Best New Zealand Poems 2019

Welcome from Series Editor

Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems is published annually by Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters. It aims to introduce readers—especially internationally—to leading contemporary New Zealand poets. The poems are chosen to show the vitality and range of current writing. We have shamelessly modelled this online project on the successful US paperback anthology, The Best American Poetry. Each year we publish 25 poems from recent literary magazines and poetry collections, where possible including notes about and by the poet, as well as links to related publishing and literary websites. In this way we hope that readers will be able to follow up fresh discoveries. There are plenty to be made.

Our thanks to Dr Mike Ross from the University’s Te Kawa a Māui for gifting us a te reo Māori name for the journal. As Dr Ross explains: ‘Ōrongohau is a “new” word combination that attempts to convey a Māori perspective. It can be translated in different ways: your news/views/thoughts/feelings/ are heard; your fame [is carried] on the wind. It doesn’t make subjective judgements about quality, the wind can blow in from anywhere.’

Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems continues to cross linguistic borders. Following on from Chinese, Italian and Samoan editions, our colleagues at Waiteata Press are working on Persian and French editions of the 2017 and 2018 collections.

Our Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2019 editor was Hera Lindsay Bird.

Earlier editors were Fiona Farrell (2018), Selina Tusitala Marsh (2017), Jenny Bornholdt (2016), John Newton (2015), Vincent O'Sullivan (2014), Mark Williams and Jane Stafford (2013), Ian Wedde (2012), Bernadette Hall (2011), Chris Price (2010), Robyn Marsack (2009), James Brown (2008), Paula Green (2007), Anne Kennedy and Robert Sullivan (2006), Andrew Johnston (2005), Emma Neale (2004), Robin Dudding (2003), Elizabeth Smither (2002) and Iain Sharp (2001).

The 2020 editor will be David Eggleton; New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2019-2021.

Bill Manhire is the founding editor, and was Series Editor from 2001-2010. With Damien Wilkins, he co-edited a print anthology, The Best of Best New Zealand Poems (Victoria University Press, 2011), which offers a condensed view of the first decade.

Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems is published by the International Institute of Modern Letters and is supported by a grant from Creative New Zealand, whose assistance we greatly appreciate. We remain grateful to the late Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) for permission to use his drawing for the first edition of James K Baxter's Jerusalem Sonnets (Bibliography Room, University of Otago, 1970) on our opening page.

Chris Price
Series Editor
Wellington
March, 2019

Photo by Robert Cross

Chris Price is a past editor of Landfall, has worked in publishing, and was for many years coordinator of the New Zealand Festival's Writers and Readers Week. She is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Beside Herself (2016), and co-edited The Fuse Box: Essays on Writing from Victoria's International Institute of Modern Letters (Victoria University Press, 2017) with Emily Perkins, and the recent Aotearoa / New Zealand issue of Poetry magazine (with Stephanie Burt and Paul Millar).

Chris convenes the Poetry and Creative Non-fiction MA workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters. She took over series editorship of Best New Zealand Poems from Bill Manhire in 2011.

​Find out more about Chris Price on the IIML website, and her AUP author page.