Poetry Shelf celebrates:

By NZ Poetry Shelf - Paula Green | Posted:

Gregory O’Brien’s cover, Bill Manhire’s poem

Gregory O'Brien is currently creating covers for PN Review. They are simply glorious. The latest cover (263) also features an exquisite new Bill Manhire poem. The combination has prompted me to take out a subscription. I keep looking and rereading, relooking and reading. This is what poetry and art can do. The effect here is enigmatic, mysterious, musical, topical, physical, and utterly of these unsettling times. Both the poem and the art make me feel the bliss of colour and line, image upon image, and then I feel like weeping for the light and the dark, in the light and the dark, for the containment and the contained. The echo mantra that 'we are all walking in the same direction' haunts. 

Some Other Words I Think They Sang

Insects singing in the night.
We were all walking in the same direction.

Be careful. Be strong. Be kind.
That’s what they sang.

Sing when the world is worn away.
Some other words I think they sang.

Insects singing in the night.
We were all walking in the same direction.

Bill Manhire

PN Review newsletter