1. Anna Smaill’s long interview with Bill Manhire. The advantages of slow-paced email interviews are evident as Anna and Bill explore the personal, ventriloquism, creative writing programmes, reading poetry, writing poetry, weirdness, holding back, trauma, God, mystery, parents, memory, drinking jugs of beer with Hone Tuwhare through the night. Life and poetry still maintain the requisite cloudy patches, private life and inner life are signposted but not made specific. This is a cracking interview – it refreshes my engagements with Bill’s poems, and writing and reading poetry in general.
2. Oscar Upperton’s poem ‘Yellow House’ because it has bright detail in the present tense and I am in the scene reading on a glorious loop.
The stream crosses the bridge. Pūkeko flicker
from blue to white, bikes rust into each other.
We rust at table.
(and the fact this poem is followed by ‘Explaining yellow house’ where Pip Adam gets a mention)
3. Sarah Barnett’s long poem essay ‘One last thing before I go’. Wow. This piece of writing is one of my treasures of the year because it goes deep into tough dark experience. It is measured and probing and hits you in the gut. Yet the fact of it on the page in front of me, so crafted and exposed, is uplifting.
4. Jane Arthur’s poem ‘I’m home a lot’ because it’s strange and real and unsettling.
This one sounds loudest against the front windows
and this one across the roof, nearly lifting it,
in an angry violent way. not like a bird taking off.
And even the birds here are massive and prehistoric.
Silence is rare. It’s eerie when it happens. Our dreams are mute.
5. Morgan Bach’s poem ‘carousel’ because when you read this your breathing changes and you enter a glorious mysterious complicated experience in the present tense.
but now having swallowed full moons,
coupled with mirrors of reticence, I find
life is not an experiment like that
and soon the body gives up its hunt
how soon the body becomes a cliff
how soon the body becomes a full stop
6. Discovering new-to-me poet Nikki-Lee Birdsey – she has a collection out with VUP next year and is currently an IIML PhD candidate. Her first-person storytelling in the form of a poem gripped me from the first lines.
7. essa may ranapiri’s selections because I find myself picturing them performing the poems and then I take supreme delight in the detail on the page.
8. Lynley Edmeades’s “We’ve All Got to Be Somewhere’ because it left a wry grin on my face. Poetry can do that.
9. Emma Neale’s ‘Unlove’ because this poem sings so beautifully.
My friend whose mind has frozen
sends me small gifts she says to keep her sane —
a cornflower-blue watch;
a box carved of light with a green latch;
a pink soapstone egg she says will one day hatch
a small, exquisite monster, its teeth sharp as love.
10. Rata Gordon’s poem ‘Mango’ because the writing is spare but it makes you feel so many different things.
This is all you have
to look forward to
your heartbeat and a
mango
everything else has dissolved:
your family
your intentions
Sport page
NZ Poetry Shelf 