Whanganui poet Airini Beautrais has been listed as a finalist for the 2018 NZ Book Awards.
Flow: Whanganui River Poems is Beautrais' fourth book published by Victoria University Press.
The book was launched in Whanganui in July this year and the writer says it began as the poetic component of her doctorate in creative writing.
"It's taken me many years and overcoming many challenges to write this book," says Beautrais.
"It's an honour to be longlisted for a NZ book award.
"The Whanganui is a powerful river and it ought to be celebrated."
Her first collection of poetry, Secret Heart, won the Best First Book of Poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
In 2016 she won the Landfall Essay Competition and was shortlisted for the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize.
Her book Dear Neil Roberts was longlisted in the poetry category of the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Award.
Beautrais has shared one of the poems from Flow: Whanganui River Poems which reviewer James Brown has described as a "remarkable sequence winds and eddies like the Whanganui River, filtering the region's many histories into something exhilarating and readable."
Pour
Like a twisted tap
like a sinking ship
like a cask of plonk
like a weeping drunk
like a turning tide
like a severed head
like a fatted cow
like those who know
like a steamer stack
like a sudden break
like an after-birth
like the restless earth
let it all pour out.
Let it all pour out.