How to read a poem: Houseplants by Megan Kitching

Posted: Friday Jun 21, 2024

The latest in a semi-regular series that breaks down a poem to analyse what it’s really trying to tell us.

Megan Kitching won the Jessie Mackay Prize for Poetry (best first book award) in this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. But I’d heard about her poetry long before that. Her collection – At the Point of Seeing – is a wonder-filled immersion in nature. But not the wilds: it’s the close, domestic variety of nature that draws Kitching’s exceptional eye. The result is a startling and intimate series of revelations that build, line-by-line, a relationship between the narrator and their daily environment. 

Continue Reading: How to read a poem: Houseplants by Megan Kitching | The Spinoff