Author(s): Ian Wedde

New Zealand Poetry

Five extended poems linked by themes of beauty and language make up this lively new collection from one of the best New Zealand poets writing today. The long poem gives Wedde room to explore these themes in detail, weaving back and forth, accumulating phrases, images and sounds, always with characteristic exuberance and humour. The central 'Hymn to Beauty' is a calendar of a search for beauty among the everyday, made up of song lyrics, favourite people, quoatations and conversations. In 'Letter to Peter McLeavey' the poet travels the country, delighting afresh in its beauty but also seeing it through the eyes of painters who have preceded him as interpreters of the landscape. The 'Three Regrets' that open the collection and the concluding poem for his mother provide vivid and moving frames for this wonderful book. First published 2005. âÃÂÃÂItâÃÂÃÂs hard to review this collection without recourse to the tag âÃÂÃÂbeautifulâÃÂÃÂ. ItâÃÂÃÂs warm, open and erudite, full of good grace and humour. WeddeâÃÂÃÂs leaps of language and thought are as surefooted but never presumptuous; the reader is allowed both the pleasures of the sensory world, and of a substantial intellectual engagement with it.âÃÂà- Takahe