Your Secret Life

Your Secret Life is the first full-length collection of Ricketts’ poems since his selected writings, Nothing to Declare, was published in 1998. As well as a number of new poems the book also includes poems from his chapbook, Plunge, Pemmican Press, 2001, and several earlier hard-to-find pieces. “What marks the measure of [Ricketts’ poems], is the fact there is so much one could say about the connections that emerge from the spaces. The poems are the heartbeat of a backward look; at times mourning, often contemplative, they revel in humour as much as intimacy, in sumptuous detail as much as the well-tended gap. This is [Ricketts] at his poetic best.” – Paula Green, in her NZ Poetry Shelf