Poetry in Te Ara
Posted 18 July 2008 // Helen Rickerby
Poet James K. Baxter
Happy Poetry Day!
Today is Montana Poetry Day, which celebrates New Zealand poetry. All around the country poetry events are being held, and poets are performing their work.
When I started work at Te Ara earlier this year, I was delighted (being a good, keen poetry-fancier) to discover the number of poems included in the encyclopedia, to illustrate and enrich the entries. And today seems like an appropriate occasion to highlight some of them.
There are a number of poems evoking places in the Landscapes overview entry, including Denis Glover’s ‘Summer, Pelorus Sound‘, Fleur Adcock’s ‘Stewart Island‘ and Brian Turner’s ‘Otago Peninsula‘.
Poetry features in our regional entries, with Allen Curnow’s ‘Auckland poem‘ in our Auckland entry, and Hone Tuwhare’s, ‘A fall of rain at Miti-miti‘ in Northland.
A tragic event in our history is commemorated in Bill Manhire’s poem ‘Erebus voices‘ – part of the Air crashes entry – which was read by Sir Edmund Hillary at the 25th anniversary of the plane crash on Mt Erebus in Antarctica.
Some of our community contributions – ‘Your stories‘ – have been poems, such as Maggie Rainey-Smith’s ‘After the storm‘ and ‘Alpine awakening‘ by Sabina de Rooy.
If you can’t be bothered reading, you can listen to sound files of Hone Tuwhare, Denis Glover and Albert Wendt reading their work.
In our next theme, The Settled Landscape (about farming, rural life, and people’s impact on the land), you can look forward to poems by Blanche Baughan, Denis Glover (the wonderful ‘The magpies’) and a 19th century poem about weasels.
I found New Zealand to be a wonderful place to muse. The valley of Arkles Bay is most conducive for creative writing pursuits I must say. Many of my poems about New Zealand found on my Poetrynest blog were penned in that part of North Island. My epic poem on Sir Edmund Hillary continues to attract many readers.
Happy Poetry Day, Montana