Fleur Adcock's new poetry collection, The Land Ballot

The Land Ballot
by Fleur Adcock
 

Fleur Adcock's new poetry collection, The Land Ballot, is also a family memoir. It traces a story that will be familiar to many twentieth century New Zealand settlers. Says Fleur:

"Early in 2012 I suddenly began to realise what an extraordinary story it was: two people from Manchester with their 10-year-old son travel to the other side of the world to turn themselves into dairy farmers; they have no farming experience; they arrive at the beginning of a war, are unable to buy land in the normal way because of currency restrictions and other problems, take their chance in a ballot and after several vain attempts find themselves with 150 acres of untouched native bush halfway up a mountain."

She says the process of writing the story in poetry rather than prose allowed her to see it in a series of snapshots.

"Sometimes I used the voice of my father himself, sometimes in extracts adapted from the local newspapers and sometimes simply in my imagination, trying to think myself back into that vanished community and totally altered landscape."

She says she unearthed huge amounts of factual material in researching the story.

"I'm an obsessive researcher, but gossip is a great resource. And of course I knew these people; anything I learned could be measured against my memories of them."

The Land Ballot, paperback,  Victoria University Press, $30. Available for purchase from October 3.