ANNA JACKSON was born
in 1967; she lives in Auckland with her partner, designer Simon Edmonds,
and two children, Johnny and Elvira. Her first collection, The
Long Road to Tea-time, was published by Auckland University Press
in 2000 and her second, The Pastoral Kitchen, by the same press
in 2001. She is a research fellow at the University of Auckland.
Of Watch she
says: Elvira, my small daughter, about two at the time, really
did say Look, my watch has a clock on it! It started me
thinking about the difference between clocks and watches and clocking
and watching, and that is what the poem is about. Come to think of
it, though, much of my poetry expecially my most recent poetry
is about time in one way or another. The poem In a minute
is about climbing into a minute the way you climb into
a car; the series Into the museum of the future revisits
the Russian futurists, looking backwards at poets looking forwards
to the future. Having children is a way of looking always into the
future, even while children are so good at focusing our attention
on the surprising present.