Expat New Zealand poet Dunstan Ward's new collection of poems, DEPARTURES, takes the reader "deep into the heart of loss and love, into the reality of mortality, into life's mystery and its sorrow. The collection as a whole is an unflinching examination of distance and the effect of 'distancing' and 'departures' on personal identity--a probing of how personal identity sits within notions of national, cultural and family kinships when departures disrupt a hitherto closed circle. It's an intimate collection and deeply human." (Sue Wootton) The long title sequence is "a classic settler narrative." (Peter Simpson)