Standing on my Shadow

Serie Barford

In Standing on my Shadow an ailing Moana poet ponders her mortality while visiting the devastated yet rejuvenating Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. Nuclear medicine and surgery in Aotearoa had revealed biological bombs on short fuses. Lymph nodes dancing a cancerous fandango. Serie decides to accept adjuvant therapy when she returns home. She stands on the shadow of fear and death: walking within its potentiality, recording experiences and musings while exploring co-existing understandings of the potency of blood and body tissue within the western medical system.

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 has published five previous collections of poetry.