Six years after Michael, I Thought You Were Dead, Michael Fitzsimons continues to be surprised by being alive and the way ordinary of things are extraordinary because he’s still here to see them. There’s the intimate world of his hillside home with Rose overlooking Wellington Harbour, and the wider world where friends and whānau live, and miseries, as Suzanne Aubert said, ‘ride behind us on horseback’. Everywhere Michael looks, life is both precious and precarious: a thrilling high-wire existence. Some of the best lines of High Wire are simply that – a handful of words on a page to mark something fleeting that will make a reader laugh or puzzle or wonder. You can’t ask more of poetry than that.

Michael Fitzsimons has published two previous books of poetry. His first collection Now You Know was recommended in RNZ’s annual poetry highlights. His second collection, Michael, I thought you were dead, dealt with a cancer diagnosis and was described by Joy Cowley as ‘a feast for the soul’. Michael is a professional writer and member of the three-person South Wellington Poetry Society. He was co-founder of the Wellington communications and publishing company, FitzBeck Creative. He lives with his wife, Rose, in Seatoun on a hill overlooking the harbour. They have three children spread from Wellington to Warsaw to upstate New York.