Author(s): Siobhan Harvey

NZ - Poetry / Plays

"Cloudboy" is a deep-mulling, richly senstive account of a mother's ajustments to the needs of an autistic child. This prize-winning suite of poems grows out of extremes of love and frustration, as the poet introduces a bright, unpredictable, markedly individual boy to the rigid, often airless routines of the school system. Any empathetic parent knows the fears and anxieties of sending a young child into the world of other children, their casual cruelties and dreamy naivete. Each concern is exponentially increased when a child s educational and emotional needs set them apart. Cloudboy writes his own version of Genesis; he invents a new language; he sketches intricate maps; he reads Aristotle and develops an obsession with Dr Who; he interrupts; he sways; his "fists come clenched and swinging." To onlookers, Cloudboy seems troubled, trouble. Cirrus, cumulus, arcus, stratus: cloud forms speak to Harvey of the phases of the mother child bond; the mood-swings and leaps of her child s mind; the mutability of personality; the attraction and evaporation of human kindness; presence and absence; reverie and forgetfulness; the intensity and yet bittersweet transience of early childhood. With a limber, gorgeously metamorphic sense of sculptural and sonic aspects of poetic form, this book is a tender and detailed atlas of a child s imaginative potential. Yet one of the most remarkable gifts it reveals for us readers is Cloudmother s own finely calibrated perceptions."