The diverse collection of poems attests to the strength of voices both long established and new—featuring work by poet Kevin Ireland whose first book came out more than 50 years ago, and Victoria Master of Arts 2013 graduate Claire Orchard who is yet to publish a book.
Before O’Sullivan was given the task of reading all new poems published in New Zealand throughout 2014, he joked that there were now more publishing poets in New Zealand than commissioned officers in our armed forces.
That was before he was charged with finding 25 poems that “give you some notion of the terrain” of New Zealand poetry.
O’Sullivan was drawn to the selected poems for many different reasons.
“Some for the tonal leaps and linguistic charge, others for their intellectual drive and focus or their pitch and inflection that will not come to you in quite that way from any other poet.”
Place and locality strongly anchor many poems in the new collection. A poem by UK–New Zealand poet Peter Bland zooms in on particulars within walking distance of Dominion Road in Auckland; a poem by Auckland’s Michele Leggott reverberates with the human and animal noises that belong to Northland; while Dunedin poet Kay McKenzie Cooke catalogues some of the ‘things that cluster/to form a town’ in a poem about life as a high-school student in small-town Southland.
Other poems in the collection go further afield: a poem by Dinah Hawken about rising sea levels spans from her home by the Tasman Sea across the Pacific to Santiago via Tuvalu, while Christchurch poet Kerrin P. Sharpe transports readers in both time and place to the Western Front—as seen by the war horse, rather than the soldier. American-based New Zealand poet Michael Jackson’s poem wanders the coastline of Key West, Florida.
The appearance of Best New Zealand Poems 2014 coincides with the publication of a new book by Vincent O’Sullivan: Being Here: Selected Poems. His collection Us, Then won the 2014 New Zealand Post Book Award for Poetry.
Series editor, poet and IIML senior lecturer Chris Price, says New Zealand today is favoured with an abundance of good poets.
“This is indicated both by the quantity of poems published in 2014 and, more importantly, the quality.”
Readers are also able to enjoy listening to audio recordings of several poems. Hawke’s Bay poet Marty Smith—winner of the Jesse Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in the 2014 New Zealand Post Book Awards—can be heard reading her poem, as can Otago poet Peter Olds and Wellington poet John Dennison, among others.
Best New Zealand Poems is published annually by the IIML with the support of Creative New Zealand, and hosted by the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection at Victoria University.
Best New Zealand Poems 2014 can be viewed at www.victoria.ac.nz/bestnzpoems