I really enjoyed the artwork here - Teaero has both written the poems and provided the illustrations. It's not often I come across an illustrated poetry collection (one not directed at children, that is) so that was a nice surprise.

The poems themselves are also enjoyable, and while I wouldn't call them environmental poetry, exactly, they very much lean into the idea of Kiribati being part of the wider Pacific, both on a cultural and geographical level. This is partly due to the author himself, who lectured at the University of the South Pacific and who traveled widely in the region (each poem has a little note at the bottom, saying where it was written and/or first performed). It gives a sense of context that I appreciate; this is especially evident in the poems that take a rather ironic look at disconnection. There are poems, for instance, about fishing and lovely fresh fish, only to be presented with a meal of tinned meat because the fish have been sent off to export, or the old, leftover gun emplacements from WW2 that continue to squat on shifting sands, horribly out of place. It was this odd pop of disconnection, embedded within the rest of the text, which stood out for me the most, I think.