New Zealand Poetry
Were you feeling a bit out of touch with New Zealand poetry yesterday?
This book contains poems from ten modern New Zealand poets - Ruth Dallas, Hone Tuwhare, Alistair Campbell, James K. Baxter, Janet Frame, Kevin Ireland, Fleur Adcock, Albert Wendt, Bill Manhire, and Sam Hunt.
Here's one from Janet Frame to keep you going until you can get your hands on a copy:
Graduate
She lives in letters. She knows
the quote, the plot that suits,
the words that fit the moment
as fox gloves fit the fleeing fox
with golden brush and speckled poison
described by him and him and her. Squalid borrower
who dreams another's life, who lives
not under the sun but flat between
another's pages as the useful bookmark, the fringed
self-centre
Still she waits for the surprising pool
where nothing grows, no fish have swum before,
no reed or weed has stirred - a hopeless dream
for already
-'the sedge is withered from the lake and
no birds sing.'
