Kite and quilt: Olive Senior’s exploration of her poetic inheritance

In the poem ‘Ode to Pablo Neruda’, published in her most recent collection of poetry, over the roofs of the world (2005), Olive Senior finds herself ‘drifting and wordless’, so far from the sea she cannot strike the right chord. The poet narrator calls upon the spirit and word-craft of Pablo Neruda to help her re-discover the lost measure that will move others: