Based on the number of poetry books published in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2021, 2022 and 2023,* on average you could read a new collection a week and just manage to keep up. Unfortunately, most of us have to be more selective in our poetry reading. There’s so many brilliant books coming out just in the second half of 2025 that it’s hard to know where to focus your time and money. This list of ten recommendations is here to help!

Overseas Experience by Nicola Andrews, Āporo Press

The debut collection from San Francisco-based Māori poet Nicola Andrews, Overseas Experience explores the tension of living in two worlds. Nicola writes both to and from her whenua in this raw, emotional collection, divided by the liminal space of airports and long-distance travel that many of us know too well. Overseas Experience speaks to questions of home and identity that ring through Aotearoa in our current political climate.

Some Helpful Models of Grief by Hana Pera Aoake, Compound Press

It’s hard to imagine many combinations of praise in New Zealand letters better than quotes from both Hera Lindsay Bird and Talia Marshall. Following on from Hana Pera Aoake’s previous book with Compound Press, A Bathful of Kawakawa and Hot Water, we can expect a powerful, moving, full-body experience from Some Helpful Models of Grief, with long prose poems that dig deep.

It’s What He Would’ve Wanted by Nick Ascroft, THWUP

People talk about the difficult second book but rarely do they mention the agonising sixth. With It’s What He Would’ve Wanted, prolific knower-of-words Nick Ascroft shares his wry wisdom on friendship and dying, among other things. The publisher’s blurb describes it as his ‘best collection yet’, which is a high bar, and means that if you’re new to Nick’s work you may as well start here.

Giving Birth to My Father by Tusiata Avia, THWUP

You don’t need me to tell you to read Tusiata Avia, but I’ll do it anyway. A new collection from Aotearoa’s most powerful poet of recent years, Giving Birth to My Father promises to be an incredibly potent and moving read about loss and family. As if that weren’t enough, the stunning cover art by Pati Solomona Tyrell makes it one of the best-looking books of the year.

If We Knew How to We Would by Emma Barnes, AUP

Emma Barnes’s first collection of poems, I Am in Bed with You, had readers reeling with its fresh and tender honesty, and, most importantly (in my mind), its sequence of poems in which the speaker imagines Sigourney Weaver as their girlfriend. A second book from Emma is an exciting prospect; this is sure to be brilliantly moving and funny.

Show You’re Working Out by Liz Breslin, Dead Bird Books

As you can see from the very cool cover designed by fellow poet Jessica Hinerangi, Liz Breslin’s new poems play with collage, diy, and scissors, both literally and as innuendo. I had the pleasure of hearing Liz read some of her new poems at an event last year and since then I’ve been eager to read this book. Liz’s poems are funny, gloriously queer, and real.

The Venetian Blind Poems by Paula Green, Cuba Press

Paula Green, unsung hero of New Zealand poets, lets us into a world of isolation and illness in The Venetian Blind Poems. Documenting her time recovering after a bone marrow transplant, the title of Paula’s latest collection promises to show us the view through her eyes as life slows, not by choice but by necessity. As an editor and reviewer as well as a poet, Paula is a sharp and generous writer, which is sure to come through in her new collection.

Sick Power Trip by Erik Kennedy, THWUP

Erik Kennedy just keeps getting better! His third book of poems carries his signature wit and political sharpness while hitting remarkable notes of pathos. Sick Power Trip is a study of power and human systems that refuses to let you slip into apathy or cynical fatalism. It’s bad form to quote yourself but I’m going to anyway, from the blurb I wrote for the inside cover: ‘[T]his new collection offers not a balm for the world but the courage to dismantle it.’

In the Hollow of the Wave by Nina Mingya Powles, AUP

Nina Mingya Powles adds to her impressive body of work with In the Hollow of the Wave, a poetry collection that reaches out to Aotearoa New Zealand from London, where she lives. You may have read Nina’s essays in Small Bodies of Water, which won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize. These new poems speak to many of the same themes, continuing the conversation with lyrical pieces that hold the reader gently. Woven though the book are pictures of Nina’s stunning textile artworks, which themselves become part of the poems.

No Good by Sophie van Waardenberg, AUP

The first full-length collection from Sophie van Waardenberg has just arrived in the world and fans are already eating it up. Sophie evokes the particular feelings of love and grief, both new and old, with such precision they feel tangible. This is a book to read to remind yourself that you’re a body in the world, for better or worse.

*Numbers from the 2022, 2023 and 2024 ‘Aotearoa New Zealand’ issues of Literature, Critique and Empire Today.