Unmooring

Description

We are unmoored by circumstances that set us adrift from our normal lives into unknown waters. The poems in this debut collection range from the luxury of certainty, through the loss of a partner, to establishing a new life in a different part of the country. But nothing is secure, and a global pandemic again threatens to disrupt the familiar. Through it all, there is reassurance in recognising the perfection in arising and passing away.

Bridget Auchmuty was born in Britain in 1951, came to New Zealand to visit her sister, and never went home. She spent more than thirty years in the Nelson region, where she and her partner lived on ten acres in the Motueka Valley. After his death, she shifted to the Ida Valley in Central Otago, where she lives in a yurt. The core of this collection formed one component of the author's Master's degree in Creative Writing at Massey University, and several of the poems have appeared in prominent poetry journals.

"The work of a poet who knows how important people and places are... I kept thinking, too, about life's voyagings. I found the whole very affecting - touching, tender, rueful at times... And all the more impressive for being unsentimental." - BRIAN TURNER