Kerrin P Sharpe

Kerrin P Sharpe is a poet and teacher of creative writing. She completed the Victoria University Original Composition Programme taught by Bill Manhire in 1976. Her poems have appeared in many journals including Hue & Cry, JAAM, the Listener, Poetry New Zealand, Sport, TakahÄ“, Turbine, the London Grip, Snorkel and the Press, Best New Zealand Poems 08, 09 and 10, and in The Best of the Best New Zealand Poems. In 2008 she was awarded the New Zealand Post Creative Writing Teachers’ award from the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her debut poetry collection, three days in a wishing well, was published by Victoria University Press in 2012. A selection of her poems will appear in Oxford Poets 2013 from Carcanet Press later this year.

Sharpe comments: ‘This poem began life as a short story based on a friend’s mother but soon crept back to its poetic roots. Now it takes the form of examining snow from a scientific perspective and it also draws on some fragments and ideas I gleamed from my son’s health science course. I felt I had had a chemical reaction myself to snow and I just couldn’t get her off my mind. ’

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