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This Change in the Light
A superb collection of poetry from one of New Zealand's top writers.
Fiona Kidman's exquisite and adroit poetry invites the reader into her life, introducing us to her family, friends and places she has loved. In turn it touches our own experiences, offering universal relevance and insight.
Fiona Kidman's exquisite and adroit poetry invites the reader into her life, introducing us to her family, friends and places she has loved. In turn it touches our own experiences, offering universal relevance and insight.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Hardcover
Published March 28, 2016
1 person is currently reading
6 people want to read
About the author
Fiona Kidman
54 books64 followersFiona Kidman is a leading contemporary novelist, short story writer and poet. Much of her fiction is focused on how outsiders navigate their way in narrowly conformist society. She has published a large and exciting range of fiction and poetry, and has worked as a librarian, producer and critic. Kidman has won numerous awards, and she has been the recipient of fellowships, grants and other significant honours, as well as being a consistent advocate for New Zealand writers and literature. She is the President of Honour for the New Zealand Book Council, and has been awarded an OBE and a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 14, 2018
this book was delicate and careful and fragile, just like the ceramics in its pages. I think I'm always going to like a book that I read at midnight in a cool apartment, eating doughnuts with my friends, collecting pieces of poetry like pottery, overwhelmed with an appreciation for a generous world.
October 18, 2021
I still don't /get/ poetry, but I enjoyed this little collection. It sat on my desk and helped get me in the Mood to study.
August 3, 2019
The poems in this are sweet and easily digestible. Fiona Kidman is good at painting a vivid picture with her imagery, and I enjoyed that aspect.
April 3, 2020
This just wasn't for me unfortunately.
Many of the poems were very much: what you see is what you get. I found them to mostly be recollections of her memories as a pose to insights into how she sees the world. I just didn't feel as though they held any particular perspective or sense of subtext.
1.5/10 I appreciated the photos and overall layout of the collection.
Many of the poems were very much: what you see is what you get. I found them to mostly be recollections of her memories as a pose to insights into how she sees the world. I just didn't feel as though they held any particular perspective or sense of subtext.
1.5/10 I appreciated the photos and overall layout of the collection.
April 30, 2017
When I entered Jason Books today I could see on top of the counter, visible from the door, and illuminating the grey day, a copy of Fiona Kidman's This Change in the Light. The book brought a smile: a beautiful object that compiles poems, family photos, and images of trencadis, the Gaudian art objects reassembled from shards.
'Isn't this what life does to you,' a friend of mine asked, 'break you, then put you together again?'
Indeed, the trencadis made me think of what people call the fragmented postmodern self, now reconfigured in metamodernism as new wholes.
This Change in the Light is a book that commands love at first sight. After the first poems read at random, I started reading them in order. The collection then unfolded as a composite narrative that plays with silences and with poetic forms - from sonnets dedicated to the poet's mother to free verse, with break lines that give pause for thought and wonder.
The book is now on my night table, my companion, as good books are, during the gathering dark. With its photos and illustrations that reveal a life rich in events and meanings so deeply personal that they touch upon the universal, the share in the collective experience that connects us all, - the book is a thing of beauty. The poems are brave and strong and deeply revealing and enlightening. I photocopied 'Shelter with me' and I smile whenever I see it on the bedroom door.
I couldn't help sharing the experience of reading these poems with the people that matter in my life. I translated the poem about cancer for my family overseas. I could see them over skype smile wry smiles at the antipodes. The poem brings a hope they don't quite dare nurture.
Collected in This Change in the Light are poems that bring smiles of joy and smiles of recognition, even when those smiles correspond to hard-won detachment from immediate and overwhelming trials. Even if they might not announce changes in the light for every individual reader, these poems that are misleading in their simplicity give solace and are good reminders that eventually, perhaps after we've accepted what can't be changed, such changes might occur.
(28 April 2016)
'Isn't this what life does to you,' a friend of mine asked, 'break you, then put you together again?'
Indeed, the trencadis made me think of what people call the fragmented postmodern self, now reconfigured in metamodernism as new wholes.
This Change in the Light is a book that commands love at first sight. After the first poems read at random, I started reading them in order. The collection then unfolded as a composite narrative that plays with silences and with poetic forms - from sonnets dedicated to the poet's mother to free verse, with break lines that give pause for thought and wonder.
The book is now on my night table, my companion, as good books are, during the gathering dark. With its photos and illustrations that reveal a life rich in events and meanings so deeply personal that they touch upon the universal, the share in the collective experience that connects us all, - the book is a thing of beauty. The poems are brave and strong and deeply revealing and enlightening. I photocopied 'Shelter with me' and I smile whenever I see it on the bedroom door.
I couldn't help sharing the experience of reading these poems with the people that matter in my life. I translated the poem about cancer for my family overseas. I could see them over skype smile wry smiles at the antipodes. The poem brings a hope they don't quite dare nurture.
Collected in This Change in the Light are poems that bring smiles of joy and smiles of recognition, even when those smiles correspond to hard-won detachment from immediate and overwhelming trials. Even if they might not announce changes in the light for every individual reader, these poems that are misleading in their simplicity give solace and are good reminders that eventually, perhaps after we've accepted what can't be changed, such changes might occur.
(28 April 2016)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews