ISBN 978-0-9941069-4-0
November 2014
Poetry
RRP $25

Cocooned, we slide
into a newly elongated world
a wet horizon encircling us 

A coracle is a small boat of wickerwork but in the poems of Anglican priest Peter Stuart it becomes the ribs of a dying man, and the means by which another makes his way into the next life, having kept vigil at ‘eternity’s rim’.

A coracle is also a kayak taking Peter and his wife, Julia, into Ōkarito Lagoon and the beauty of the natural world which – on the wings of the kōtuku – carries the reader eventually to the white robes of the monks at Kōpua, and further to the white invasion of an aboriginal sacred site and a barbecue at Auschwitz with a bunch of money changers.

For these poems are angry, too, and political, and take delight in the joyous and sensual. A singular first collection that poses as many questions as it answers.

About the author

Peter Stuart is an Anglican priest who lives in Eastbourne, New Zealand.

Reviews

“Stuart’s first collection is a rich and musical inquisition of faith. Coracle may be a small boat, but its cargo is plentiful.” — National Poetry Day NZ Blog
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“Coracle is the considered speech of an intelligent and sensitive man – table-talk poeticised.” — Robert McLean, Landfall Review Online
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