BILL MANHIRE

Gaza

The dead boy tries to open his eyes.
He wants to see the world he is leaving.
But there is nothing to see here,
nothing and nothing, and anyway he is gone.
His parents held him while he died
but they are both dead, too.
Or he held them, no one remembers.

A photo of poet Bill Manhire sitting on a green couch

Bill Manhire's Lyrical Ballads was published in February 2026. His previous books include Wow (2020), Some Things to Place in a Coffin (2017), Tell Me My Name (with Hannah Griffin and Norman Meehan, 2017) and The Stories of Bill Manhire (2015). He has won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry five times, and was New Zealand's inaugural poet laureate. He founded and directed the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. He has edited major anthologies of New Zealand literature, including, with Marion McLeod, the now classic Some Other Country: New Zealand’s Best Short Stories (1984). In 2018, Bill was awarded an Icon Award Whakamana Hiranga from the Arts Foundation.

​Poem source details >

 

​Links

Bill Manhire's Te Herenga Waka University Press author page

 

Photographer credit: Grant Maiden