Three Regrets and a Hymn to Beauty

By Ian Wedde

Five extended poems linked by themes of beauty and language make up Three Regrets and a Hymn to Beauty, a 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 kind of zany calendar of a search for beauty among the everyday, made up of song lyrics, favourite people, quotations 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781869406356

Ian Wedde

Ian Wedde is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, seven novels, two collections of essays, a collection of short stories, a monograph on the artist Bill Culbert, several art catalogues, a memoir, and has been co-editor of two poetry anthologies. His work has been widely anthologised, and has appeared in journals nationally and internationally. Wedde won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction for his first novel, Dick Seddon’s Great Dive (1976), and a New Zealand Book Award for his poetry collection Spells for Coming Out (1977). He was the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago in 1972, the Victoria University Writing Fellow in 1984, the Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton in 2005, and the University of Auckland Michael King Writer in Residence in 2009. In 2010 Wedde was awarded an ONZM in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, and in 2011 was made New Zealand Poet Laureate. He was awarded the Creative New Zealand Writer’s Residency in Berlin in 2013–14, and in 2014 received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (poetry). Between 1994 and 2004 Wedde was head of art and visual culture at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; more recently he has been an adjunct senior lecturer in the departments of Art History and English at The University of Auckland and is now an independent curator and critic.