Sarah Jane Barnett
Sarah Jane Barnett is a writer, tutor, and book reviewer who lives in Wellington with her husband and son. Her work can be found in a range of publications such as Landfall, Sport, Takehē, Turbine, Hue & Cry, and Southerly. In 2012 her collection A Man Runs into a Woman was published by Hue & Cry Press. She has had two previous poems selected for Best New Zealand Poems (2007 & 2010). Sarah is currently completing a creative PhD that will include a collection of twisted nature writing.
Barnett comments: ‘This poem was first published in JAAM 29 and it was also in my debut collection, A Man Runs into a Woman. The poem, for me, is about a woman struggling with her sexuality and the expectations of her family. It is also about how we use language to define ideas that are sometimes indefinable, and the fluidity of language itself. I used descriptions from the field of geography because I wanted to suggest that language about natural world sometimes says more about us than the world.’
