Distinguished writer Elizabeth Smither has published seventeen volumes of poetry, five novels and five short story collections. She was the 2001–2003 Te Mata New Zealand Poet Laureate. In 2004 she was awarded an honorary DLitt from the University of Auckland for her contribution to literature and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM). She won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2008.

A wind that only the widest gardens can hold. A lipstick stain on a poem. A bee released – with recourse to a letter from the Inland Revenue Department. A grey sky like a governess, a mother dressed by her two-year-old son, a flurry of leaves behind a tram.