Poetry books

Siobhan Harvey

WALKING TO JUTLAND STREET

by Michael Steven

(Otago University Press, $27.50)

Auckland poet Steven journeys through geographies both familiar and strange. Beautifully structured with prologue, three sections and epilogue, the book begins with an ending — in the poem Terminus — and then travels back in time to landscapefocused works about formative places like Hereford Street, Latimer Square, Avondale, Howick and Britomart. To say, though, this is an exploration of locale puts it too simply. Rather it’s a work about a boy, shaped by his surroundings, who grows into a man, a theme astutely examined in verses such as Axis Mundi and 1991. The Man Alone Kiwi archetype is here updated, magnificently so.

THE FACTS

by Therese Lloyd

(Victoria University Press, $25)

Lloyd’s second collection negotiates the constraints and liberations of divorce. From the opening, This Time Around, through metaphysical mediations, to poems of absence and independence like the concluding verse Eleven a.m., this is a book equally emotional and insightful. Lloyd discovers sentiment in unlikely places: a dingy motel, a new hat, a stranger’s funeral. Ditto perceptiveness which she prises from the works of US artist, Edward Hopper and Canadian poet Anne Carson. A heartrending, philosophical account of how we find and lose those closest to us ensues.

WAYFINDER

by Jan FitzGerald

(Steele Roberts, $25)

There’s something painterly also about Napier poet FitzGerald’s new collection; no surprise given FitzGerald, a highly accomplished author, is also an acclaimed artist. Wayfinder sees the poet-painter’s finely structured verse companioned by beautiful monochrome prints. Poems to ancestry, mythology and travel punctuate these with comparisons and contrasts. As the titular concluding poem symbolises, the result is a work that leaves a lasting impression upon its audience.

HE’S SO MASC

by Chris Tse

(Auckland University Press, $30)

Tse’s second collection is an examination of being and belonging — as a poet, a gay man, an Asian New Zealander. For a definition of “MASC” read: online dating slang for “masculine”. It’s the kind of vernacular — and its constraints — played with throughout, sometimes comically and, as in the love poem par excellence, Crying at a disco, sometimes tenderly.

WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND

by Tom Weston

(Steele Roberts, $25)

Longlisted for 2018 Ockham Awards, poetbarrister Tom Weston’s seventh collection is a stunner. Perhaps it’s the lawyer in him, or perhaps it’s hereditary, but Weston’s work is built around multilayered language and meaning. The first poem, The thief of everything, a pyro-focused soliloquy, sets the high standard to come. Other standouts include the titular verse, the elegiac Crossing over, the filmic A serious affair and the concluding work. Transit lounge, all of them contemplative and dark-edged. What Is Left Behind is proof of a poet-craftsman at the height of his powers.