Carcanet Press - South Pacific

Description
Author
Contents
Awards
Reviews

You are just an ordinary New Zealander. You have strength, intelligence and good luck, though you are not particularly good at languages. Your family and friends like you, and there is one special friend who thinks you're really swell. Yours is a well-rounded personality; your horoscope is usually good; your school report says 'satisfactory'. But somehow you are restless. Your life is missing challenge and excitement. You want to make this happen. Go to 2.

Cannibals

Some Questions I am Frequently Asked

Ponies

The Poet's Wife

Highlights

Ventriloquial

Siena

The Moon at the End of the Century

The Days of Sail

Flights of Angels

Songs of My Life

South Pacific

Wings of Gold: A Week among Poets

The Brain of Katherine Mansfield

Jenny's Bicycle

Nonchalance or The New Land: A Picture Book

Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1946. He was his country's inaugural Poet Laureate and has won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry four times. He headed the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, establishing and directing the university's prestigious creative writing programme. ... read more

Awards won by Bill Manhire Commended, 2020 Poetry Book Society Recommendation (Wow)

Praise for Bill Manhire 'Bill Manhire's poetry is always lyrical whether the lyricism is the lyricism of the ballad or the lyricism he finds in ordinary, unmetred New Zealand conversational speech. Sometimes it seems as if you can hear a poem tuning up, finding its rhythm before it turns itself into song. As it lifts into song, it lifts, too, into meaning... when a Manhire poem takes flight, and when loneliness is taken for a stroll, the epic vision that the lyric can also, he shows, give rise to is all the more resonant and all the larger for being distilled into song.'

Anna Jackson, Academy of New Zealand Literature

'Though Manhire is full of foreboding about the future, he mixes the serious with the playful across a range of short, experimental poems... This is a poet who shares his learning with an appealing accessibility and ease'

Tom Williams, Literary Review

'Read Wow and you get story and song, light and dark, the surreal, constant surprise, but there is also always wit and humour ... Wow will haunt you'

NZ Poetry Shelf

'Wow offers further intriguing snapshots and glimpses, sometimes half-familiar but never monotonous... Here the light mist over everything teases you with where you are and what's what. Things constantly shift and change shape and being, even as you seem to have grasped them.'

Newsroom

'Being the leading poet in New Zealand is like being the best DJ in Estonia, impressive enough on its own terms. But Bill Manhire is more than that: he's unquestionably worldclass. As with Seamus Heaney, you get a sense of someone with a steady hand on the tiller, and both the will and the craft to take your breath away.'
Teju Cole, Boston Globe
'Manhire changes tack in every poem, coming at us with different techniques and different personae. It's a marvellously varied performance...Lifted is a short book, but few readers will be able to take it all in at a single sitting. It demands -and rewards- re-reading.'
Iain Sharp, Sunday Star Times
'The biggest noise in New Zealand poetry is Bill Manhire... Manhire has always known how to look at the human condition and state it simply through his poems. 'Lifted' is confident and emotive in what it tries to achieve. ...'Lifted' is shining stuff from truly one of our best poets. Definitely check this one out.'
Hamesh Wyatt, Otago Daily Times 'Turning the pages of 'Lifted', no reader can fail to be surprised and delighted by the variety of voices and tones... Manhire shows not only his mature formal skills but his ability to look unflinchingly into the heart of things. He is a poet in which a sly sense of humour is coupled with a respect for whatever truths a poem can wring out of experience. ...Manhireâs poems make us feel as if we are really there.'
Billy Collins, Dominion Post

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South Pacific Bill Manhire Categories: 20th Century, New Zealand Imprint: Carcanet Fiction Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Hardback (224 pages) (Pub. Jan 1994) 9781857540468 Out of Stock Description Author Contents Awards Reviews You are just an ordinary New Zealander. You have strength, intelligence and good luck, though you are not particularly good at languages. Your family and friends like you, and there is one special friend who thinks you're really swell. Yours is a well-rounded personality; your horoscope is usually good; your school report says 'satisfactory'. But somehow you are restless. Your life is missing challenge and excitement. You want to make this happen. Go to 2. Cannibals Some Questions I am Frequently Asked Ponies The Poet's Wife Highlights Ventriloquial Siena The Moon at the End of the Century The Days of Sail Flights of Angels Songs of My Life South Pacific Wings of Gold: A Week among Poets The Brain of Katherine Mansfield Jenny's Bicycle Nonchalance or The New Land: A Picture Book Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1946. He was his country's inaugural Poet Laureate and has won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry four times. He headed the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, establishing and directing the university's prestigious creative writing programme. ... read more Awards won by Bill Manhire Commended, 2020 Poetry Book Society Recommendation (Wow) Praise for Bill Manhire 'Bill Manhire's poetry is always lyrical whether the lyricism is the lyricism of the ballad or the lyricism he finds in ordinary, unmetred New Zealand conversational speech. Sometimes it seems as if you can hear a poem tuning up, finding its rhythm before it turns itself into song. As it lifts into song, it lifts, too, into meaning... when a Manhire poem takes flight, and when loneliness is taken for a stroll, the epic vision that the lyric can also, he shows, give rise to is all the more resonant and all the larger for being distilled into song.' Anna Jackson, Academy of New Zealand Literature 'Though Manhire is full of foreboding about the future, he mixes the serious with the playful across a range of short, experimental poems... This is a poet who shares his learning with an appealing accessibility and ease' Tom Williams, Literary Review 'Read Wow and you get story and song, light and dark, the surreal, constant surprise, but there is also always wit and humour ... Wow will haunt you' NZ Poetry Shelf 'Wow offers further intriguing snapshots and glimpses, sometimes half-familiar but never monotonous... Here the light mist over everything teases you with where you are and what's what. Things constantly shift and change shape and being, even as you seem to have grasped them.' Newsroom 'Being the leading poet in New Zealand is like being the best DJ in Estonia, impressive enough on its own terms. But Bill Manhire is more than that: he's unquestionably worldclass. As with Seamus Heaney, you get a sense of someone with a steady hand on the tiller, and both the will and the craft to take your breath away.' Teju Cole, Boston Globe 'Manhire changes tack in every poem, coming at us with different techniques and different personae. It's a marvellously varied performance...Lifted is a short book, but few readers will be able to take it all in at a single sitting. It demands -and rewards- re-reading.' Iain Sharp, Sunday Star Times 'The biggest noise in New Zealand poetry is Bill Manhire... Manhire has always known how to look at the human condition and state it simply through his poems. 'Lifted' is confident and emotive in what it tries to achieve. ...'Lifted' is shining stuff from truly one of our best poets. Definitely check this one out.' Hamesh Wyatt, Otago Daily Times 'Turning the pages of 'Lifted', no reader can fail to be surprised and delighted by the variety of voices and tones... Manhire shows not only his mature formal skills but his ability to look unflinchingly into the heart of things. He is a poet in which a sly sense of humour is coupled with a respect for whatever truths a poem can wring out of experience. ...Manhireâs poems make us feel as if we are really there.' Billy Collins, Dominion Post You might also be interested in: Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets Edited by Robyn Marsack and Andrew Johnston	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog We've Moved! read more Books of the Year read more One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more
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