Tuesday Poem: 'Setting off', from Heading North

Setting off

When you travel so
far, you’re searching
for new breath
driving faster - - leaving
old air behind

feeling the pressure
of the window - - between
work and work
it was now
or never

it was now


That's the opening poem in my sequence Heading North, which is being published as a book by Kilmog Press. I'm very excited! It's all happened quite fast, so I hadn't blogged about it yet. But already it's becoming an actual book! A beautiful, hand-made, hardback, limited-edition book! You can see it in the below, but you can view it in more detail on the Kilmog Press blog: http://kilmogpress.blogspot.com/2010/08/helen-rickerby-heading-north.html.


You can read more about the book here on Beattie's Book Blog, which already has the blurb: http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/another-poetry-collection-for-tuesday.html (completed only late last night). Or you can just read the blurb below:

In Heading North Helen Rickerby takes us on the road. This playful and reflective sequence explores the tensions and connections between the narrator and her lover on a road trip towards the tip of the North Island. The place where two oceans meet, Cape Reinga, is the calm in their subtle storm. Heading North is an inner and outer journey through the geography of Northland.

Helen Rickerby is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Abstract Internal Furniture (2001) and My Iron Spine (2008). She is co-managing editor of JAAM literary magazine and runs Seraph Press, a boutique poetry publisher. She lives in Wellington, in a cliff-top tower, and works as a web editor.

I've been meaning to blog about Kilmog Press again for a while now, ever since I bought copies of Michael Steven's first two books (there's already another now, so that shows how slack I am!). And I will do a proper blog soon, but for now I'll just say that I've always admired their gorgeous, work-of-art books, and I'm so excited that mine is going to be among them.

And of course, check out the official Tuesday poem on the Tuesday Poem Blog, and you'll find more Tuesday poems in the sidebar of that blog.