Siobhan Harvey reviews the year of verse
HE’S SO MASC
by Chris Tse (Auckland University Press, $30)
Chris Tse’s second collection is an examination of being and belonging — as a poet, a gay man, an Asian New Zealander. The poems turn author into protagonist, as in “Chris Tse and his Imaginary Band” and riffs off artists like Taylor Swift and Kate Bush and contemporary song. “Masc” is online dating slang for masculine. Tender and comic, such vernacular and its constraints play throughout.
WATCHING FOR THE WINGBEAT
by Pat White (Cold Hub Press, $40)
Fairlie environmentalist poet Pat White’s stunning collection combines new and previously published work. The range here moves from the impressionistic epic, from the Valdimar Notebooks to the laconic conservational Afterglow. Such variety and craft is coupled to White’s channelling of past Chinese poets, his ecological sensibilities and a reverence for artisan crafts. Primarily though, whether it’s O¯ ka¯ rito, Scotland or bygone times, this is a book charting landscapes lost to the past or in need of protection.
TA¯ TAI WHETU¯ : SEVEN MA¯ ORI WOMEN POETS IN TRANSLATION
Edited by Maraea Rakuraku and Vana Manasiadis (Seraph Press, $20)
The book’s titular reference to a constellation of stars symbolises the stunning voices showcased within. The result is a medley of established and emerging authors such as Kiri Piahana-Wong and Anahera Gildea. Piahana-Wong’s sequence Day by Day, translated by academic Hemi Kelly, is a standout, as is Gildea’s honoring of womanhood,
In Search of Mana Wa¯ hine, translated by author Herewini Easton. Additional contributions include Alice Te Punga Somerville, Tru Paraha, Dayle Takitimu and Michelle Ngamoki. Themes of land, spirituality and wha¯ nau result.
ONE HUNDRED POEMS AND A YEAR
by Bob Orr (Steele Roberts, $30)
One of our most renowned poets, Bob Orr’s ninth collection examines rural and suburban, local and global existences. Poems about Freemans Bay and Devonport hang out with those about Otago and Cape Colville, work examining Hamilton and Motueka harmonising with those about Mexico, Japan and Russia. Its global perspective is married to a sharp eye for detail and a tongue rich in melody.
WINTER EYES by Harry Ricketts (Victoria University Press, $25)
Accomplished poet and biographer, Harry Rickett’s latest collection is a celebration of writers, writing, song and survival. Whether they’re about authors like Jane Austen or Janet Frame, memories, future anticipations, friendships, grief or love, the poems are buoyed by music and deeply mulled meaning. Life, Ricketts reminds us, is informed by the past and enlightened by the present. Everywhere, form is deeply important to the author, his structures both formal and expansive.
LOUDER by Kerrin P. Sharpe (Victoria University Press, $25)
Christchurch’s Kerrin P. Sharpe is a wordsmith of the first order, her verse melding her inventive use of language with an imaginative approach to subject matter. A woman in rural China mourning her mother; a Hokitika hotel and its sleeping inhabitants soaring, like a rocket, through the stars; a balsam boat-building son compared to an Old Master: here and elsewhere, fantastic stories and motifs of deer, birds and angels compose a fairy tale of mourning, merriment and surprise.