Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2021

Book excerpt: Poetry New Zealand, this country's longest-running poetry magazine, showcases new writing from New Zealand and overseas. This issue, #55, features 182 poems by 129 poets, including Elizabeth Morton, Michele Leggott, essa may ranapiri, Bob Orr, Kiri Piahana-Wong, Jordan Hamel, David Eggleton and Mere Taito, the winning entries in the Poetry New Zealand Prize, essays, and reviews of 25 new poetry books. Compiled in a time of pandemic, these are poems written -- in the words of editor Tracey Slaughter -- when 'the only line to follow was deeper in, darker down, to poetry. The page was the only safe place our breath could go.'