This Must Be The Place

“The general theme of the collection is transitory spaces – be they physical or emotional, and I really wanted to produce a book that wasn’t high-brow literature, but something anyone could read and feel some engagement with.”

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I was recently sent a copy of This Must Be The Place by Wellington-based writer Annabel Hawkins – a beautiful example of local and independent publishing. Annabel’s words instantly resonated with me, transporting me to my own time living in the capital, exploring the streets, eyes blurred with too much time and freedom, wading through that electric zing in the air that comes with the feeling that something, anything, is about to happen – and probably for the first time. I devoured This Must Be The Place in a single sitting.

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The places in Annabel Hawkins’ poems are close at hand or within sight of the horizon, at the perimeter between study and first jobs and whatever comes next, in a city that for now — for better or worse — is home.

She ticks off the places she finds herself: Thorndon Pool, Salamanca Road in Kelburn, on the back roads of Otaki, in Te Aro. And from time to time longs to be elsewhere. But Annabel comes to realise there’s a time for going and a time for staying put, and that home can be a feeling.

This Must Be The Place is a rich collaboration between two Wellington friends: Annabel who wrote the words and her friend Alice who designed the place to put them.

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You can purchase a copy from [here]