Settle for disorder.
All summer you will swim before you wake.

Captured within this vivid and engaging collection of poems are the tides of order and disorder – the multitudinous vitality of the shoreline, the warmth and wildness of family, Mediaeval Fools and the excitement of late night Cuba Street.

Praise for How to Live By the Sea

Lynn Davidson's exquisite new book confirms that no subject is redundant, no theme rung dry by poets across time and place. ...The superb first poem introduces "the little girl/in the curve/ of your lifeline" while the last poem visualises "when I'm old." The ebb and flow of time in family life presents a fitting circularity as it sends us back to the allure of watching currents in the intertidal zone.
Paula Green NZ HERALD

She is one of our original writers with a vision.
Hamesh Wyatt OTAGO DAILY TIMES

The beautifully crafted poems sweep from calm tranquility to wild violence. The familiarity in subject and setting along with the captivating changes in tone drew me in, and moved me to feel the connections between human life and nature that underlie each story. Crashing violent waves through peace and tranquility, Davidson uses the ocean and the tides as metaphors for life and feeling. So expansive and so volatile, you can never trust the ocean. It seems calm and loving but in a second could sweep you away or turn wild and deadly.
Fiona McNamara SALIENT

Lynn Davidson is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Tender, and Mary Shelley’s Window, and a novel, Ghost Net. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in Sport, Landfall, Turbine and The Red Wheelbarrow. In 2003 she was awarded the Louis Johnson Writer’s Bursary.

Lynn teaches creative writing and lives on the Kapiti Coast.