Poetry > New Zealand Poetry

Apirana performs.

Poetry so well made will not easily be forgotten Dr Peter Simpson Basil Dowling: Selected Poems represents perhaps the final statement in a poetic career that spanned over six decades. Basil Dowling is known today for his poetry as much as for his role as a Second World War conscientious objector and for his association with the Tomorrow generation of 1930s Christchurch writers and artists. His was a considerable poetic talent: he was a peer of Charles Brasch, Allen Curnow and Ruth Dallas among others, and closely associated w... read more

DoP 2007 A collection of the best of John O'Connor's Haiku & Senryu. Among the pioneers of New Zealand haiku, John OConnor was the first New Zealander to have his work widely published in US haiku journals. His haiku have been internationally anthologised since the early 1990s and have been translated into eight languages. In 1997 he received an Honorary Diploma from the Croatian Haiku Association and in 2001 a Museum of Haiku Literature Award, Tokyo, for best of issue in Frogpond International, a special issue of Frogpond - ma... read more

First published February 2010.

A book which looks at Western meetings, the author's and others', with Noh. First published 2005.

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"These are poems which, down the years or in some cases only recently, have settled in my mental household, comfortable and available, a satisfying source of reflection and contemplation." - from the introduction.

Fly Boy - poems about planes and the people who fly them - celebrates a lifelong fascination with flight.

Simple Broken Beautiful is the title on a notebook of poetry written by Leigh Davis in 2008. This was during radiotherapy treatment following surgery for a brain tumour, which was affecting his ability to express himself in words. The notebook writing was the beginning of a work that developed into a long poem called 'Stunning Debut of the Repairing of a Life'. The resulting manuscript won The Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry 2009, judged by Ian Wedde.

Linda Connell's first collection of poems, Laughing with the Undertaker, was published in 2004, and a poem from it, 'Cycling in America', was included in the 2004 Best New Zealand Poems. Her work has also been widely published in journals and newspapers.

"This new collection of poetry will enchant and provoke, comfort and delight. From the hilarious 'True Pregnancy Tales' to the sobering 'The First Stone', in which the author recounts her small child grappling with the adult concepts of war and revenge, Neale moves between storytelling and quiet reflection with confidence and charm. A sparkling read." 78pp / 165x230mm First published February 2008.

helen Bascand beguiles us into her world, observing familiar landscapes and feelings with fresh eyes and exquisitely chosen words. First published March 2007.

Following much-acclaimed memoirs Ghost Dance (winner Montana best first non-fiction work) and Terra Incognito, is Douglas Wright's first book of poetry, laughing mirror. Richly illustrated with his own drawings, Douglas's poems contain a raw truthfulness that will be a revelation for those unfamiliar with his earlier works and a must for those rediscovering his wide-ranging talent. First published August 2007.

Medieval Chinese poet Li He lived in the last brief flowering of the T'ang dynasty from 790-816, his evocations of the heavenly and the nether worlds are unique, possibly in the whole of the Chinese cannon and are the source of his honorific title, 'the demon talented one'. Mike Johnson's collection of poems preserves the extraordinary imagery of the originals, while allowing Li He to be read without difficulty by a wider public.

Mallinson Rendel Publishers is pleased to be releasing an expanded, hardback edition of the very popular Big Weather : Poems of Wellington, first published as a paperback in 2000. The new edition is a beautiful hardback book that has been lovingly revised and expanded by Gregory O'Brien and Louise St John. Since the nineteenth century, Wellington has been the site and object of much literary activity and never more so than now. Where many of New Zealand's leading poets once wandered, frequenting bars, delivering mail up the steepes... read more

Kevin Ireland’s sixteenth book of poems takes a wry, comic-serious look at the glorious ways we fritter away our days. It opens with reflections on airports – those necessary yet infuriating hijackers of our time and patience – then returns home again to puzzle at, satirise and celebrate the intricate and devious manner in which we fill our minds, hopes and activities with rich delays, breathless foolishness and gorgeous squanderings. As Ireland puts it: From t... read more

The inaugural winner of the Kathleen Grattan Award, The Summer King tells stories, exploring the world we inhabit and our relationships with the other. Myth, catastrophe, family, strangers, sex, sport – all feature in this ÃÂÂÃÂ... read more

Cooke's theme, like Robin Hyde's, is one of finding 'a home in this world': hers is an authentic poetry of place, with a fidelity to experience comparable to that of other more established poets such as Bernadette Hall or Brian Turner. The poems contain an array of striking images, developed from Cooke's exposure as a child and adolescent to the wind-whipped coastline of Orepuki, now a ghost town on the eastern fringe of Te WaewaeBay, near Fiordland. The passing of seasons features in the background of scenes which are dominated by... read more

Powerful historical poems about nineteenth-century Irish emigration to New Zealand, the colonial wars, Von Tempsky and Te Kooti, moving elegies for poet/painter Joanna Margaret Paul, the artist Reiko Kunimatsu and the poet's late father, love poems, and meditations on the nature of spiritual existence in the intellectual pressure-cooker of the twenty-first century. Howard's poems are accompanied by a selection of haunting images by the painter Garry Currin, produced to accompany the long title-poem which is the central feature of t... read more

This New Zealand-born Londoner is an astute observer of life; her words are laconic, gritty, individual and yet by contrast, hauntingly delicate. With the adept perception of an artist, she leads us out of the 1960s to the present, with her passionate, cuttingly brutal, extraordinary poetry. In the modern world of emigration and travel, this book will speak to many who feel a sense of displacement and who look to poetry for a renewed perspective on belonging.