Growing Pains
NZ$35.00
Paperback | English
Love Poems for The Planet’s Young & Aging Partners
The approach of death heightens our awareness of the sheer wonder of life. It’s appreciated all the more just because it is so transient.
This book—the life experiences of two aging partners—is a surprising celebration of what’s often quietly dreaded. For the one eventually left behind, bereavement can also be an everyday quiet celebration of the life of the cherished partner lost—through remembrance of things past.
The real shock is realising that our unique world faces extinction too, unless we care for it as an enduring third partner.
Additional information
ISBN
9780473762322
Dimensions
165 × 244 mm
Format
Paperback | 236 pages
Language
English
Printed by
CopyPress
Publication Date
October 2025
Publisher
Ian Carruthers
3 reviews for Growing Pains
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Dr Bronwyn Hughes –
On receiving Ian Carruthers superb publication, Growing Pains: Love Poems for the Planet’s Young & Aging Partners, I was immediately intrigued by the title and entranced by Kazuko’s self-portrait on the cover. The delicate watercolour on the front cover invites engagement with the poems within its pages.
The publication is superb in so many ways. It is a fine tribute to Kazuko and the range and depth of the writing, on so many vital issues and intimate ideas, is profound and thought-provoking. I am both sad and uplifted as I read.
It will take more than a few days, and several re-readings, to fully comprehend the love and hard work that Ian Carruthers has put into the publication.
DR BRONWYN HUGHES – OAM
Author: Lights Everlasting: Australia’s Commemorative Stained Glass from the Boer War to Vietnam. Australian Scholarly Publishing. May 2023.
Ghassan Maleh –
I spent much of today reading Growing Pains. What an extraordinary book where poetry permeates the verse and the prose as well as every piece of Kazuko’s glass.
This is a book to keep by our side to read time and again to derive hope and strength from the genuineness of its sense of bereavement and pleasure from the ingenuity of its simple-word poetic intensity. Thus Kazuko becomes the Souha I lost and the loved one of every sensitive grieving soul.
It is most gratifying to see that you still have the creative energy that you had at Yarmouk as you set out to establish the first English-language theatre in Jordan and to train future actors and dramaturgs.
GHASSAN MALEH
Former Professor of English at Yarmouk and Damascus Universities.
Former Dean of the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts, Damascus, Syria.
Former Vice-President,International Theatre Institute, Unesco.
Sandy Stephens –
I was surprised at how Growing Pains ‘feels’. The text aligned with pictures add so much to each, but I didn’t expect to identify with so much of what Ian Carruthers has written. The text aligned with accompanying pictures somehow jumped right into my being. Now I can say I know a person I never met, just a little. That indeed is a huge tribute endowed upon a beloved wife. A beautiful piece of writing, sharing intimate aspects of joy, sadness, creative expression, beauty, tragedy, many perspectives in life, and more.