A well-loved New Zealand poet returns to territory that will be familiar to all readers in this collection of verse that takes on the uncelebrated, even mundane aspects of everyday life: family, work, suburbia. The book is divided into three sections. The first deals with a midlife career change; the second looks back to a period earlier in the poet's life, when she was a receptionist for a television company; and the third is a more intimate, bittersweet offering of personal poems. With her moving, lyrical lines, the author documents and ties together the sounds, shapes, and experience of human existence.

Winner, Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry 2008