Author Talk: The Midnight Plane by Dame Fiona Kidman

Join us in the shop to hear from Dame Fiona Kidman chat to Maggie Rainey-Smith about her latest collection, The Midnight Plane, published by Otago University Press.

The Midnight Plane comes in to land exactly half a century after the 1975 publication of Kidman’s debut book, the poetry collection Honey and Bitters. There’s a sense in which The Midnight Plane works like an alternative memoir, offering a poet’s immediacy of vision and gift of linguistic precision on a life unfolding in real time.
From the first line to the last, The Midnight Plane speaks to human relationships, to connection and disconnection, to the mystery and the majesty of life, to seasons of loss and cycles of renewal. Each of these poems is, in its own way, a midnight plane, flying in the dark, navigating for home in sometimes perilous conditions. ‘What I know,’ writes Kidman in her generous preface to this landmark collection, ‘is that poetry has the power to shake the heart’.

Here it comes swooping
against the stars, perfectly poised
above the unruly winds …
from ‘The midnight plane’

Maggie Rainey-Smith is a novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist and book reviewer.

Fiona will be book signing.

All welcome!

You may also like the following events from Unity Books Wellington:

• This Wednesday, 23rd July, 08:00 am, Book Launch: The Stars Are a Million Glittering Worlds by Gina Butson in Wellington
• This Thursday, 24th July, 02:00 am, Unity Book Club July 2025 | Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way in Wellington
• Next Tuesday, 29th July, 02:30 am, Author Talk: Viva Opera! by Patricia Hurley in Wellington

Also check out other Arts events in Wellington, Literary Art events in Wellington.