Sol

Sol Synopsis

'Solitude, solace, consolation
sun in its onlyness'…

are some of the motifs that play through Andrew Johnston's fine new collection, illuminating with humour and curiosity the ways we link language, loss, history and memory.

At the heart of Sol are two major poems. 'Les Baillessats' is a relaxed, sun-filled poem to his newborn son. 'The Sunflower', an elegy for his father (written in the form of a technically dazzling double sestina) is an extended meditation on death, family and religious faith.

Andrew Johnston is the author of Birds of Europe (2000), The Open Window (1999), The Sounds (1996) and How to Talk (1993). Since 1997, he has lived in France where he works as an editor for the International Herald Tribune. He also edits The Page, an online digest of some of the Web's best poems and essays, and was the 2007 J. D. Stout Fellow at Victoria University. He won the 1994 New Zealand Book Award for Poetry and the 1994 Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award.

Arc Publications published his third collection, The Open Window, in 1999.