Such deep silence to hear

Christchurch poet Ursula Bethell’s ‘Rock Crystal’ was a recent Guardian ‘Poem of the Week’. ‘Rock Crystal’, travels beyond the garden and celebrates wider nature. It’s a “holiday poem” but one that takes a metaphysical turn, and invites us into the process by which a refreshing new vista expands into the visionary. Bethell is one of the seminal figures in 20th-century New Zealand poetry. She was born in Surrey, England, in 1874. When she was two, her parents returned with her to New Zealand, and she spent most of her childhood there. Bethell is a highly original artist. Yet in her work and life are several elements that may remind us of Elizabeth Bishop: the dream-house shared with a woman lover, the keen delight in daily things, the sense of life-long displacement. Bethell died in 1945.