Evening light

Her hands, long-fingered, freckled,
by sun and soil, rested quietly
on her thighs. She was sitting alone
by the window, admiring the agility of birds
on the branch of a plum tree. Suddenly
sunlight caught the face of her watch
as it can sometimes catch
the turquoise bowl on the bookshelf.
Place and time, time and place,
illuminated.

Dinah Hawken
from Peace and Quiet, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2026

Dinah Hawken is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated poets. She was born in Hāwera in 1943 and trained as a physiotherapist, psychotherapist and social worker in New Zealand and the United States and has worked as a student counsellor and writing teacher at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. Of her ten collections of poetry, four have been finalists for the New Zealand Book Awards. Her first book, It Has No Sound and Is Blue (1987), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Time Published Poet. Her latest poetry collection is Faces and Flowers: Poems to Patricia France (2024), and other recent collections are Sea-light (2021), longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, There Is No Harbour (2019), and Ocean and Stone (2015). Dinah lives in Paekākāriki.

Peace and Quiet will be launched at Unity Books Wellington on April 23rd.

The Poetry Shelf Breathing Room: A place to enter and pause and take a long slow breath and then another, as you absorb the beauty movement joy stillness wonder movement of a poem.