This Moment, Every Moment

I am fastened to the earth.
Travelling.
Where?

—Ruth Dallas, from ‘Night’

This Moment, Every Moment is a new and updated edition of the collected poems of internationally renowned Aotearoa New Zealand poet Ruth Dallas. Edited and introduced by Nicola Cummins, and with cover art by Kushana Bush, this volume brings together previously uncollected poems written in Dallas’s youth, alongside all her published collections – from her arrival in 1953 as a significant voice in the New Zealand literary landscape with Country Road and Other Poems, 1947-52, to her final book, The Joy of a Ming Vase, published in 2006.

Ruth Dallas’s voice is unique within the Aotearoa New Zealand literary canon. Her poetry is characterised by a profound connection to nature and seasonal rhythms. It is deeply grounded in place – often to locations in Otago and Southland, where she spent most of her life – yet universal in its reach. The clarity, elegance and apparent simplicity of her style owe much to her interest in classical Chinese poetry and thought.

This Moment, Every Moment demonstrates the majesty of Dallas’s craft across her lifetime of poetic work. Time spent in contemplation of even a single Dallas poem is always time richly rewarded; how much more so with this complete collection.

‘No other poems written in this country move & haunt me as Ruth’s do.’
—Charles Brasch

Editor

Nicola Cummins is based in Ōtepoti Dunedin and teaches on the English and Linguistics Programme at the University of Otago.