Straggling Into Winter

Kathy Kituai

Jan. 2007 · Interactive Publications

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A serene and very human voice emerges from a year-long tanka journal in which the changing seasons reflect the poet's thoughts on illness, love, and world events. The great delight of the tanka is the jewel-like images it produces: how a bowl captures moonlight, willow twigs flaring at sunset, a poet wandering into a fog, pumpkin shoots, playing checkers when the doorbell rings. Poems that chronicle the progress of illness, the black butterfly of cancer, alternate with visiting wild birds and animals and moments of humour, even in the hospital, where crutches are stolen by hospital terrorists, musings on the Israel/Palestine tragedy, and the nature of old age and love. Kituai may be one of those rare writers who reject the idea that illness and death are things that have to be worked through and then left behind; rather, by beginning and ending with winter, she suggests death and loss are where we begin and what we work towards. There's peace in that thought.

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Kathy Kituai has published a number of poetry collections and has been awarded numerous prizes, including the CJ Denis Poetry Award and the Annual St Kilda Competition. She has been the Assistant Editor of Bikmaus for the Institute of PNG Studies and Muse magazine and has served various organisations and festivals including the ACT Spring Poetry Festival, the ACT Writers Centre, and Arts ACT Peers Assessment Committee. She also shares her writing expertise as a private and group mentor. She has loved birds since childhood and aims to honour wildlife and humanity in her poetry.