The Midnight Plane
In The Midnight Plane, Dame Fiona Kidman, one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most distinguished writers, returns to her first and deepest literary love, poetry. This beautifully curated volume opens with selected work from Kidman’s six previous collections, chronologically ordered, and concludes in the present day with a body of exciting new poems.
The Midnight Plane comes in to land exactly half a century after the 1975 publication of Kidman’s debut book, the poetry collection Honey and Bitters. There’s a sense in which The Midnight Plane works like an alternative memoir, offering a poet’s immediacy of vision and gift of linguistic precision on a life unfolding in real time. From the first line to the last, The Midnight Plane speaks to human relationships, to connection and disconnection, to the mystery and the majesty of life, to seasons of loss and cycles of renewal. Each of these poems is, in its own way, a midnight plane, flying in the dark, navigating for home in sometimes perilous conditions. ‘What I know,’ writes Kidman in her generous preface to this landmark collection, ‘is that poetry has the power to shake the heart’.
Here it comes swooping
against the stars, perfectly poised
above the unruly wind …
from ‘The midnight plane’
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Reviews and Interviews
‘A gorgeous new collection of Kidman’s poetry beautifully published in hardback and with an arresting cover image taken from the documentary about Kidman that premiered last year.’
The Unity Books Wellington bestselling list on The Spinoff – June 6 Read
‘I have just finished reading the most marvellous New Zealand novel. Wonderland, (The Cuba Press) by Wellington writer Tracy Farr is set very close to where we both happen to live, positioned in a real life amusement park that once flourished near Miramar in the early 20th century. I am filled with wild and savage envy, as Angela Carter once wrote about a fellow writer’s new book, that I hadn’t thought of this first.’
Fiona Kidman shares what she's been reading with the Sunday Star Times Read
‘Right from the start she has produced poetry to shake the heart. This book even feels warm to hold ... Kidman has a distinctive loving voice, instantly recognisable. The Midnight Plane deserves to be on every beside table.’
Hamesh Wyatt for the Otago Daily Times
‘I know that for so many of us, poetry is a gift, a gift we do and a gift we share. Fiona’s poetry winds about me, I gather it in, the shifting lights and the vital substance, knowing in her work there is always heart, her fingers on the pulse of humanity, and that is why the poetry of Fiona Kidman matters so very much.’
Paula Green for NZ Poetry Shelf Read
About the author
Fiona Kidman
Dame Fiona Kidman is a poet, fiction writer and memoirist. She has also written for the screen industry. Her internationally published work has won numerous prestigious literary awards, and her honours include a damehood (DCNZM), an OBE and the French...
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