Poetry : Poetry

In a momentous publication, Seamus Heaney's translation of Book VI of the Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem composed sometime between 29 and 19 BC, follows the hero, Aeneas, on his descent into the underworld. In Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, Heaney acknowledged the importance of the poem to his writing, noting that 'there's one Virgilian journey that has indeed been a constant presence, and that is Aeneas' venture into the underworld. The motifs in Book VI have been in my head for years - the golden bough, Charon's barge, the quest to meet the shade of the father.' In this new translation, Heaney employs the same deft handling of the original combined with the immediacy of language and flawless poetic voice as was on show in his translation of Beowulf, a reimagining which, in the words of Bernard O'Donoghue, brought the ancient poem back to life in 'a miraculous mix of the poem's original spirit and Heaney's voice'.

Title: Aeneid Book VI
Author: HEANEY SEAMUS
Format: Pack
Publishing status: Active
Publication date: 02/03/2017
Price: $28.00
RRP: $28.00
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9780571327324
Available stock: 1

Title: Allen Curnow Collected Poems
Author: CAFFIN ELIZABETH
Format: Hardback
Publishing status: Active
Publication date: 30/09/2017
Price: $59.98
RRP: $59.98
Imprint: Auckland University Press
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408510
Available stock: 1

Woven from the sharp and tensile strands of memory, many of the poems in this collection return to the primal pains of neglect and damage in childhood. Emotional memory is anchored in the specific detail of an era - the selection is laced with dreams of flight and memories of West Coast town rituals, places and people - and fans out to draw on local and international history, exploring with wit, anger, imagination and grief the ways in which Aotearoa still carries the wounds of colonization and class. Confronting the ghosts of bereavement and loss, in this gripping and powerful collection Holman leads us from remembrance and elegy, in all their guises, to a kind of 'spring of the soul'. Poetry and song have their own healing gifts: here, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman calls on their potency to set the mind free.

Title: Blood Ties New & Selected Poems: 1963 to 2016
Author: HOLMAN JEFFREY PAPAROA
Format: Limp
Publishing status: Active
Publication date: 20/02/2017
Price: $25.00
RRP: $25.00
Imprint: Canterbury University
Publisher: Canterbury University Press
ISBN: 9781927145883
Available stock: 1

Cloudboy is a deep-mulling, richly sensitive account of a mother's adjustments to the needs of an autistic child. This prize-winning suite of poems grows out of extremes of love and frustration, as the poet introduces a bright, unpredictable, markedly individual boy to the rigid, often airless routines of the school system. Any empathetic parent knows the fears and anxieties of sending a young child into the world of other children, their casual cruelties and dreamy naivety. Each concern is exponentially increased when a child's educational and emotional needs set them apart. Cloudboy writes his own version of Genesis; he invents a new language; he sketches intricate maps; he reads Aristotle and develops an obsession with Dr Who; he interrupts; he sways; his 'fists come clenched and swinging'. To onlookers, Cloudboy seems troubled, trouble. Cirrus, cumulus, arcus, stratus: cloud forms speak to Harvey of the phases of the mother-child bond; the mood-swings and leaps of her child's mind; the mutability of personality; the attraction and evaporation of human kindness; presence and absence; reverie and forgetfulness; the intensity and yet bittersweet transience of early childhood.
With a limber, gorgeously metamorphic sense of sculptural and sonic aspects of poetic form, this book is a tender and detailed atlas of a child's imaginative potential. Yet one of the most remarkable gifts it reveals for us readers is Cloudmother's own finely calibrated perceptions.

Title: Cloudboy
Author: HARVEY SIOBHAN
Format: Paperback
Publishing status: Active
Publication date: 01/04/2014
Price: $25.00
RRP: $25.00
Imprint: Otago Press
Publisher: Otago University Press
ISBN: 9781877578809
Available stock: 1

This is the first complete edition of Katherine Mansfield's poetry, including 26 poems, dating from 1909-10, discovered by Gerri Kimber in the Newberry Library in Chicago in 2015. This edition is made up of 217 poems, ordered chronologically, so that the reader can follow Mansfield's development as a poet and her experiments with different forms, as well as tracing the themes - love and death, the natural world and the seasons, childhood and friendship, music and song - that preoccupied her throughout her writing life. The comprehensive annotations provide illuminating biographical information as well as explaining the rich contexts of the European poetic tradition, including fin de siecle decadence within which Mansfield's artistry is steeped. The inclusion of a collection of newly discovered poems, highlights Mansfield's desire to be taken seriously as a poet from her earliest beginnings as a writer. The poems as a whole point to a poet who varied her craft as she perfected it, often witty and ironic yet always enchanted by the sound of words.

Title: Collected Poems of Katherine Mansfield
Author: KIMBER GERRI
Format: Hardback
Publishing status: Active
Publication date: 14/12/2016
Price: $35.00
RRP: $35.00
Imprint: Uni Of Otago
Publisher: Otago University Press
ISBN: 9781877578816
Available stock: 1

Australia's most-loved bush poet, Banjo Paterson, is the writer who in many ways defined what it was to be Australian. When a young man submitted a set of verses to the Bulletin in 1889 under the pseudonym 'the Banjo', it was the beginning of an enduring tradition. today Banjo Paterson is still one of Australia's best-loved poets. This complete collection of his verse shows the bush balladeer at his very best with favourites such as 'A Bush Christening', 'the Man from Ironbark', 'Clancy of the Overflow' and the immortal 'The Man from Snowy River'. These well-known verses are joined here by his comic verse, his remarkable war poems, including 'We're All Australians Now', and lesser known works.'These classics are our indispensable voices. At a time when our culture was still noisy with foreign chatter and clouded by foreign visions, these writers told us our own stories and allowed us to examine and evaluate both our homeplace and our place in the world.' Geraldine Brooks'Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson is the most famous - certainly the most publicly performed - Australian writer who has ever lived' The Guardian

Title: Complete Poems Of Banjo Paterson
Author: PATERSON A B
Format: Hardback
Publishing status: Active
Publication date: 20/11/2017
Price: $40.00
RRP: $40.00
Imprint: Fourth Estate
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (Aust
ISBN: 9781460755686
Available stock: 1

If I were a Dalek And a big Dalek too I shouldn't much care What happened to you...As they get older, even Time Lords sometimes struggle to understand the universe around them. In this delightful collection of poems - the first volume of Doctor Who verse ever published - there are moments of insight, wit and reassurance for those aging inhabitants of Gallifrey, all of which will sound hilariously familiar. Now We Are Six Hundred is a charming, funny and whimsical collection of poems that celebrate the joys and pitfalls of getting older. Much, much older. Time-Lord older. And sometimes, in space.

Title: Doctor Who Now We are Six Hundred A Collection of Time Lord Verse
Author: GOSS JAMES
Format: Hardback
Publishing status: Active
Publication date: 14/09/2017
Price: $30.00
RRP: $30.00
Imprint: BBC Books
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
ISBN: 9781785942716
Available stock: 1

Cilla McQueen was New Zealand Poet Laureate 2009-11. One of her writing projects during her time as laureate was Serial, which she described as 'exploring a space between prose and poetry'. It was published in chapters on the Poet Laureate website. Retitled Edwin's Egg and other poetic novellas, this work is now published for the first time in hard-copy format, combining McQueen's evocative text with wonderful images from the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Title: Edwins Egg & Other Poetic Novellas
Author: MCQUEEN CILLA
Format: Boxed Set
Publishing status: Active
Publication date: 01/03/2014
Price: $39.95
RRP: $39.95
Imprint: Uni Of Otago
Publisher: Otago University Press
ISBN: 9781877578137
Available stock: 1

After its publication in 1667, John Milton's Paradise Lost was celebrated throughout Europe as a supreme achievement of the human spirit. Now it is little read. To bring readers back to Milton's masterpiece, John Carey has shortened it to a third of its original length. In this fascinating reinterpretation, Carey reveals new insights about Milton's sources of inspiration, while exploring divided readings of the work's key characters. The Essential Paradise Lost presents the epic's greatest poetry, with linking passages that preserve its cosmic sweep - from the superhuman defiance of a ruined archangel to a pair of tragic lovers, bewildered to find themselves responsible for the fate of the whole human race.

Title: Essential Paradise Lost
Author: CAREY JOHN
Format: Hardback
Publishing status: Active
Publication date: 16/03/2017
Price: $37.00
RRP: $37.00
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9780571328550
Available stock: 1