Author(s): Johanna Emeney

NZ Poetry

A family's history turns on its head when a mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. Beyond the shock of discovering the disease, there are questions raised about genetics - all the more difficult when the mother's an adoptee. For Johanna Emeney, the members of her small, country family were also quickly overwhelmed by the city-based clinical world they found themselves in, and the way it depersonalised the central figure in their lives. In her second collection, Johanna brings her family history to the page - in all its uniqueness and ordinariness - and challenges the medical approach that can forget the person inside the patient.