“They’re not really a way of making sense of the world as such, more of poking at it and mining it … My family tells me that my writing is not therapeutic or meditative because I am not very peaceful in the doing of it or the aftermath, but it is a total necessity for me.”

Breslin is in a celebratory mood, keenly awaiting the publication of her first collection of poetry, Alzheimer’s and a Spoon, which will be launched in Dunedin and Wanaka next week.

The collection’s title, and various works within it, directly references the dementia she witnessed in her Polish grandmother (or “babcia”), as well as delving more widely into the notion of memory, relationships and how events take on different meanings depending on a person’s viewpoint.

Full piece here