This Paper Boat follows the author as he traces his own history through the lives and written fragments of Iris Wilkinson (aka Robin Hyde), his parents, and their parents, while examining the public and private rituals of institutions ranging from the military to the medical, and of communities, families and individuals. Stumbling again and again across irreparable fractures in identity and material, time and space, the author discovers a world driven by its incompleteness and constructability towards hope and forgiveness. In these poems, rich in understatedly beautiful imagery, two authors, their families and their many ghosts navigate oceans, forests, gardens and houses in New Zealand, Singapore, China, and in dreams.