Say I Do This: Poems 2018-2022 *Ockham 2024 Longlist*

In this poignant new poetry collection, one of this country's most significant voices reflects on home, on away, and on friends living and dead. 'I lead a life of quiet medication', the poet claims, 'longing for foreign shores, adventure and death.' But whether swimming to the yellow buoy or remembering an encounter in Belsize Park, in the thick of it or asking, 'what next?', Stead's voice is intimate, amusing and always compelling. Swimming in the dark I call on memory - Rangitoto ahead, and those lights of Kohi behind making a cosy half-circle. Overhead the moon's a waka sailing west to escape first light that will put it out. I'm reaching blind fingers for the yellow buoy and touch it only as the sun does dimly through a bank of cloud