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  • Published: 28 March 2016
  • ISBN: 9781775538554
  • Imprint: RHNZ Godwit
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $37.00
Categories:

This Change in the Light

A Collection of Poems



'terrifically strong poetry' - Radio NZ

A superb collection of poetry from one of New Zealand's top writers.

Fiona Kidman’s exquisite and adroit poetry invites the reader into her life, introducing us to her family, friends and places she has loved. In turn it touches our own experiences, offering universal relevance and insight.

  • Published: 28 March 2016
  • ISBN: 9781775538554
  • Imprint: RHNZ Godwit
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $37.00
Categories:

About the author

Fiona Kidman

Fiona Kidman has published over 30 books, including novels, poetry, non-fiction and a play. She has worked as a librarian, radio producer and critic, and as a scriptwriter for radio, television and film. The New Zealand Listener wrote: ‘In her craft and her storytelling and in her compassionate gutsy tough expression of female experience, she is the best we have.’

She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships; in more recent years, The Captive Wife was runner-up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction and was joint-winner of the Readers’ Choice Award in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and her short story collection The Trouble with Fire was shortlisted for both the NZ Post Book Awards and the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. Her novel This Mortal Boy won the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the NZ Booklovers Award, the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction and the Ngaio Marsh Crime Writing Award for Best Novel.

She was created a Dame (DNZM) in 1998 in recognition of her contribution to literature, and more recently a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour. ‘We cannot talk about writing in New Zealand without acknowledging her,’ wrote New Zealand Books. ‘Kidman’s accessible prose and the way she shows (mainly) women grappling to escape from restricting social pressures has guaranteed her a permanent place in our fiction.’

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Praise for This Change in the Light

. . . tightly curated and unified . . . The collection covers The Big Things: the arrival of grandchildren, immigration to a new country, a friend dying, the wedding. "Shelter with Me" deserves to become the default poem to be read at New Zealand weddings. . . . At the centre of the collection is a series of "10 sonnets for my mother" under the umbrella title "How I Saw Her". They are formally strict, but the impressive technical control never distracts from the emotions at their centre. Near the end are two almost unbearably moving poems about the experience of having a child with cancer. This brief account merely scratches the surface of a mosaic of poems whose impact is out of all proportion to the size of the book in which they appear.

North & South

These are terrific . . . nuances of detail, flickers of humour . . . little shards of story . . . a touching final poem . . . terrifically strong poetry.

Harry Ricketts, Radio NZ

. . . of family, travels, milestones, things happening to a woman growing old, and a literary woman . . . a very beautiful book . . . a keepsake . . . a very lovely book . . . its lyrical writing . . . ultimately about love.

Mary McCallum, Radio NZ

The old adage, don’t judge a book by its cover, is tricky to abide by when confronted with such an aesthetically charming book. A sunny, kaleidoscopic front cover, with coloured inserts interspersed with black and whites. . . . Kidman has a range of voices, and can shift between lights and darks. There is indeed a ‘Change in the Light’; there is chiaroscuro here, shadows amongst the flowers

Elizabeth Morton, Booksellers News