Your poem offers an honest, sensory recreation of the Christchurch earthquake. Were you in the city when it struck?

I wasn’t in the city. I live in Wellington half an hour’s flight north, but within minutes of the February earthquake I had the television on, and so as the aftershocks occurred I had the sense of being there – if not on the ground then in spirit. It had a very strong emotional impact. This was an earthquake that Wellingtonians have been told all their lives to expect. Instead it had happened where an earthquake was least expected. It turns out now that Canterbury has as lively an earthquake heritage as the capital city.