Heartland: Paperback - Softcover

Michele Leggott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 186940808X ISBN 13: 9781869408084

Publisher: Auckland University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Michele Leggott’s new book of poetry follows on from her 2009 collection, Mirabile Dictu, in its exploration of light and of gathering dark. Leggott is a poet of the lilting, shining moment and in five of the sections here we follow her through her own moments and movements – to Devonport, to Australia, to the north – though these sequences also reverberate with the stories and histories of others. The final two sections take this exploration of character and narrative further as in one we see off a soldier – shadowed by Leggott – to the First World War; and in the other – set in an earlier, unspecified time charted for us by telegraphic weather reports – a family tragedy unfolds, until a body is finally brought home for burial.

Previously a poet to whom layout was crucial, the book includes the last poems Michele wrote that she was able to see the shapes of on the page, and thus Heartland gestures back towards previous work while at the same time beginning to chart a new compositional method. Heartland, Leggott says, is ‘a destination and a song, a shadow and a single word with two chambers’.

About this title

About the Author:

Michele Leggott MNZM is a professor in the Department of English at The University of Auckland and the founding director of the NZ electronic poetry centre. An award-winning poet and literary scholar, she has published seven previous collections of poems and edited several influential anthologies and collections of essays. In 2007 she was appointed inaugural New Zealand poet laureate (2007–9), was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in 2009 for her services to poetry, and won a 2013 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement.

About this edition

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 186940808X
• ISBN 13: 9781869408084
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120