The poems in Sinking Lessons portray the vitality of a world full of things and beings we too often disregard, using language that vibrates in harmony with the lively tales it tells--from small, everyday events to stories of shipwrecks and strandings, resurrections and reanimations, arctic adventures and descents into the underworld. The cast of characters includes members of the poet's family alongside heroes from myth and literature, such as Orpheus, Scheherazade, and Frankenstein's Creature. And crowding in upon these, at all times, a multitude of non-human protagonists: sun and stars, wind and water, mud and sand, body fluids, decaying matter, chemicals organic and inorganic, and a great many fishes and birds and beasts. Sinking Lessons is the first collection of poetry from Philip Armstrong, winner of the 2019 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award.

Philip Armstrong lives in Lyttelton and teaches literature, writing, and human-animal studies at the University of Canterbury. In 2011 he won the Landfall Essay Prize for his essay 'Tenuous Grounds, ' an account of the Canterbury earthquakes. His previous books include Sheep and A New Zealand Book of Beasts (co-authored with Annie Potts and Deidre Brown).