Poems that navigate the emotional geography of displacement and belonging

Through salt-heavy seas weaves together the coastlines of Aotearoa New Zealand, the Scottish Highlands and Islands, and the mountains of Wales. These poems chart the internal landscapes we carry with us-from black volcanic beaches to Highland corries, from absent parents to unrequited love, from suburban kitchens to ancient standing stones. Moving through seasons and generations, the collection explores how we construct identity when the usual markers have been disrupted or lost. What does it mean to be cut adrift from ancestral knowledge? How do we remain connected to what we love across distance and time?

In poems that speak in English, Gaelic, and te reo Māori, the author refuses easy answers, instead mapping the spaces between cultures, between people, between who we were and who we’re becoming. Together, these poems suggest that belonging might be less about fixed location than about our capacity to hold multiple places within ourselves. The salt-heavy seas of the title become not barriers but carriers, bearing our stories from shore to shore, generation to generation.