Raw places

Despite the historical and current importance of farming to New Zealand, farmer-poets are comparatively rare beasts here. John Horrocks is one such, and many of the poems in this collection take as their starting point his years spent farming in the windswept Tararua District north of Wellington.

There's a lot of fine poems in here - with John's permission, I'm hoping to post my very favourite, "Dogs", on my blog sometime soon - although set in the city rather than the country, it gives a good flavour of the book.