Please join us for the launch of Still Is, the final poetry collection by Vincent O’Sullivan.

Still Is will be launched by Fergus Barrowman, with readings by Jenny Bornholdt, Diana Bridge, Bill Manhire, Gregory O’Brien, and current New Zealand Poet Laureate Chris Tse.
 
Friday 21 June
5–7pm

Te Ahumairangi Foyer
National Library of New Zealand
Corner Molesworth and Aitken Street
Thorndon, Wellington

All welcome. Please RSVP to: thwup@wgtn.ac.nz

Light refreshments will be provided,
with wine kindly sponsored by Te Mata Estate.
Copies of Still Is will be for sale in Te Āmiki.

With thanks to Helen O’Sullivan and the wider O’Sullivan whānau.

The thrushes are back. The blackbirds too
are back, already worrying the thrushes,
filching their choice worms. The gorse
is running the hills along the Aramoana
Road, spills the slopes yellow; the broom,
so much more politely, you call it
gold. Look again, the gorse walks prickling
against the skyline. This is September.
 

Still Is gathers ninety dazzling new poems by Vincent O’Sullivan. These are poems that call and respond, poems that elaborate and pare down, and poems in which an ending is a beginning.

Born in Auckland in 1937, Vincent O’Sullivan was one of New Zealand’s leading writers, acclaimed for his poetry, plays, short stories, and novels, which include Let the River Stand, Believers to the Bright Coast, and the Ockham-shortlisted All This By Chance. He was joint editor with Margaret Scott of the internationally acclaimed five-volume Letters of Katherine Mansfield, edited a number of major anthologies, and was the author of widely praised biographies of John Mulgan and Ralph Hotere. He taught at Waikato University and Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, and was the New Zealand poet laureate for 2013–2015. In 2000, Vincent was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and in 2021 he was redesignated as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Vincent died in April 2024.