My favourite set of lights

The poetry of Kay McKenzie Cooke is the hills and harbours, roads and skies of the deep south, their beauty and enormity and embrace. It is the people who have made their lives there: her father who farms near Gore, her mother who drops off homemade jam and a gold spray-painted push mower, and the poet herself, once a young woman in a halter-necked sundress and now a grandmother of nine mokopuna. Kay writes of finding her way into her Kai Tahu whakapapa and Irish ancestry, of watching her moko try out their wings, of wondering how the landscape will be without her in it. She takes it all in, contentment coming to her in pieces. This is a book shot through with light - from the sky's blue jug pouring out a second helping of custard sun, to children with hair glistening like diamonds, to a favourite set of lights that the poet drives through on her way to everywhere.