Some place else: April 2018

No One Home came into being on 28 February, 2018. The publisher, Submarine (an imprint of Makaro Press) describes it as follows:

"No One Home tells the story of Keith Westwater growing up in 1950s New Zealand. At age seven  he loses his mother to a botched operation and with her death loses a place to call home. So Keith and  his brother take to the road with a gambling father, staying with relatives when their father can’t have them and enduring a stepmother who like a fairy-tale witch ‘disappears’ the boys when she’s had enough of them.

As the boys make their way through ‘the motherless woods’, Keith draws mental maps of all the places they call home, from Oruru in the far north to halfway down Auckland’s Dominion Road.

In No One Home Keith draws the maps and writes the poems to open up the memories he locked away as a boy to stop himself feeling sad. An unsentimental collection that tells a story steeped in the people and places it comes from."

Felt intensity was released on 15 November, 2015. It is published by Submarine Poetry, an imprint of Makaro Press. The work has received several favourable reviews, excerpts from which are:

– "...a series of excellent poems that go well beyond the personal." Goodreads

– “Westwater’s verses are resplendent with detail that punches out physical settings and descriptions that make us hold our breath.” takahē magazine

– "A fine balance is struck by Keith Westwater, and different worlds mix together to create a pleasant experience." Booksellers NZ

Tongues of Ash was my debut full-length collection of poetry. Published by Brisbane-based trans-Tasman publisher Interactive Publications, it was awarded the publisher's 2011 IP Picks Best First Book prize.

The poems are mainly to do with landscape, place, memories of place, the physical world, the environment and notions of 'home'. The publisher calls it "travel" poetry as it is also about my personal journey through time and place and my travels within New Zealand and overseas.

Readers have called it "beautiful and touching" and "a wonderful collection of poems". A review of the book appeared in the Otago Daily Times:   Hamesh Wyatt's reviews.

Marking Time: poems from Army days is a chapbook that I self-published in 2008. The collection contains 10 poems that are centred on memories and recollections from my days in the New Zealand Army. Five of these poems later appeared in Tongues of Ash.

The cover, which I designed myself, includes a photo of the Regular Force Cadet School’s December 1966 Graduation Parade. Other photos appear on pages throughout the work, which is printed on high quality paper. I used the imprint ‘Thing One and Thing Two Publications’ for the collection.

How to buy copies of books

In Person 

if your our local bookshop doesn't have the book you want to buy in stock, they should have no problem getting hold of it through the publisher, or Wheelers.

Online 
Here you have a wide range of options:
• You can find out more about No One Home and Felt intensity, and buy them directly from the publisher, at Submarine Poetry and for Tongues of Ash at the Tongues of Ash mini-site.
• You can buy paperback versions of Felt intensity or Tongues of Ash online from Fishpond, The Book Depository and other online book-sellers.
• Tongues of Ash is available in a range of ebook formats from Amazon, eBookPie and the Australian iTunes Store.

I began writing poetry in 2003 while attending a 'Writing the Landscape' course at Victoria University of Wellington. Since then my work has appeared in Landfall, JAAM, Snorkel, Idiom 23, and other publications and has received or been short-listed for awards in New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland. Prizes for my poetry include an equal first place in the 2006 Yellow Moon Spirit of Place competition and first place in the International Tertiary Student Poetry section of the 2009 Bauhinia Literary Awards.

Some place else

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Wednesday, April 11, 2018

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