DAVID BEACH was born in England in 1959 to New Zealand parents who returned (with him) to New Zealand when he was five. From 1986 to March 2002 he lived in Sydney, since then back in Wellington. His poems have been quite widely published in Australia, without editors overdoing it. Since returning to New Zealand he has had poems published in the New Zealand Listener, Poetry New Zealand, JAAM, and Takahe.

Beach comments: ‘From time to time I have flown in a plane, mostly between Wellington and Sydney, but have never jumped out of one. “Parachute” is from a group of “attack sonnets”, where the idea was to write something energy high, sensibility unobtrusive. Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan” was a key poem. Banjo Paterson’s “The Man from Snowy River” also opened the door to possibilities.’

 

Poem: Parachute