Incognito

Relaxed and intimate, engaging and wise, Incognito is Jessica Le Bas's first book. Her poems have been carefully collected but are wonderfully various. Themes, characters and voices come and go as the poet moves in and out of identities and roles - sometimes known, sometimes incognito - discovering new world views, new horizons, whole new windows of observations. Incognito is crammed with people recognised and specific: children, family, friends, the arrival of a new baby. But Jessica Le Bas is also openly lyrical about the New Zealand landscape and its human clutter and writes hills and wind, sheds and roads, headlands and valleys. Incognito is an intensely New Zealand book, not least in its journey outward in the final sections - to Malindi, Shenandoah, Zagreb - and its affectionate return home.