Far-Flung traverses multiple terrains &– home and upheaval, our connection to the environment and to people, our relation to the past, place and placelessness. From &‘the Kilmog slumping seaward' to &‘the bracts and the berries and the leaves' of the Mackenzie country; the moth (&‘courier of bloom powder'); the wind that grows like an animal and &‘the great loneliness / of grass' &– Gallagher is in conversation with the natural world. Her lyric poems, marked by attentiveness, have an earthy, intuitive music and a linguistic clarity.Gallagher moves easily from the ecological and personal concerns of contemporary life to the nineteenth-century Irish migrants and the historic legacy of the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum. The multi-voiced, dramatic sequence &‘Seacliff Epistles' draws on a rich variety of poetic forms: from lyric to prose poem, parable to riddle, monologue and letter poem. Bill Manhire called Rhian Gallagher's poetry &‘one of the quiet, astonishing secrets of New Zealand writing'. Far-Flung sees the poet's lyric exploration broaden considerably in an assured new work.