Poetry Shelf’s Paula Green reviews this year’s Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, reflecting on discovering new voices and old connections.
‘Reading poetry journals can be a prismatic and extremely satisfying experience. You reconnect with voices and familiar and discover those you want to read more of. Every time I dip into the latest Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, I find different sparks and different connections.
Tracey Slaughter’s editorial got me musing on the way a poem is a form of “space”, which implies there is room to gather dialogue, connections, to be engaged in multiple ways, to be maverick and toastmaster, bricoleur or archaeologist, to harness profound or fleeting rewards. Tracey writes:
A poem is a space of encounter, a room of language that invites us to move our senses over its living surfaces, to brush our bodies against its echoes and pressures, visual, sculptural, sonic.
The new issue presents a generous gathering of poems, several essays and substantial book-review attention.’
Read the full review here.
