, simple sentences that aim for poetic gold every once in a while and in tandem with the whole. And I don’t call ‘Meat Lovers’ accessible in a bad way, or a Rupi Kaur way (two different ways, believe me). I’m focusing on ‘Flesh tones’ for its morbid portrait of a young girl on a sheep farm. I didn’t get tingles of beauty but it is a vivid portrayal of a child’s psyche as informed by animals and decay, and, as a part of the collection, informed by the ruralness of the preceding poems.
As much as long poems are ideal for storytelling it promotes breaks between them. Which is not a bad thing unless you want to go for one sitting. A lot of content for $25!
I want to take a second to praise the presentation. The cover featuring an Edvard Munch lesbian cowgirl farmgirl lovers atop diaphanous androgynous lactating cow in the forest under a blood red moon, its night, various bony remnants scatter the floor and a boneless flying axolotyl threatens belief most, the edible things on the foreground’s table are not meat but they are red. Turning the page, the inside cover is a muscly sinewy congealed bloody ness in a marble style, the same that fills the title of “MEAT LOVERS” on the front. The first section makes one half and it is titled “MEAT” with an accompanying biblical spread featuring a feminine minotaur pouring thick blood down her body via milk carton and lactating while crouched in the entrance of a cobbled hallway surrounded by hanging flora and a rabbit on a hook bonded to the cow via rope and ring, on her horn like a hook, a horned skull caught by vine-like barbwire, they all look as if they have been trapped. Extra details there is a two headed lamb and prickly flowers. “LOVERS” is decorated with a scene set in a similar hallway, in the same darkness, the back opening out onto a crescent mooned night, an exotic flower framed like the moon from the front, there are two figures here, a human now, simple, could be a child, embraced with a ram counter part to ‘Meat’s cow, so inhuman it has a useless bony wing which has evolved into usefulness by becoming a flower at the end, or it has happened the other way round the plant finally weighed down to snap by the little slugs spun around it, childish pinky promise in the corner, and a flying eel.
Becomes too much of a good thing.
So far they’re all good. This is the kind of poetry I attempt. Narrative based, easy to understand, simple sentences that aim for poetic gold every once in a while and in tandem with the whole. And I don’t call ‘Meat Lovers’ accessible in a bad way, or a Rupi Kaur way (two different ways, believe me). I’m focusing on ‘Flesh tones’ for its morbid portrait of a young girl on a sheep farm. I didn’t get tingles of beauty but it is a vivid portrayal of a child’s psyche as informed by animals and decay, and, as a part of the collection, informed by the ruralness of the preceding poems.
As much as long poems are ideal for storytelling it promotes breaks between them. Which is not a bad thing unless you want to go for one sitting. A lot of content for $25!
I want to take a second to praise the presentation. The cover featuring an Edvard Munch lesbian cowgirl farmgirl lovers atop diaphanous androgynous lactating cow in the forest under a blood red moon, its night, various bony remnants scatter the floor and a boneless flying axolotyl threatens belief most, the edible things on the foreground’s table are not meat but they are red. Turning the page, the inside cover is a muscly sinewy congealed bloody ness in a marble style, the same that fills the title of “MEAT LOVERS” on the front. The first section makes one half and it is titled “MEAT” with an accompanying biblical spread featuring a feminine minotaur pouring thick blood down her body via milk carton and lactating while crouched in the entrance of a cobbled hallway surrounded by hanging flora and a rabbit on a hook bonded to the cow via rope and ring, on her horn like a hook, a horned skull caught by vine-like barbwire, they all look as if they have been trapped. Extra details there is a two headed lamb and prickly flowers. “LOVERS” is decorated with a scene set in a similar hallway, in the same darkness, the back opening out onto a crescent mooned night, an exotic flower framed like the moon from the front, there are two figures here, a human now, simple, could be a child, embraced with a ram counter part to ‘Meat’s cow, so inhuman it has a useless bony wing which has evolved into usefulness by becoming a flower at the end, or it has happened the other way round the plant finally weighed down to snap by the little slugs spun around it, childish pinky promise in the corner, and a flying eel.
Becomes too much of a good thing.
March 12, 2025
I adored this collection of poems. They are really compelling, and I really think a lot of the poems lived up to the idea of 'the best words in the best order.' The style is accessible, and the content modern, making it an easy collection to read.
The first half, Meat, was an excellent exploration of where humanity and animals intercept. Life growing up on a dairy/meat farm is depicted in a vivid way that doesn't flinch from how harsh it can be, but it maintains how beautiful life is, childhood is, and animals are. How you can still experience respect for the animals, and question your place in their lives while performing your job.
The poem that haunts me from that section is 'Is it cruelty.' It's a slightly shocking coming of age moment, where children act on empathy in a world where that isn't always enough. Where they learn that the consequences of their actions isn't always the kindness they anticipate. It was relatable, as I think all children have experienced a similar story (although on a smaller scale, maybe about insects). I won't forget this one quickly.
The second half, Lovers, also had me in a chokehold. The poem 'Werewolf in the girls' dormitory' is exactly what it's like to be a teenaged lesbian at school. Relating it to body horror really captures the way you feel alienated not just by being different and separated from your peers, but also the way your body can feel foreign during puberty. It hits all the marks.
The other poem that hit me intensly was 'Lesbian vampire film theory.' The first stanza is
"A circle of witches dancing starkers in the meadow
Buzzed on ergot and fly agaric but there is no forest and no coven
It's just you and I holding hands in public"
And when I tell you that I put down the book and sat quietly for a minute. That's exactly how I felt the first time I held a girl's hand romantically in public. Wild and exhilarated, and also like I was doing something forbidden and dangerous. It was empowering and scary, and the bravery of doing it together forged a bond on my side, a small devotion, to that girl.
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection. I'd love to read more by this author. Super grateful to my library, because I'm in the UK and haven't ever seen or heard of this book anywhere else. I'll have to import my own physical copy.
The first half, Meat, was an excellent exploration of where humanity and animals intercept. Life growing up on a dairy/meat farm is depicted in a vivid way that doesn't flinch from how harsh it can be, but it maintains how beautiful life is, childhood is, and animals are. How you can still experience respect for the animals, and question your place in their lives while performing your job.
The poem that haunts me from that section is 'Is it cruelty.' It's a slightly shocking coming of age moment, where children act on empathy in a world where that isn't always enough. Where they learn that the consequences of their actions isn't always the kindness they anticipate. It was relatable, as I think all children have experienced a similar story (although on a smaller scale, maybe about insects). I won't forget this one quickly.
The second half, Lovers, also had me in a chokehold. The poem 'Werewolf in the girls' dormitory' is exactly what it's like to be a teenaged lesbian at school. Relating it to body horror really captures the way you feel alienated not just by being different and separated from your peers, but also the way your body can feel foreign during puberty. It hits all the marks.
The other poem that hit me intensly was 'Lesbian vampire film theory.' The first stanza is
"A circle of witches dancing starkers in the meadow
Buzzed on ergot and fly agaric but there is no forest and no coven
It's just you and I holding hands in public"
And when I tell you that I put down the book and sat quietly for a minute. That's exactly how I felt the first time I held a girl's hand romantically in public. Wild and exhilarated, and also like I was doing something forbidden and dangerous. It was empowering and scary, and the bravery of doing it together forged a bond on my side, a small devotion, to that girl.
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection. I'd love to read more by this author. Super grateful to my library, because I'm in the UK and haven't ever seen or heard of this book anywhere else. I'll have to import my own physical copy.
November 25, 2025
Phenomenally visceral poetry. This collection had me laughing and grimacing in equal amounts. Rebecca Hawkes writes in a style both sly and raw.
Despite the difference in our worlds I found Meat Lovers ultimately relatable. Having only brushed shoulders with farming in Aotearoa, the intensity of Hawkes’s descriptions left me feeling vicariously acquainted with the scents, sights, and sensations of that life.
The views of love and lust through her eyes were perhaps more relatable, but no less illuminating. Hawkes’s reflection is vivid, emotional, and tantalisingly humorous in its introspection.
A standard of poetry that will stay with me, and one upon which I will measure my own musings, no doubt.
Despite the difference in our worlds I found Meat Lovers ultimately relatable. Having only brushed shoulders with farming in Aotearoa, the intensity of Hawkes’s descriptions left me feeling vicariously acquainted with the scents, sights, and sensations of that life.
The views of love and lust through her eyes were perhaps more relatable, but no less illuminating. Hawkes’s reflection is vivid, emotional, and tantalisingly humorous in its introspection.
A standard of poetry that will stay with me, and one upon which I will measure my own musings, no doubt.
January 7, 2023
a queasy investigation of food, farming, and desire. there's a theme-and-variations feel to this one, a strong motif running through poems that delight with moments of luminous wit, observation, and whimsy. i read it as an ebook, but from what i've heard about the physical book's presentation i may have to check that out as well!
December 6, 2022
Very relatable as a country grown girl from NZ. Was very visceral, worried for a bit it would turn me vegan. But then she got just as gory and guilty about the plants. Be prepared to lose your appetite at least a little while reading this.
September 9, 2023
So stunning I just know I have to read this again, pronto!
November 17, 2024
this collection ate, left no crumbs
December 22, 2025
disgusting, rural, visceral
June 24, 2025
meat is to consume, but so is love.
a poetry collection divided into two parts exploring the oddness of a farm girl, and then later love as a whole. i really enjoyed hawkes’ prose, her use of words always stump me in a way that really makes me think of the intention behind them. i’ve read some of her works in online literary journals like ‘bad apple’, so it was really sick to finally own a physical copy of her work. (also, the cover!!!! painted by hawkes’ herself).
a poetry collection divided into two parts exploring the oddness of a farm girl, and then later love as a whole. i really enjoyed hawkes’ prose, her use of words always stump me in a way that really makes me think of the intention behind them. i’ve read some of her works in online literary journals like ‘bad apple’, so it was really sick to finally own a physical copy of her work. (also, the cover!!!! painted by hawkes’ herself).
March 29, 2024
4.5 maybe!! like reading butter in the best way possible
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews