Selected and new poems
By Fiona Kidman
Out 22 May 2025
In The Midnight Plane, Dame Fiona Kidman, one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most distinguished writers, returns to her first and deepest literary love, poetry. This beautifully curated volume opens with selected work from Kidman’s six previous collections, chronologically ordered, and concludes in the present day with a body of exciting new poems.
The Midnight Plane comes in to land exactly half a century after the 1975 publication of Kidman’s debut book, the poetry collection Honey and Bitters. There’s a sense in which The Midnight Plane works like an alternative memoir, offering a poet’s immediacy of vision and gift of linguistic precision on a life unfolding in real time. From the first line to the last, The Midnight Plane speaks to human relationships, to connection and disconnection, to the mystery and the majesty of life, to seasons of loss and cycles of renewal. Each of these poems is, in its own way, a midnight plane, flying in the dark, navigating for home in sometimes perilous conditions. ‘What I know,’ writes Kidman in her generous preface to this landmark collection, ‘is that poetry has the power to shake the heart’.
Here it comes swooping
against the stars, perfectly poised
above the unruly winds …
from ‘The midnight plane’
Author
Dame Fiona Kidman is a poet, fiction writer and memoirist. She has also written for the screen industry. Her internationally published work has won numerous prestigious literary awards, and her honours include a damehood (DCNZM), an OBE and the French Legion of Honour (La Légion d’Honneur). She lives on a cliff top in Wellington.
Publication details
Format: Hardback with ribbon
Dimensions: 220 x 160mm
Pages: 172 pages
Categories: Poetry
ISBN: 9781991348005
RRP: $40
Release date: 22 May 2025
Out now
Reviews and Interviews
Elegantly produced and warm in the hand, The Midnight Plane is a volume to be returned to again and again. It deserves pride of place not only on the nation’s bookshelves but also on its bedside tables, where its quiet wisdom can accompany readers through the night. This is a landmark collection from a writer whose poetic voice remains as generous, observant, and resonant as ever.
Chris Reed for NZ Booklovers Read
A gorgeous new collection of Kidman’s poetry beautifully published in hardback and with an arresting cover image taken from the documentary about Kidman that premiered last year.
The Unity Books Wellington bestselling list on The Spinoff – June 6 Read
I have just finished reading the most marvellous New Zealand novel. Wonderland, (The Cuba Press) by Wellington writer Tracy Farr is set very close to where we both happen to live, positioned in a real life amusement park that once flourished near Miramar in the early 20th century. I am filled with wild and savage envy, as Angela Carter once wrote about a fellow writer’s new book, that I hadn’t thought of this first.
Fiona Kidman shares what she's been reading with the Sunday Star Times Read
Right from the start she has produced poetry to shake the heart. This book even feels warm to hold ... Kidman has a distinctive loving voice, instantly recognisable. The Midnight Plane deserves to be on every beside table.
Hamesh Wyatt for the Otago Daily Times