Author: Janet Charman. Reviewer: Siobhan Harvey.

Crafted, woven with feminist ideology and navigating the intersections of memory, gender and politics, Janet Charman’s The Pistils is an accomplished work.

March 2022 release

Author: Rebecca Hawkes. Reviewer: Paula Green.

Meat Lovers, Rebecca Hawkes’s debut full-length collection, is a triumphant display of the power of words.

March 2022 release

Editor: Tracey Slaughter: First Surname. Reviewer: Erica Stretton.

No breakdown of the contents in Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2022 prepares you for the thought, beauty and disruption within the pages.

March 2022 release

Author: Oscar Upperton. Reviewer: David Herkt.

The Surgeon’s Brain is not only a narrative - albeit one shattered and shivered to a purpose - it is also gathering of bright human sensations and thoughts.

February 2022 release

Author: Nicole Titihuia Hawkins. Reviewer: Elizabeth Heritage.

Whai is Nicole Titihuia Hawkins’ debut collection from a new press in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, We Are Babies, which is off to an impressive start with a place on the longlist of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards’ poetry category.

November 2021 release

Author: Michelle Elvy. Reviewer: Erica Stretton.

Michelle Elvy blends the boundaries between poetry and prose, moving effortlessly back and forth but maintaining the overarching threads with ease.

June 2021 release

Editor: Marie Hodgkinson. Reviewer: Louise Ward.

Strange times call for strange fiction and in Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy Volume III we can redefine beauty, find moa in the wild and investigate the worlds of the dead.

November 2021 release

Editors: Kathy Derrick, Jac Jenkins and Kipa Munro. Reviewer: Paula Green.

I grew up in Northland and carry the summer sun, the tropical dumps of rain, the coastal beauty in my bones. Kerikeri is a vital landmark in my memory banks, so it is with delight I read Ngā Ripo Wai: Swirling Waters, an anthology linked to the area.

November 2021 release

Editors: Sinead Overbye & Jordan Hamel. Reviewer: Elizabeth Heritage.

Every piece of Stasis I read felt like a thread of spider web, gentle and strong, tying me back to reality.

2021 release

Author: Jeffrey Paparoa Holman. Reviewer: Paula Green.

This is a collection of poetry that will echo and nourish as we move through uncertain days.

October 2021 release

Author: Anne Kennedy. Reviewer: Harry Ricketts.

The Sea Walks into a Walk shows Anne Kennedy continually adroit with form, few of the poems repeating the same pattern or arrangement on the page. There are poems in couplets (long and short); poems with enormously extended, prosy lines; mantralike poems hammering a phrase

October 2021 release

Author: Kevin Ireland. Reviewer: Graham Reid.

At 88 with 26 poetry collections, two wonderful memoirs, a novel, short stories and essays behind him, Kevin Ireland still writes with clarity of thought, insight and a mischievious twinkle in his eye.

November 2021 release

Edited by: Fergus Barrowman. Reviewer: Greg Fleming.

In his introduction to A Game of Two Halves: The best of Sport 2005-2019, Fergus Barrowman says he based his selections on “how immediately rereading each story, poem or essay rekindled the excitement I had felt when I read it the first time. I tried not to second-guess myself” - and readers can be thankful for that gut-instinct approach because the result is the most enjoyable anthology of New Zealand literature I’ve read.

November 2021 release

Editors: Chris Tse and Emma Barnes. Reviewer: Demi Cox.

Aotearoa is a land of extraordinary queer writers, many of whom have contributed to our rich literary history. But you wouldn’t know it. Decades of erasure and homophobia have rendered some of our most powerful writing invisible. Out Here will change that, bringing together and celebrating queer New Zealand writers from across the gender and LGBTQIA+ spectrum with poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and more.

November 2021 release

Author: Keith Westwater. Reviewer: David Hill.

From spit-polished ‘brightly black’ boots to doing ‘the marchie marchie’, Home Base is a candid and often humorous look at the lives of Regular Force Cadets. It’s also a memoir of Keith Westwater’s adolescence depicted through handwritten diary entries, photographs, maps and poems.

November 2021 release

Author: Tim Heath. Reviewer: David Hill.

A few decades back, there were moves to establish a Master Teacher category, recognising those who excelled in the classroom and were committed to their pupils. Tim Heath deserves such an accolade, and The Accidental Teacher neatly encapsulates his achievement.

September 2021 release

Editor/authors: Anna Jackson, Lily Holloway, Modi Deng & Tru Paraha. Reviewer: Paula Green.

The AUP New Poets series, under Anna Jackson’s astute editorship, has confirmed its place as essential poetry reading.

September 2021 release

Editors: Susan Paris & Kate de Goldi. Reviewer: Erica Stretton.

A new school year: nits, crushes, math lessons, and rainy-day lunchtimes. But what happens when you send a bunch of poets to school? The glorious Skinny Dip poetry book.

September 2021 release

Author: essa may ranapiri. Reviewer: Elizabeth Heritage.

In Irrational Animal Cross-Dresses, the potential writer essa may ranapiri sees for everything to be fundamentally different is exhilarating.

July 2021 release

Author: Dinah Hawken. Reviewer: Paula Green.

Sea-light showcases a poet roving in order to reflect back, to contemplate the moment, to wonder forward. This book fills me with wonder and is Dinah Hawken at her very best.

August 2021 release