This fine new collection of poetry, Owen Marshall's second, is rich in the themes and preoccupations that have made his short stories and novels so admired. Here are wise, elegiac poems on love and loss, longing and regret, and ageing; beautifully observed, affectionate poems about New Zealand countryside, where 'clear cold barking comes from miles away'; sly and sharply witty poems about human frailty - 'Death's an old joke, the Russian said / but comes to each of us as a surprise'; poems that look back to a distant past whose inhabitants were 'much the same as you and me' - all expressed in language that is superbly balanced and finely judged. Sleepwalking in Antarctica is the work of a master writer at the height of his powers.