'Highly Commended, IP Picks National Competition for Unpublished Manuscripts, 2007: Best Poetry. Taking the form of a year-long tanka journal, Kathy Kituai’s collection of poems steers the reader through joyful and sorrowful meditations on her life between two winters. ‘If not challenged, I am most uncomfortable as a poet,’ says Kituai, who, in the ancient Japanese poetry form, has found a medium which both challenges her and allows her to dovetail observations of beloved natural surrounds with emotional journeys. The journal that emerges is drenched in a deep love of nature, and imbued with a searching, insightful sense of the human condition.' (Publication summary)
