Leaning into the wind: Poems: 2019-2024

Leaning Into the Wind is New Zealand poet Terry Locke's sixth volume of poetry. The title alludes to the troubled and chaotic times we live in. In the words of award-winning eco-poet Megan Kitching, "These are wise, humane poems. Both elegiac and life-affirming, they look back across the seasons of life while 'forward-leaning', dreaming of more hopeful futures."

The collection draws on poems written since the publication of Tending the Landscape of the Heart (Steel Roberts, 2019). Some are written out of a sharp sense of the insistent seasonal promptings of the Falcons Return property (in the Ngongotahā Valley near Rotorua) where Locke lives with his wife. Others, such as "Geronimo", are examples of sharply focused, socio-historical critique dealing with aspects of European colonisation of the Americas, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. A complete section, "Figures of Outward", references the poet's debt to the Black Mountain School of poetry, based at the progressive school of the same name in North Carolina in the 1950s. In eco-critical fashion, a number of poems experiment with the concept of voice as a formal way of challenging the human habit of locating our species at the centre of the universe.