BRIAN TURNER’s varied interests are reflected in his many published books. In addition to collections of poems, these include sporting biographies – which have been highly praised – and a memoir, Somebodies and Nobodies, about growing up in southern New Zealand.

His awards include the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry in 1993 and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1979. He was Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago in 1984, received an Arts Council Scholarship in Letters in 1994, and in 1997 was Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury.

Turner comments: ‘I wrote this poem in my head one brilliantly sunny day in spring 2004. I was out training on my road racing bike in the Maniototo district in Central Otago where I live. I felt fitter than usual and exhilarated, imbued with gratitude and wonder and a love of the place. I tried to capture, in the form and rhythm of the poem, something of the cadence of pedalling through this remarkable landscape, and chart part of the course of what it means to me to be alive in a place as distinctive as any I know, and am still discovering.’

 

 

Poem: Cycling in the Maniototo