Winner of the Poetry section Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2004. Anne Kennedy's first book of poems, a natural progression from her fiction, deals with the domestic life of a family, but in particular about the gruelling experience of eczema from which the little girl suffers. This may not seem a promising subject but telling it from the mother's point of view and setting it amid moves of house, the textures of a bicultural household, endless fruitless encounters with 'healers' of many kinds, Kennedy makes it into a moving and profoundly reognisable picture of the strains of parenthood -- its anxieties, fatigue, desperation -- the contemporary situation of women and the power of love under harsh circumstances. First published 2003.
Awards
Winner of Montana New Zealand Book Awards: Poetry Category 2004.
Reviews
""Eczema-daughter, eczema-mother, who could have imagined a more unlikely subject for a collection? But what a moving, engaging, almost heart-stopping progress it is. A first reading is likely to be fast to find out the outcome. A second reading shows that life was going on all the time."
