Sue Wootton

Poet, Writer

About

Sue Wootton is a poet, novelist, short story writer and essayist. She lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Publications Sue's fiction and poetry is widely published and anthologised in New Zealand and internationally. Some of her work has been translated into Hungarian, Romanian, Spanish and Vietnamese. Her children's book, Cloudcatcher, was published in 2010. She has published five collections of poetry, most recently The Yield. Her fiction for adults includes the short story collection The Happiest Music on Earth, and her debut novel, Strip. March … Read more about About

Latest publications

Sue’s latest publications are her fifth book of poetry The Yield and her first novel, Strip. The Yield was shortlisted for the 2018 Ockham NZ Book Award for Poetry. Strip was longlisted for the 2017 Ockham NZ Book Award for Fiction.  

The Yield is one of the most satisfying, intelligent, well-crafted and involving volumes of New Zealand poetry I have read in the last decade.”  – Reid’s Reader, 27 March 2017

Strip … compelling and extraordinarily humane … skilful characterisation and excellent pacing… Her small cast – Harvey, wife Isobel and daughter Fleur – are perfectly pitched.” – Sally Blundell, NZ Listener, 7 January 2017

March 2020: Strip has now been published in Bulgaria under the title of Fleur.

By Birdlight, a collection of poems remarkable for their inventiveness, grace and range of reference.” – Fiona Farrell, NZ Listener online 1 December 2011

Sea foam at Gemstone Beach

Yellow sea foam is emerging from the ocean, wave
upon wave of jelly-creatures slithering from salt
to shore. Here it comes, a species long cradled in the deep,
shedding fathoms, shedding sea-water, not yet limbed for land.

Spongy-looking, lung-like. On they come. Quivering,
shuddering, sucking at gravity, light, the searing wind.
Never has there been such pain. Excruciating. Addictive.
They must! They must! They will! They will!

They scud, they skate, and each metre more onto the beach
is another bone cell imagining itself out of jelly. Is this joy?
It is joy! Shake, shake! Jelly-creatures conquer the world!
Until the sandbank, its small wall studded with gemstones.

Quartz, topaz, amethyst. Earth-kilned, earth-polished,
each is reversing out of land. Not so as you’d notice, but
plop, plop, eon by eon, they are falling back to the beach.
Still the yellow sea foam comes, and piles in a wobble

at the barrier, puzzling at solidity. Concentrate! Concentrate!
Wings? Wings!  The first shreds fly up and over.