- 223 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
The Best of Best New Zealand Poems
About this book
Since 2000, the online anthology Best New Zealand Poems has showcased the most exciting and memorable poetry produced in this country. Here, for the first time, is a selection of this work in book form. Edited by founding publisher Bill Manhire, and writer Damien Wilkins, this anthology is an indispensable guide to the richness, strangeness, and liveliness of contemporary poetry. With over sixty poets appearing, there's classic work by some of the best-known figures in our writing, including Sam Hunt, Allen Curnow, Jenny Bornholdt, Cilla McQueen, Elizabeth Smither, and Ian Wedde; there are also compelling poems from new writers. Each poet's own note on the selection illuminates the work and takes us inside the writer's personal workshop. The first decade of the new century comes into view as a vibrant, argumentative, restless period, with our poets unafraid of either political engagement or strong personal feeling.
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Yes, you can access The Best of Best New Zealand Poems by Bill Manhire,Damien Wilkins in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Poetry. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
THE BEST OF
BEST NEW ZEALAND
POEMS
FLEUR ADCOCK
Having sex with the dead
How can it be reprehensible?
The looks on their dead faces, as they plunge
into you, your hand circling a column
of one-time flesh and pulsing blood that now
has long been ash and dispersed chemicals.
The half-glimpsed mirror over their shoulders.
This one on the floor of his sitting-room
unexpectedly, one far afternoon;
that one whose house you broke into, climbing
through his bathroom window after a row.
The one who called you a mermaid; the one
who was gay, really, but you both forgot.
They have all forgotten now: forgotten
you and their wives and the other mermaids
who slithered in their beds and took their breath.
Disentangle your fingers from their hair.
Let them float away, like Hylas after
the nymphs dragged him gurgling into the pool.
JOHANNA AITCHISON
Miss Red in Japan
I make telephone calls
to my bones, eat evenings
full of 12-year-old
video credits.
Crows snap black
on power lines, shine
beaks inside my leaf window.
My childhood home
is coffee cans, a frying pan
on the living room floor.
Mum is a Moritz stick.
The stove is a piece of dried seaweed.
At night I cover mother
in a yellow plastic hard hat.
‘Goodnight dad,’ I call out.
The road is dancing.
In the dark I salute
packets of HOPE
cigarettes inside
spacelight
roadside machines.
MICHELE AMAS
Daughter
The Steeple Chase
Get off my back
daughter
this is not dancing
you have sharpened your spurs.
Get off my back
you are giving me
the fingers
behind my head.
Get off my back
you have me pinned
against the ropes
the ref is on his tea break.
Get off my back
I am not carrying you
to my grave.
Get off my back
from up there you are
taller than me.
I will not race you
to the finish line
race you to freedom
I will not count down.
I am not your competitor
daughter
you signed me up
without my permission.
I am not your
leap frog.
Golden Delicious
She is sunny
she is sunny side up, my girl
running to meet me.
The other girls look lumpy
with their slumping shoulders
dyed hair and regrowth.
But my one is a beautiful apple
rolling down the drive
out past the school gates.
Blame
It is my fault
her toenails
her thighs
the hideous
hair on her arms.
My fault
she has too many books
it’s making her schoolbag
fat.
Fat is my fault
I don’t feed her
correctly, don’t limit
her intake.
My fault
the failed marriage
I am simply
unlovable.
No money is my fault
what sort of grown-up
is an actress.
No brothers or sisters
my biggest fault
an unpardonable crime.
Babies
It’s a feast or a famine
with sperm
wouldn’t you say?
Some days they can lap at your feet
other days are shorter.
I see flakes of babies
on hands
on shirt fronts
on benches
on car back-seats
The old guy, toothless and cursing
wearing socks and jandals
is full of babies.
The college boy
has left babies
on his sheets this morning.
The Unborn Ones
The brothers and sisters
how stupid of them
to leave it up to me.
Stupid too
the German psychologist’s
advice.
One child will now
bury her parents.
The brothers and sisters
salty baby mammals
have returned to the sea
turning into little grey whales.
Alliteration
Bullshit, she says
and I better bloody...
Table of contents
- Front Cover
- Copyright
- Damien Wilkins: Introduction
- Bill Manhire: The Next Thousand
- The Best of Best New Zealand Poems
- Notes and Biographies
- Copyright Acknowledgements
- Back Cover