Leggott was the inaugural New Zealand Poet Laureate from 2007 to 2009. She has won a heap of awards along the way.
She is also blind.
She knows a lot of people think of poetry as stuffy and awful. Poetry can be hard and it was hated at school. Heartland makes an effort in turning all this around.
Ache is breaking through in poem after poem. But there is also a sweet, shimmering excellence. Leggott knows what it is like to be vulnerable and isolated.
These latest poems are imbued with love, along with a hunger to see and hear. I love the beautiful sequence ''wind and weather''.
You can hear the voices from the past. Leggott has always given a nod to fellow poets Robin Hyde and Eileen Duggan.
''harbour lights'' concludes:
... my mother gets up and they talk
into the night
drinking cocoa we're over the
strait and safe
in the next house on the journey to
Canada but
I remember my father's blue eyes and
the tears
we couldn't see against the late sun
my father
driving north as we sailed south
the last time
I saw him his blue eyes full of tears.
Leggott consistently releases high-quality books.
- Hamesh Wyatt lives in Bluff. He reads and writes poetry
