Elizabeth Smither

The grass with little daisies in it springs as if springs are under my feet. I poke the ferrule of my umbrella in it, as if I need a prop for steadiness and yet it is a pretence: waterlogged or not something like joy is running underneath.   In her twentieth poetry collection, Elizabeth Smither brings together a new ensemble...

Angel Train brings together four novellas on different themes and with very different central characters: a literary friendship between an English and New Zealand poet; a well-meaning Tasmanian highwayman and the DNA of righting wrongs; a fleeing French countess and, centuries later, the floundering marriage of an English actor and a lover of hydrangeas; and, in the final story, the...