The Companion to Volcanology is not a field guide to volcanoes. But tectonic shifts are present in Brent Kininmont's second book of poetry, and so are companions. The child, for instance, carried up a mountain in the titular opening poem, and companions alive to the brevity of their time together.

Kininmont, who grew up in Aotearoa, has lived in Japan for many years, and so these poems are of a life between two places and of the body in anxious or joyful motion.