Michael Harlow is one of New Zealand’s leading poets. He has published eleven books of poetry, including Sweeping the Courtyard, Selected Poems (2014), Heart, Absolutely I Can (2014), Cassandra’s Daughter (2005, 2006), The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap (a finalist in the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry), and Take a Risk, Trust Your Language, Make a Poem (awarded the PEN/NZ Best First Book of Prose, 1986). He has received many prestigious awards and held a range of residencies, including the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship and the Burns Fellowship. His poetry collection Nothing for it But to Sing won the Kathleen Grattan Award for an unpublished poetry manuscript and was published by Otago University Press in 2016. In 2018 he was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry.