An aloe - spiky, soothing, fragrant, bitter - opens Diana Bridge's new collection of poetry. Aloe is structured in four parts: 'The compulsion to catch it', 'Into words', 'Among the Freuds' and 'It's their century'. The first section looks outwards to the natural world, opening with a stunning set of tree poems that begin with close observation and move on to contemplate loss, hesitancy, generation and repetition (repeat, diversify, diversify, repeat). The second section explores how words affect everyday life and how everyday life may be turned into words. Other voices and stories are used to convey psychological and physical suffering in 'Among the Freuds' - the furies, Penelope, Sylvia Plath and Medea all appear. The final section, 'It's their century', returns to the Chinese and Indian source material that Bridge has mined with such success in the past. Using various touchstones - an enduring classical poem, a superb Chinese pot and the architectural and sculptural records of India - she explores ideas of juncture and conjunction, meeting places between West and East. Aloe is a fine new collection by a rigorous and perceptive poet.

Author Biography

A Wellingtonian by upbringing and inclination, Diana Bridge lives there again after many years stationed overseas with her diplomat husband in London, Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong, Delhi and Taipei. Bridge has a PhD in Chinese Literature from the Australian National University and has studied, researched and taught Chinese language, literature and art history and early Indian art history. She has published four previous acclaimed books of poetry with AUP: Landscape with Lines (1996), The Girls on the Wall (1999), Porcelain (2001) and Red Leaves (2005).