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Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets

An Anthology

Edited by Robyn Marsack and Andrew Johnston

Foreword by Robyn Marsack

Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets: An Anthology
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, Anthologies, New Zealand
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (272 pages)
(Pub. Mar 2009)
9781857549768
Out of Stock
  • Description
  • Editors
  • Reviews
  • Audio
  • Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets is the first anthology in decades to present to British readers the remarkable freshness and vitality of New Zealand poetry. Starting in the mid-1980s, it captures turning points in the work of Allen Curnow and Bill Manhire, poets who have made a mark across the English-speaking world, and charts the advent of a new wave of writers who recombine influences from all over to investigate the self and language with passion, intelligence and humour.

    Taking their cue from the 1960s generation of poets who jettisoned the idea of a single tradition, writers such as Jenny Bornholdt, Dinah Hawken, Michele Leggott and James Brown play freely with lyric expectations, extending the boundaries of poetry through constant formal innovation, intellectual inquiry and a fierce but fond attention to the uniquenessof everyday life and speech in New Zealand.

    A vital part of this distinctive body of work is its dialogue with social and political change, in recent poetry by Glenn Colquhoun, Robert Sullivan, Anne Kennedy and Tusiata Avia that finds new ways to talkabout the richness and the challenge of living in a bicultural and multicultural society.

    Robyn Marsack
    Robyn Marsack began her long association with Carcanet Press by editing the first edition of Edmund Blunden’s Selected Poems in 1982, and worked as a publishers’ editor until she became Director of the Scottish Poetry Library 2000–2016. She was a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Glasgow 2016–2018. ... read more
    Andrew Johnston
    Andrew Johnston is a New Zealand poet who lives in Paris with his wife and two sons. He won the 1994 New Zealand Book Award for poetry for his first book, How to Talk; his most recent collection, Sol, was published in New Zealand in 2007 by Victoria University Press and ... read more
    Praise for Robyn Marsack 'Readers will be drawn to this book for the poets' letters, but what really dominates is the personality of Schmidt; at the end we are left with a prevailing sense of his editorial vision and an appreciation of his influence and accomplishment in the world of contemporary poetry publishing and criticism... Fifty Fifty is full of energy and play, and not a few crossed swords.'

    Kevin Gardner, Wild Court

     'A window into the award-winning world of Carcanet'
    Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph
    'In celebration of the Manchester-based press' 50th anniversary, a fascinating collection of letters... tracing the eventful history of this small, ambitious and excellent press.'
    The Bookseller
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Cover of Selected Poems
Selected Poems Bill Manhire
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