I admire Charman very much as a poet and this new collection, and I like the way that the title The Intimacy Bus works as a governing phrase throughout the collection. So in reading a book of poems we are sometimes often, particulary with a poet who seems to be addressing us very direclty as Charman does, we are onboard a kind of intimacy bus and, let me tell you, this is often at times a very intimate bus that we’re aboard.
Harry Ricketts for Nine to Noon RNZ Read

Charman opens the poem in her own life, closes it, and relinquishes it to the person she’s addressing – a subtle and complete acknowledgement of the ultimate unknowability of her subject’s life. Charman offers up a great deal of candour in this collection and all those that have preceded it, but she stops short of telling us everything ... These poems are honest, not gratuitous.
Sophie van Waardenberg for Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books Read

Janet Charman is one of New Zealand’s sharpest and most subversive writers, described by Anne Kennedy as ‘a complete original in voice and content’. The Intimacy Bus is Charman’s tenth collection of poetry. In 2008 she won the Montana Book Award for Poetry for Cold Snack. In 2009 she was a visiting fellow at the International Writers’ workshop of Hong Kong Baptist University. In 2014 she appeared as a guest reader at the Taipei International Poetry Forum. Her most recent poetry collection, The Pistils (Otago University Press, 2022) was longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry in the 2023 New Zealand Ockham Book Awards.