Released 31st July 2022 // 158 pages // PB: 978-1-915079-82-4 HB: 978-1-915079-80-0
 
The island of Borneo was once the most heavily wooded in the world, and its people have always carved wood beautifully. In KILLERNOVA, grappling with his heritage, Omar Musa remixes this ancient art form with fiery poetry forged in the stars. With equal parts swagger, humour and vulnerability, Musa charts a journey through the colonial history of South-East Asia, environmental destruction, oceans, bushfires, race, the isolation and addiction of COVID lockdown, family, lost love and, ultimately, recovery. Relentlessly on beat, visually captivating and deceptively intimate, this is a collection of words and art that burns blindingly bright.
 
 
PRAISE for Killernova:
 
Omar Musa is a rare kind. As visual in his poetry as he is poetic in his visuals. This collection allows us to to dive deeper into his worlds, to experience the poems alongside the carvings adds greater dimension to each.
- KAE TEMPEST
 
Omar’s poetry slips between two worlds, between play and dread, the sacred and the mundane, with Houdini-like ease. He leans into the mystery, while bringing down the hammer. Like if Frank Ocean ghost-wrote Nostradamus.
- HERA LINDSAY BIRD
 
Omar Musa’s latest work explodes on the page like a dazzling fireworks display, endlessly surprising and beautiful. Killernova is a book to keep close to the heart, forever.
- TASH AW
 
Pretentious literary navel-gazing. This will go well when thrown into the circle jerk of writers festivals and resin-jewellery led artists panels. That said, it’s hard to deny the Queanbeyan edge that penetrates these whimsical post-national musings. The man’s pretty handy with a linoleum cutter too.
- THE BETOOTA ADVOCATE
 
 
PRAISE for Omar Musa:
 
Omar Musa is a special writer with his own beat, cutting through worlds.
- MOHSIN HAMID
 
Never mind page versus stage, this is poetry: listen.
- JEET THAYIL
 
[s]uch swaggering exuberance that it will make most other fiction you read this year seem criminally dull. You have been warned.
- IRVINE WELSH
 
[A] writer with the attuned ear of a great poet, the narrative gifts of seasoned novelist, and no slight exposure to the beautiful struggle.
- MITCHELL S. JACKSON
 
Musa is a poet and every page speaks to his ferocious talent.
- FATIMA BHUTTO
 
Each poem in Musa's Millefiori beats with a large heart.
- GREGORY PARDLO