Mary Ursula Bethell

Mary Ursula Bethell was a New Zealand poet. She settled at the age of 50 at Rise Cottage on the Cashmere Hills near Christchurch, with her companion Effie Pollen, where she created a sheltered garden with views over the city and towards the Southern Alps, and began writing poems about the landscape. Although she considered herself "by birth and choice English", and spent her life travelling between England and New Zealand, she was one of the first distinctively New Zealand poets, seen today as a pioneer of its modern poetry.