Anthems to art and transformation, from past Poet Laureate, Chris Tse.

Plot a lifetime of joy.
Begin with a niece discovering how to dance;
end with a poet weeping happy tears
next to water.

— from ‘On joy’

Unfolding in the strobe-lit landscape of the club, this latest collection from Chris Tse reflects on joy, nostalgia and legacy – and what it means to make a vocation of vulnerability. Words hit the page like light on a mirrorball as Tse takes us from come-up to comedown, between the spotlight and the shadowy corners, penning both sadbangers and straight-up bangers that are generous, alive and shot through with the magnetic urgency of a club classic.

But when the lights come up after the last dance, how do we brace ourselves to face the world outside? Dance-Floor Romance is poetry that seeks answers from the art we turn to in times of uncertainty, that ‘Holds the present as much as it / holds a whisper of the future’, and amplifies it. Someone hand Tse the AUX cord.

Author

Chris Tse is a writer and editor living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. He studied film and English literature at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, where he also completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. He is the author of three poetry collections published by Auckland University Press: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (winner of the 2016 Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry), HE’S SO MASC and Super Model Minority (a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and longlisted at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards). Alongside Emma Barnes, he edited Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (Auckland University Press, 2021). In August 2022, Chris was appointed Aotearoa New Zealand’s thirteenth Poet Laureate; he completed his term in August 2025.

Endorsements

‘These poems are warm and lush; they will bring a room together.’ — Sophie van Waardenberg

‘This collection is comfortable in its own poetic skin and prepared to slip out of that skin when required. Tse is in control of his inheritance: he is in the workshop, at play, busying himself with the tools to hand and knowing what to do with them. He is producing variations and, with each variation, a new pleasure and a new insight comes into view. Is it surrender or ecstasy? Yes, please.’ — Dougal McNeill