Freshness? Vitality? Bullshit!

Once more the corpse that is most New Zealand poetry is rolled out onto the viewing table. Maybe the curtains have been changed in the interim, but judging from the exterior of this anthology it seems that nothing much else has changed since I left 40 years ago.

My belief is that poets in N.Z. read the very first line in Donald Allen's The New American Poetry, Olson's

What does not change / is the will to change

got frightened by it & decided to make sure they stayed in the same old traditionalist & provincial Anglophile rut.


Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets showcases the freshness and vitality of current New Zealand poetry.
It's perhaps ironic that I found a link to this at Ron Silliman's blog since, to judge from the majority of the list of contributors, this is the Antipodean Chapter of Ron's dreaded School of Quietude writ large, & so contemporary that at least two of the poets are dead.

I love the smell of formaldehyde in the morning.....