An Anthology Of New Zealand Poetry In English

From the earliest records of exploration and encounter to the globalized, multicultural present, this compilation features New Zealand's major writing, from Polynesian mythology to the Yates' Garden Guide, from Allen Curnow to Alice Tawhai, and from Wiremu Te Rangikaheke's letters to Katherine Mansfield's notebooks. Including fiction, nonfiction, letters, speeches, novels, stories, comics, and songs, this imaginative selection provides new paths into New Zealand writing and culture.

From revered, established writers as well as exciting new voices, the poems in Puna Wai Korero offer a broad picture of Maori poetry in English. The voices are many and diverse: confident, angry, traditional, respectful, experimental, despairing, and full of hope, expressing a range of poetic techniques and the full scope of what it is to be Maori. There are poems from all walks of life and modes of writing: laments for koro and hopes for mokopuna, celebrations of the land and anger at its abuse, retellings of myth and reclamations of history. Puna Wai Korero collects work from the many iwi and hapu of Aotearoa as well as Maori living in Australia and around the world, featuring the work of Hone Tuwhare, J. C. Sturm, Trixie Te Arama Menzies, Keri Hulme, Apirana Taylor, Roma Potiki, Hinemoana Baker, Tracey Tawhiao and others – as well as writers better known for forms other than poetry such as Witi Ihimaera, Paula Morris, and Ngahuia Te Awekotuku.

The third edition of this anthology captures the new air of self-confidence that shines in the work of the current generation of New Zealand poets. The volume devotes additional space to the writings of an exciting group of younger poets and includes--for the first time--the work of Lauris Edmond (who won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1985), Elizabeth Smither, and Brian Turner; it also presents recent poems by such older or established writers as Curnow, Smithyman, Adcock, and Ireland.

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.

In the twentieth century more people spoke English and more people wrote poetry than in the whole of previous history, and this Companion strives to make sense of this crowded poetical era. The original contributions by leading international scholars and practising poets were written as the contributors adjusted to the idea that the possibilities of twentieth-century poetry were exhausted and finite. However, the volume also looks forward to the poetry and readings that the new century will bring. The Companion embraces the extraordinary development of poetry over the century in twenty English-speaking countries; a century which began with a bipolar transatlantic connection in modernism and ended with the decentred heterogeneity of post-colonialism. Representation of the 'canonical' and the 'marginal' is therefore balanced, including the full integration of women poets and feminist approaches and the in-depth treatment of post-colonial poets from various national traditions. Discussion of context, intertextualities and formal approaches illustrates the increasing self-consciousness and self-reflexivity of the period, whilst a 'Readings' section offers new readings of key selected texts. The volume as a whole offers critical and contextual coverage of the full range of English-language poetry in the last century.