Sleeping with Stones

Serie Barford met her long-term partner - a French national from Alsace - at Piula, a beautiful freshwater pool beside the ocean on the Samoan island of Upolo. Many years later, their story ended in tragedy when he fell to his death from a waterfall in South America. Serie wrote Sleeping with Stones whilst trying to move through the anguish and disbelief that engulfed her in the wake of his death. She sought both answers to the questions posed by his passing and to address her own grief.

Sleeping with Stones is divided into sections for each of the four seasons. As she moves through autumn, winter, spring and summer, Serie traverses the pain, anger, longing and heartache of losing a loved one in poetry that is both steely with resolve and exquisitely tender. And although Sleeping with Stones traverses heavy subject matter, it remains a hopeful and uplifting book.

Serie Barford is one of New Zealand's leading voices in contemporary poetry and has been a pioneer for Pasifika women poets since the late 1970s. She was born in Aotearoa to a German-Samoan mother and a Palagi father and grew up in West Auckland. Her first two poetry collections, Plea to the Spanish Lady (1985) and Glass Canisters (1989), were published by Hard Echo Press, and her third collection Tapa Talk by Huia (2007). She has also been widely published in online and print journals, and is well-known as a performance poet.