Winner of the 2025 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award, The Gum Trees of Kerikeri by Lynn Jenner is a beautifully crafted and quietly compelling tour de force. Grounded in the natural world and the community of the land the speaker lives on – an area in the far north of Aotearoa New Zealand that was once a kauri forest – the collection weaves observations and encounters from daily life with musings on societal and environmental issues, memory, history, art and culture. The result is a deeply observant, reflective collection on that most challenging of constants: change.
From the opening poem, Jenner traces how this land has been transformed since the late nineteenth century. Where kauri forest once stood there have been gumfields, orchards, dairy farms, lavender rows and now tourist accommodation. Humans and landscapes alike continue to be altered over time, but Jenner asks that we not forget the past.
Across 56 finely tuned prose poems, Jenner’s technical restraint and precision allow her explorations to unfold with calm, measured power. She draws connections between people, place and creative practice, examining how time, art and memory shape our sense of belonging. The Gum Trees of Kerikeri is a thoughtful, sensitively balanced work that shows how close observation can uncover new understandings of the world and our own circumstances – even as the speaker sometimes doubts that any of it is useful in a world speeding towards catastrophe.