Claudia Jardine has an MA in classics with distinction from Victoria University of Wellington, where she won the 2020 Alex Scobie Research Prize and a Marsden Grant for Masters scholarship. Her first chapbook, ‘The Temple of Your Girl’, was published in AUP New Poets 7. Her ancestors are from the British Isles and the Maltese Archipelago, and she lives in Ōtautahi. There are lots of wonderful things about living in Ōtautahi – for example, have you ever seen the royal spoonbill, or kōtuku ngutupapa, feeding in the estuary at dusk? Marvellous.