Settler Dreaming

Shortlisted for the 2003 Tasmania Pacific Region Poetry Prize

Nominated for Best Use of Illustration in the 2002 Spectrum Print Book Design Awards

Bernadette Hall’'s fifth collection will consolidate her reputation as one of the most distinctive poetic voices to emerge in the early 2000s in New Zealand. Her abiding themes of secular and religious love and the transporting passion of writing are strongly present, and are extended by a deepening political engagement with the history and possibilities of this land.

Settler Dreaming is an exquisite production featuring a suite of drawings by the Dunedin artist Kathryn Madill.

Omakau

The beautiful long back
of the woman in the black
and white photograph

The shoulder-blades
of shorn sheep, the way
the light gathers there

as they bend and eat.
Then all start walking
in the same direction.

'These poems have warmth, depth, intelligence and lots of appeal. . . Settler Dreaming is quite outstanding.' —Hamesh Wyatt OTAGO DAILY TIMES