Portraying a parent's experience of coming to terms with the new and frightening world of mental health care, this narrative explores the myriad foreign ways of diagnosis and treatment. Written from a mother's perspective, the poetic sequence displays the anguish and complexity of dealing with mental illness, describing the events of an ordinary family--the numerous visits to doctors, the treatments that don't work, and the people who suddenly have answers and heartbreaking histories of their own to tell. At the heart of the book lies an outstanding set of poems about electroconvulsive therapy, leading up to a concluding revelation that mental illness may have no solutions, but there are ways of living with it. As stark and powerful as it is healing and illuminating, this is a groundbreaking addition to the field of New Zealand poetry.

Relaxed and intimate, engaging and wise, ""Incognito"" is Jessica Le Bas's first book. Her poems have been carefully collected but are wonderfully various. Themes, characters and voices come and go as the poet moves in and out of identities and roles - sometimes known, sometimes incognito - discovering new world views, new horizons, whole new windows of observations. ""Incognito"" is crammed with people recognised and specific: children, family, friends, the arrival of a new baby. But Jessica Le Bas is also openly lyrical about the New Zealand landscape and its human clutter and writes hills and wind, sheds and roads, headlands and valleys. ""Incognito"" is an intensely New Zealand book, not least in its journey outward in the final sections - to Malindi, Shenandoah, Zagreb - and its affectionate return home.