Andrew Johnston is the author of Sol (2007), Birds of Europe (2000), The Open Window (1999), The Sounds (1996) and How to Talk (1993), which won the 1994 New Zealand Book Award for Poetry and the 1994 Jessie MacKay Best First Book Award. Since 1997 he has lived in France, where he works as an editor for the International Herald Tribune. He also edits The Page, an online digest of some of the Web's best poems and essays, was the 2007 J D Stout Fellow at Victoria University, and is writing a critical study of contemporary New Zealand poetry.

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Featured poem

Antipodean

Crocus buds come up out of winter,
whiteyellowpurple. Then night arrives,

black as a cab, its putter and gleam.
Courage,' say the pub windows: inside

by the fire, old friends ask 'have I changed?' -
who want to hear Yes, who want to hear No.

The way we say Home, meaning here or there,
it's a well-lit word, it's open all hours,

but when we go home and turn out the light
we dream of crocuses opening.

Andrew Johnston © 2000
in Birds of Europe: poems (Victoria University Press, 2000)