The reflective poems in Threadbare Like Lace comment on the world as Jacqueline Baldwin has experienced it. She is an expatriate New Zealander who has lived and worked in such far-flung places as Montreal and the remote Robson Valley in the Canadian Rockies. Her poems are a mediation between the private and public worlds and are reminiscent of many of the Black Mountain poets. Her work is fuelled by her love of the natural world and her abhorrence of violence. She is one of those rare poets who is both intensely readable and popular. Threadbare Like Lace is her first book, although she has had individual poems published in many journals and her work is well received at readings.