Moonlight: New Zealand Poems about Death and Dying

Andrew Johnston (ed.)

• extract

In recent years Godwit has established a strong market for handsomely packaged poetry and anthologies and Moonlight is no exception. Beautifully packaged in flexibind and with a marker ribbon, this intelligent, moving collection taps into the extraordinarily powerful way New Zealand poets address the subject of death, dying and grief. There are 65 poems from poets as diverse as Janet Frame and Glen Colquhoun, James K Baxter and Michael Jackson, drawn together by one of this country's finest mid-career poets, Andrew Johnston.

All royalties go to Hospice New Zealand and the book is being launched on Montana Poetry Day 2008 at the Mary Potter Hospice, Wellington. This charitable connection was the editor's plan, as a mark of gratitude for the quality of care given to his late father by hospice several years ago.

'Neale presents us with an often discomforting, but always honest, portrait of parenthood; and even those without children will find some part of their own childhood illuminated by the collection'
'This is an anthology that pushes the boundaries of the genre. What Johnston has done, with extraordinary subtiety and painstaking care, amounts to crafting a coherent and continuous poem-cycle about death and dying out of the works of other New Zealand poets' - Hugh Roberts