As a feminist poet chronicling life in the suburbs in all its banal and joyous detail, Janet Charman has no equal. She has a strong personality but she is never an egotistical poet and her work is remarkable for its compassion, its uncompromising anger and its wit and irony. It has developed a more sophisticated and complex approach over the years and in Rapunzel Rapunzel, the result of a CNZ/University of Auckland fellowship, Charman's use of language, tight, pointed, aware, is often masterly: this collection is filled with people's voices, familiar and vivid.