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Somewhere a cleaner

Red book cover with white and yellow writingSomewhere a cleaner

Edited by:
Adrienne Jansen, with Te Rongomai Tipene-Matua, Joan Begg, Wesley Hollis and Nicky Subono.
Landing Press, 2020 RRP: $25.00


Cleaning is universal. It’s steeped in tradition and culture. It’s essential, it’s ordinary and it’s surprisingly poetic.

Somewhere a cleaner captures the spirit, the highs and the lows, of this occupation that often falls below the radar. The poems range across hospitals, offices, marae, clocks, schools, boat hulls, sneakers and more. And the poets themselves, a mix of novice and established writers, are equally diverse.

Through songs, rhymes, deeply insightful poems and poignant small stories, this anthology gives a voice to a profession both invisible and indispensable.

“Having walked the corridors of hospitals for more than a few years, I can tell you that cleaners can sometimes be the best doctors of all. And now I find they can write some great poems too. 

This book is wonderfully democratic. The art here is in the work done before and beyond the writing. The endless picking up, mopping, smoothing and shining. These are poems with strong forearms. My deepest congratulations to every poet in this collection – and my long overdue thanks. I will never walk on a neatly mopped floor again.” – Glenn Colquhoun

 

$25. Available from Landing Press.

Landing Press is a small cooperative press based in Wellington. It publishes poetry that many people can enjoy.