Born in New Zealand, resident in Australia, with literary achievements in both countries, Jennifer Compton is a truly trans-Tasman writer. Two recent residencies in New Zealand, at the Randell Cottage in 2008 and as Visiting Literary Artist at Massey University in 2010, have enabled her to spend time in her home city of Wellington, find out new things about her homeland, examine her roots and reflect on life. Two previous residencies in Italy, at the Whiting Library Studio in Rome 2006 and the Ligurian Study Centre, Bogliasco 2007, produced another kind of reflection on time and place, leading Kathleen Grattan Award judge Vincent O'Sullivan to comment about this collection: 'It is a volume that sustains a questing, warmly sceptical mind's engagement with wherever it is, whatever it takes in, and carries the constant drive to say it right. This is a complete book of poetry, coherent, gathering its parts to arrive at a cast of mind, a distinctive voice, far more than simply adding one good poem to another.'