In Continents

From the violence of Tiberius and Edward III to the death of James Cook's Polynesian companion Tupaia, this collection of poems examines a litany of historical contexts, countering the habitual barbarity, selfishness, and stupidity of humans by highlighting their potential. It contrasts grace with atavism, imaginative transcendence with the determinative structures of biology, culture, and belief. Humans, the clever apes, live and die in age-old continents, but behave incontinently. At the collection's core is the role of poetry as revelation of the ethical horizon of human existence and how as a species the human race willfully neglects to act in accordance with this revelation. In one example, the collection also reflects on the environmental conflict presently raging in Otago-Southland concerning the giant wind farms proposed by Meridian, TrustPower, and other generators. Ironically, the poems suggest that areas of great and remote natural beauty have fallen victim to technology, symbolizing a would-be corporate revolution towards greener methods of energy. Using deft and concentrated language to bridge the gap between ideas and objects, this compendium demonstrates a unique and innovative voice in New Zealand poetry.

Richard Reeve is a poet, reviewer, and editor. He has published two collections of poems, Dialectic of Mud and The Life and the Dark. He won the Macmillan Brown Prize for Poetry in 1998 and was awarded the 2002/2003 Todd Foundation New Writer's Bursary. His poems have been published widely in journals in New Zealand, Australia, and Britain and several have been selected for the annual anthology Best New Zealand Poems Online. He is currently an editor for Otago University Press.