The Poetry of Reflection

Betty May was born on New Zealand’s West Coast in the Middle of the Great Depression – the sixth of thirteen children.

Taken out of school before her thirteenth birthday to help her mother care for the younger children.

She was 26-years-old when she married – having represented West Coast at rugby, netball and hockey. She raised three children of her own, following her husband’s career path around New Zealand before settling in Invercargill, on the South Coast in 1985.

It was there that Betty was baptized and become a communicant member of the congregation. In 2017 she retired from a role as “executive housewife” (her occupation of record since 1970) when many of the poems she had written in the margins of whatever book she could find for more than 40-years were rediscovered.