This is predominantly a book of poems, most of which have already been published in New Zealand in a series of volumes and literary magazines between 1973-2018. About half the poetry consists of shorter poems on a variety of subjects, particularly the New Zealand landscape. The other half are long poems, some of great size, that concern historical and cultural narratives of New Zealand, Oceania, with some reference in one case to Europe and America. The prose takes up about 50 pages of an 800-page volume. This consists of essays on poetics directly related to the poetry and a large glossary that covers the social, cultural and historical material, and translates terms in Māori and other languages that occur, mainly in the longer poems. The essays also have previously been published in New Zealand.