On the East Coast of New Zealand’s South Island there is a town called Timaru. The name derives from the Māori phrase te-tihi-o-maru meaning ‘a place of shelter’. It’s a place of shipwrecks and cabbage trees, smoky pubs and volcanic shores, and it’s where Brent Cantwell’s first collection of poetry begins.
Tether takes its inspiration from this shaken landscape, exploring the fault lines that rumble between friends and family as they move and migrate, as they tether vast distances small. Whether it’s Timaru, or Turnpike Lane, or Tamborine Mountain on the Gold Coast Hinterland, at its heart lies a possibility: a connection to place, to the past and to each other. Each poem is a ‘place of shelter’.