The best New Zealand poems, like the best poems anywhere, are capable of changing our idea of what a poem is – surprising us, overtaking our expectations. The poem is both the winding road and the wild horse that gallops past us as we read, so that when we come around the last bend, there it is, waiting for our shock of recognition.

Such poems make the world bigger by taking us somewhere new. One of the great pleasures of selecting the Best New Zealand Poems 2005 was that the poems I came to enjoy re-reading most – the ones that stuck in my head, that became part of my mental furniture, and then part of the final list – weren’t always the ones I’d expected to enjoy most. Read on >