Wow

By Bill Manhire

A Poetry Book Society Winter 2020 Recommendation. Bill Manhire's Wow opens with the voice of an extinct bird, a song from anciency, and takes us forward into the present and the darkening future of other extinctions. For Manhire, the reach of the lyric is long: it has the penetration of comedy, satire, the Jeremiad, but also the delicacy of minute detail and the rhythms of nature's comfort and hope, the promise of renewal. In the title poem the baby says 'Wow,' and the wonder is real at the world and at language. But the world will have the last word. Writing of Manhire, Teju Cole declared, 'Being the leading poet in New Zealand is like being the best DJ in Estonia, impressive enough on its own terms. But Bill Manhire is more than that: he's unquestionably world-class. As with Seamus Heaney, you get a sense of someone with a steady hand on the tiller, and both the will and the craft to take your breath away.' Bill Manhire was New Zealand's first poet laureate. He established and until recently directed the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. This is the ninth of his Carcanet books in 30 years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Dec 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781800170056

Book preview

Wow

Bill Manhire

For my long-haul editors, Fergus Barrowman and Michael Schmidt

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

1

Huia

Untitled

Also

The Armchair Traveller

South

Side Trips

Names

A Really Nice Trip

Letter from the New Place

Sorrow

Woodwork

Someone Was Burning the Forest

Warm Ocean

Falling Asleep

The Terrible Singers

2

Noah

Angels

The Angry God

He Loved Her Lemonade Scones

Breakfast

The Mysterious Twin

The Kaffir Lime Is Having a Bad Day

Isolation Notes

Mean Neptune

To Be Concluded

Earthquake Practice

Conference Dinner

Lives of the Poets

Langholm

The Lazy Poet

The Deerculler’s Wife

What I’m picking up when I’m out and about

Weather

3

Discontinued Product

After Lockdown

Incidental

Halls

Exhibition

The Sailor

Knots

Our Teacher

The Sky

Change Nothing

Like

The Smile

Wow

Polly

Reverse Ovid

After Surgery

Little Prayers

Copyright

they’ve cleared away

the clearings

1

Huia

I was the first of birds to sing

I sang to signal rain

the one I loved was singing

and singing once again

My wings were made of sunlight

my tail was made of frost

my song was now a warning

and now a song of love

I sang upon a postage stamp

I sang upon your coins

but money courted beauty

you could not see the joins

Where are you when you vanish?

Where are you when you’re found?

I’m made of greed and anguish

a feather on the ground

+

I lived among you once

and now I can’t be found

I’m made of things that vanish

a feather on the ground

Untitled

This book about extinct birds is heavier than any bird:

heavier than the dark bird eating my heart,

page after page of abandoned wings.

I lift it up and sit it on my lap

and listen to it purring.

Also

my mother cries all day

because soon it will be the world’s last day

imagine being a baby again!

I can’t do that but I must try

+

also: my dog’s bark

is the whole of the colour blue

it