OTARI: POEMS & PROSE
Author: Louise Wrightson
ISBN:
978 0 473 28879 2
Publisher:
Otari Press
RRP: $30.00
NEW ZEALAND’S NATIVE PLANT RESERVE CELEBRATED
Otari-Wilton’s
Bush is unique. It contains the only botanic garden in New Zealand dedicated
solely
to native plants and, as a bonus, hosts the remaining few hectares of virgin
forest
in the
Wellington region.
Louise
Wrightson, a Wellington poet, has written about real and imagined encounters in
Otari
and at her nearby home in her just published book Otari: Poems &
Prose.
The
first part of her book focuses on Otari: a hermit protects the forest, an
abandoned car
is found
in dense bush, a patupaiarehe (a forest fairy) suggests a rendezvous, an
account of
the discovery
of digitalis takes the reader to Birmingham in 1785, a cancelled bush walk
leads
to a
list of common and dangerous fungi.
The
second part of the book is set on the poet's quarter-acre. It has poems about making
a
flat
back lawn, the fate of Wrightson's lawn mower, a visit from a real estate
agent, the
importance
of wood and a spooky story called 'Growth' about what can happen when
nature gets
the upper hand.
Otari: Poems & Prose has two poems translated into te
reo, notes and a five page glossary
of Māori
words. Four poems are displayed on
banners in the Visitors Centre. The
Otari-Wilton’s
Bush Trust supported the cost of the banners designed by Sarah Maxey.
The book
is published a month after the completion of extensive renovations on a
house in
the reserve funded by the Wellington City Council and the Otari Wilton’s
Bush
Trust. Named the Cockayne Centre after Dr Leonard Cockayne, New Zealand’s
greatest
botanist, it will be used for education, research and events.
About the poet
Louise
Wrightson completed a creative writing course in 2009 at Victoria University.
Dinah Hawken
was her tutor for a “Writing the Landscape” course at the Institute of
Modern
Letters, at Victoria University, Wellington. Her work has been published in
Sport, Landfall,
Metro, Best New Zealand Poems, Turbine,
and the New Zealand Listener.
Wrightson
has been accepted for the MA in Creative Writing course at the
Institute
of Modern Letters, Victoria University, in 2015.
Otari: Poems & Prose was published with the assistance
of a grant from Creative New Zealand.
Contact: louise.wrightson@gmail.com
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