Piet Nieuwland 

Garments of the Dead: Old and new work by Koenraad Kuiper (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2023), 192pp, $37.50; Saga by Hannah Mettner (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 88pp, $25; Liveability by Claire Orchard (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 80pp, $25

Garments of the Dead: Old and new work by Koenraad Kuiper, a collation of poem sequences, reveals him to be a poet possessed of a playful, precise wit. A former professor of linguistics at the University of Canterbury, Kuiper is someone who pays close attention to the way information is presented by language registers and tonal shifts. His poems convey a strong sense of his wide background knowledge of the worlds of arts and literature, as well as his viewpoint as a post-war migrant, coming out with his family from Europe to New Zealand. With my own Dutch ancestry, I could see my deceased father and uncle really enjoying these poems, which portray experiences similar to theirs and their families during World War II and later as immigrants. They will also appeal to later generations of those with Dutch ancestry, curious about their elders’ formative origins. [Read more…]

Siobhan Harvey

Āria by Jessica Hinerangi (Auckland University Press, 2023), 76pp, $30; As the Trees Have Grown by Stephanie de Montalk (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 104pp, $25; Middle Youth by Morgan Bach (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 96pp, $25

It always disappoints me to encounter contemporary poets who, in their verses or in their readings of their work, inform the world that it contains so much poetry that really there’s no room or need for any more. It’s disappointing because such poets have only reached this determination after they’ve added their work to the poetry catalogue. Collectively and individually, three recent collections by New Zealand authors, Āria by Jessica Hinerangi, As the Trees Have Grown by Stephanie de Montalk, and Middle Youth by Morgan Bach, offer evidence that there must always be space in the poetry world for new work to speak to readers and their concerns. Now, more than ever, we need the emotional nourishment poems can provide, and we need receptive audiences for them. [Read more…]

David Eggleton

James K. Baxter: The selected poems edited by John Weir (Te Herenga Waka University Press, Cold Hub Press, 2023), 332pp, $40; Travels in Eclectia by Andrew M. Bell (Bigger Than Ben Hur Productions, 2020), 332pp, $56; From the Fringe of Heaven: Titirangi Poets edited by Piers Davies, Ron Riddell, Amanda Eason and Gretchen Carroll (Printable Reality, 2022); Famdamily: Meow Gurrrls (The Meow Gurrrls Collective, 2023), 40pp, $15; My Thoughts Are All of Swimming by Rose Collins (Sudden Valley Press, 2022), 100pp, $25; te pāhikahikatanga / incommensurability by Vaughan Rapatahana (Flying Island Books, 2023), 134pp, $10; Marcellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry by David Beach (David Beach, 2021), 64pp, $25

Poets, in making poems, long to use words so as to explain, to expatiate, to justify and absolve our human predicament. None more so than James K. Baxter, who, as this new Selected Poems attests, remains one of the most able practitioners of poetry that New Zealand has produced. He’s also one of its most articulate and prolific writers, as the ten volumes of his Collected Works: Poems, Prose, Letters, published over the past ten years by Te Herenga Waka University Press and also edited by John Weir, attest (there are other works, such as plays, remaining to be added to this assemblage). In his memoir, Out of the Jaws of Wesley, Peter Olds records Baxter telling him: ‘They’ll etch on my tomb—at last, his mouth is mute.’ [Read more…]

Genevieve Scanlan

Deep Colour by Diana Bridge (Otago University Press, 2023), 82pp, $25; Sea Skins by Sophia Wilson (Flying Island Books, 2023), 98pp, $10; This is a Story About Your Mother by Louise Wallace (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 88pp, $25; Past Lives by Leah Dodd (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 96pp, $25

Diana Bridge’s eighth collection, Deep Colour, opens with two epigraphs. One, from W.G. Sebald, speaks to ‘how it is essential to gaze far beneath the surface’. Fitting, then, that the titular poem begins ‘Somewhere down there in the aquarium’. From the first page, this collection immediately demonstrates with what masterful skill Bridge can plumb all sorts of depths. The titular poem draws from marine murk startling personal clarity: ‘One truth will soon displace / another […] A life gathers its themes, / some of which it may never weave’. [Read more…]