Trace Fossils

Mary Cresswell

Steele Roberts Publishers - $19.99

We all carry losses with us. Some are self-inflicted; some are presented to us by circumstance. Either way, we need our memory to shore them up and hold them in some manageable shape.

Mary Cresswell’s poetry looks at memory and loss via a variety of formal structures, and often with humour. She uses images of the Pacific to illustrate much of her work, using not only her admiration for islands (tropic through subantarctic) but also her own journey from California to New Zealand.

The manuscript of Trace Fossils was chosen by Fleur Adcock as first runner-up for the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award (University of Otago). Mary is also co-author of Millionaire’s Shortbread (University of Otago, 2003). In 2009 Steele Roberts published her collection of parody and satirical poems, Nearest and Dearest.

“Mary Cresswell has renewed her poetic licence in this volume and takes us for a heck of a spin, everywhere from pensive to playful, from lyrical to satirical. She does it all, and more, with equal aplomb.” ~ Roger Steele