Best New Zealand Poems 2007

The best New Zealand poems of 2007, as selected by Paula Green, have been published on the Best New Zealand Poems website. There’s lots of interesting things to read, and I particularly enjoy the author’s notes, even though I feel kind of naughty reading them – like I shouldn’t need to know, (and infact oughtn’t even want to know) what the author thinks about a poem.

I was delighted when someone let me know that while my poem ‘Passion’ didn’t quite make it in, Paula Green liked it enough to mention it in her introduction as one of the ones she would have liked to also include. She said the same about Scott Kendrick’s ‘Gotter Getter Better’, which in my life as a publisher I published in Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete: Poems & Satires – very gratifying.

I was also delighted that three poems published in JAAM made it into the final cut of Best New Zealand Poems 2007: Robert Sullivan’s ‘After the UN Rapporteur Supported Maori Customary Rights’ from JAAM 24, and Richard Reeve’s ‘Autumn’ and Alison Wong’s ‘Reflection on a proposal of marriage’ from JAAM 25. Congratulations to those poets, and indeed all the poets included.

In her introduction, Paula Green mentions JAAM as one of the ‘stalwarts’. Again, I’m delighted (just to completely overuse the word). Everyone involved with JAAM, past and present, take a bow.