Author(s): Michael Jackson

Poetry

Dead Reckoning is a wonderful new collection by Michael Jackson, an expatriate New Zealander who has lived and worked overseas most of his adult life,far too long / in another hemisphere, while continuing to publish in New Zealand. This distance and global reach form the poems in Dead Reckoning, which sprawl from Beirut to Africa, Cape Reinga to Finisterre. The poems also operate in another dimension, time, with many that act as meditations on the past by a poet, now in his sixties, with a wealth of human experience. Over these two axes Michael Jackson has written lucid, thoughtful lyrics with a subtle blend of the personal and the political. The poems range over the world but also display a sense of strong sense of New Zealand; by a poet 'reckoning' up his past experience and his position in the world. A warm, wise and thoroughly enjoyable collection of poetry! First published 2006.