Books - The Best of Best New Zealand Poems & The Hill of Wool

Victoria University Press must be on a high after publishing two delicious collections of poetry. Poetry isn’t every reader’s cup of tea – or in Wellington, coffee – but if you want to discover a range of modern New Zealand poetic voices, The Best of Best New Zealand Poems is your field guide. Best New Zealand Poems is a yearly online publication based on an American series. Since 2001, an annual guest editor has picked 25 of his or her favourite poems from the previous year. For the Best of Best collection, editors Manhire and Wilkins selected 100 of their favourite poems from the last ten years. Wilkins calls the paper collection “retro” (it is sourced from an online publication), but paper seems a fitting way to celebrate a decade of New Zealand poetry.

The collection is enjoyably introduced by Wilkins, who says the past decade “looks … like a time of jitteriness, agitation” but also of “boldness”, and that Best of Best tends towards “fun”. Really, this is an irresistible collection. From Michelle Amas’ funny and moving poem about motherhood (‘Daughter’), to Amy Brown’s clever ‘Propaganda Poster Girl’ and Tim Upperton’s ‘The Starlings’, I can’t get enough. The book’s final section lists a biography for each poet, as well as a personal statement about their poem that lets us in on their private preoccupations. This rarely occurs with poetry and allows the book to be devoured once, and then again with the commentary. In most collections there are a few misses, but each poem in Best of Best provides pleasure. If you buy only one book of poetry this year, I recommend this one.

If you buy a second collection of poetry, you can’t go wrong with The Hill of Wool by award-winning Wellington poet Jenny Bornholdt. Split into two sections, Bornholdt’s new collection talks about memory and family, from moving her mother to a new house after her father’s death, to encountering an old lover in a toy shop at Christmas. In these pages the past and the present collide. Many poems are whimsical and lyrical, surreal and askew: the world in a carnival mirror. “Days scatter / either side of us. / We drive off the map”, Bornholdt says in ‘Travel’. In the same poem: “There’s a town called Furnace / a herd of wild deer / two fully clothed pianos / and a bath full of brown water”.

Other poems talk about the distance between memory and language (or recollection), such as the surprising ‘Poem about a Horse’. The second section in particular touches on the art of poetry – which is at least the cousin of memory, I’d say – a fact that may escape any reader who isn’t paying attention to the clever but quiet language. Overall, the collection blends the surreal and familiar into something comforting. “Life has never been / so good” one poem says. It feels like a wish for all of us.

The Best of Best New Zealand Poems

Edited by Bill Manhire and Damien Wilkins

Victoria University Press, RRP $35

[rating: 5 out of 5 FishHeads]

The Hill of Wool

Jenny Bornholdt

Victoria University Press, RRP $25

[rating: 4 out of 5 FishHeads]