Some Things to Place in a Coffin

Bill Manhire’s first new collection of poems for seven years takes its title from his elegy for his close friend the painter Ralph Hotere, who died in 2013. At its heart is the sequence ‘Known Unto God’, commissioned for the centenary of the Battle of the Somme in 2016. These are poems of memory and mortality, which are also full of jokes and good tunes. Some Things to Place in a Coffin is published simultaneously with Tell Me My Name, Bill Manhire’s new poetry + photographs + CD collaboration with composer Norman Meehan, singer Hannah Griffin and photographer Peter Peryer.

Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill in 1946 and educated at the Universities of Otago and London. For many years he taught at Victoria University, where he founded the International Institute of Modern Letters, which is home to New Zealand’s leading creative writing program. He is now Emeritus Professor of English and Creative Writing at Victoria, and was recently UNESCO Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.