Diana Bridge reads ‘A pounamu paperweight’ from Two or more islands (Otago University Press, 2019)

Diana Bridge has a PhD in Chinese classical poetry from the Australian National University, received the 2015 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize and has published numerous collections of poetry. She received the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award in 2010 for her outstanding contribution to New Zealand poetry. Elizabeth Smither writes: Diana’s ‘range is both local and international, delicate and down to earth, and at the same time, probing and intensely rewarding.’ Vona Groarke wrote in her judge’s report for the Sarah broom Poetry Award that Diana’s work ‘is possibly amongst the best being written anywhere right now– for the arresting composure of the poems, for their reach and depth, for their carefully wrought thought and language, for the beauty of their phrasing, for how they are both intellectually astute and also sensual and accessible, for the way they catch you up short and make you wonder.’

Cold Hub Press published In the Supplementary Garden: New and Selected Poems with an introduction by Janet Hughes in 2010. Two or more islands came out in June of this year from Otago University Press. About eighteen months before, she completed, with Peter Harris, a collaborative translation of a selection of Chinese classical poems. As well, last year she was interviewed, as one of eleven New Zealanders who have worked on aspects of China, for a project called ‘The China Knowledge Project’. The collected interviews are to be published.

Harry Rickett reviews Two or more islands on RNZ National

Poetry Shelf interviews Diana Bridge