Author(s): Dinah Hawken

NZ Poetry

There is a remarkable range of poems in The Leaf-Ride as it travels along in its 'down-welling, up-welling drift': poems that range from the power of a single word to the horror of violence to the joy of a newborn child. At the heart of the book are three sequences to stand alongside those that have formed the backbone of Dinah Hawken's acclaimed oeuvre: a contemplative poem written beside Lake Geneva; the 'Building Sonnets', which observe the construction of a new room; and 'Peace on Earth', which was commissioned to accompany a performance of Haydn's Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross.