Introduction

Leading New Zealand poet, writing in the 1920s and 1930s.

Explored eternal themes - the interrelationship of God, Nature and Mankind.

Three volumes of verse:

- From a Garden in the Antipodes (London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1929),

- Time and Place (Christchurch, Caxton Press, 1936), and

- Night and Day, Poems 1924-1934 (Christchurch, Caxton Press, 1939).

The Collected Poems (Christchurch, Caxton Press, 1950) includes the three published volumes, the "Six Memorials" (to Effie Henrietta Dorothea Pollen), parts of the incomplete autobiographical sequence "By the River Ashley", and five others not published in the previous volumes.

In Collected Poems : Ursula Bethell (Auckland, Oxford University Press, 1985) the editor, Vincent O'Sulluivan included the "By the River Ashley" sequence in its entirety.

Ursula Bethell : collected poems (Wellington, Victoria University Press, 1997) contains a new introduction by the editor, Vincent O'Sullivan, as well as some changes to the "Notes to the Poems."