Author(s): Elizabeth Smither

Poetry | Aotearoa

White lies, hip replacements and ballet with a sawhorse. Parisian drycleaners and the brush of the grass in Central Park. In My American Chair, Elizabeth Smither leads us through serendipitous encounters, the uncanny in the ordinary, the intricacies of friendship and ruminations on mortality. Assured, intimate, witty, revealing - this is a poetry collection to treasure from one of our most beloved voices. When you purchase them you must allow - five stems, fifteen buds, only two half- open - for their circumference to come flouncing, bowing, bending in two days' time like fifteen girls who have changed into white debutante dresses or five women who have danced all night and come home with the milkman. - 'The white lilies open'

Author Biography: Elizabeth Smither has written six novels, six collections of short stories and eighteen poetry collections. She has twice won the major award for New Zealand poetry and was the 2001-2003 Te Mata Poet Laureate. In 2004, she was awarded an honorary DLitt from the University of Auckland for her contribution to literature and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. She received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2008. Her most recent book, Night Horse (Auckland University Press, 2017), won the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry.