Sunday, April 21, 2013

Sarah Broom - In memoriam

from Siobhan Harvey


It's with the deepest sadness that the New Zealand literary community learned on Thursday that it had lost one of its own, the bright, young, gifted Auckland poet, Sarah Broom, author of Tigers at Awhitu published jointly by Auckland University Press NZ and Carcanet UK in 2010.
   
After a long, brave battle with illness, Sarah leaves behind an amazing legacy of work.

Her funeral will be held at St Luke's Chruch, 130 Remuera Road, Remuera on Tuesday 23rd April at 11 am. 


And Dunedin-based poet David Howard advises:

Dr Jack Ross has an obituary here:

4 comments:

Mary McCallum said...

Thank you for alerting me to this, Graham and Siobhan. On behalf of Tuesday Poem I would like to express my sadness at this news and offer my condolences to Sarah Broom's family. She was a talented writer and the local writing community looked forward to seeing where she would go with it. Her poem 'All my life' was posted on the Tuesday Poem hub by Christchurch poet Helen Lowe just before Xmas last year and stayed up until we resumed posting in late January. It inspired a number of comments and many visits. You can find it here http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/all-my-life-by-sarah-broom.html with a great commentary by Helen and useful links.
Haere ra, Sarah.

Helen Lowe said...

Thank you to Siobhan for the obituary and Mary for her comment: I returned to Christchurch on Thursday and also to the news of Sarah's passing, which I received with great sadness. I admire her poetry immensely and also her courage in he face of a prolonged illness.

Anonymous said...

Dear Mary and Helen,

thank you for your generous and amazing comments and your heartfelt wishes.

Many poets have emailled me this weekend to say that they heard Sarah read her superb poem, "All my life" and were moved to tears. So thank you both for mentioning it too. Sarah's courage; her poetry: the two are, as you mention Helen, inextricably entwined,

kind regards

Siobhan

Richard said...

I was moved by this as she was the same age as my son. I didn't know her but saw her once at a book launch, she was very nice. She was clearly very talented. I have her book on British and Irish writers and her writing there is very very good and interesting. (I will get hold of her poetry next. I also saw Jack Ross's post.) He literary and creative career was cut short.

And her life was tragically short. My deep condolences to her family and those how knew her.