David Eggleton

David Eggleton is a poet and critic whose many awards include PEN Best First Book of Poetry and the Robert Burns Fellowship. David is a six-time Montana New Zealand Reviewer of the Year, having been awarded the distinction in 1991, 1997, 2001, 2003, 2007 and 2009. In 2010 he was named the new permanent editor of literary journal Landfall.

Eggleton comments: ‘I wrote early drafts of “Drowned Volcano” in 2006, soon after returning from my first visit to my maternal grandmother’s home village of Namoli, near Nuku’alofa in Tonga. As a part of that Pacific journey I flew from Sydney to Tonga, then back to Brisbane – flying over New Caledonia – because I made the trip with my mother and my brother, who live in different cities. The incidents and sights and sounds in the poem are related in different ways and on different levels, some deriving from anecdotes told by relatives in Namoli, including the small island that “drowns” and then resurfaces periodically. The poem also weaves in different kinds of time, including dreamtime and memories.’

Previous section.

Next section.