essential new zealand poems

essential new zealand poems, selected by lauris edmond and bill sewell

it's difficult to really review a book like this. what can you say? for me, this was a pretty good selection of new zealand poetry and well worth reading through. all the 'stars' of nz poetry are represented and i think there is quite a good range. the book is targetting joe public so there is nothing very challenging here, but that's ok.

strangely, given the fact that i write poetry myself, i'm not a big fan of reading other people's poetry. what hope is there? if poets don't like reading poetry then what hope is there that poetry will ever be read? someone better sort all this out and quickly before poetry becomes a total freakshow as far as the average person is concerned. but my reason for not being a big fan is that i haven't yet found a poet that i can fully enjoy - don't get me wrong i believe in poetry but haven't found my favourite poet so far.

all that raving aside though, this book is a good introduction to nz poetry and easy to read. quite nice actually, i didn't have to force myself to read it, and i think that if people who don't normally read poetry read this then they might actually quite enjoy it. maybe this book part of the solution.