Lifted

by Bill Manhire

In this work, Bill Manhire presents poems that want to know how the secular spirit can lift itself in the face of mortality and human violence. This book includes poems of courage and surprise, turning from grief to curiosity; then to beauty, humour, anger, gratitude, acceptance - and curiosity.

Genres: Poetry

79 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2006

About the author

Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill in 1946. He was his country's inaugural Poet Laureate and has won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry four times. He holds a personal chair at the Victoria University of Wellington, where he directs the celebrated creative writing programme and the International Institute of Modern Letters. His volume of short fiction, South Pacific, was published by Carcanet in 1994.

Reviews

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

My second book of Bill Manhire's poems. 'Lifted' includes two of Manhire's best known poems - 'Hotel Emergencies', which starts with the form letter to a hotel guest about fire alarms and winds, by way of dictators, war and death, to the place 'up there high in the smoke above the stars', and 'Erebus Voices', written for the anniversary of the crash and first read by Edmund Hillary. I'm finding, overall, that Manhire touches me, but doesn't hold me.

But one poem charmed and wooed me. I think it's because this year I've spent a lot of time thinking about growing up on our farm; the rolling hills, the essential grass, the river boundaries, the broad skies, the soft crunching sound of cows grazing, the grease and thick smell of wool, the spike of hay and stink of silage, the sense of connection to my family and disconnection from the world, the independence, the pride.

Old Man Talking in his Sleep

When I have left the shearing shed
and am riding home above the cloudy valley,
who do I see between my horse's ears?

After shearing there was only one face
I saw between my horse's ears:
the face of your mother, who sometimes
she smiled and sometimes she wept.

Courtship went on between our valley
and her little place on the coast.
Her baby sisters gathering seaweed
watched me go by. They loved me the most!

But your mother was a bird
who could fly above the flax.
Her eyes were the world's black fire.

I brought her the sweepings from the floor.
She found feathers from the seas
And so we made our mattress
where we swum easily.

We made our life of wings and wool,
of wood and iron -
our house was in a high paddock
its happiness hurt the sky.

Now I search in all the old places.
She is not with the cooks at the shed,
not by the sea.
There are new words for love
throughout the valley.

But when I have left the shearing shed
there is one face and one face only ...

+

We should try not to wake him.
He will wake to many others.

I shall turn on the light
then turn off the light.
Then perhaps he will be quiet.

[Alexander Guy]

I thought some were quite good.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read all (or even most?) of Manhire's work, but this I think is my favourite of what I have read. There's something spare and cool and lyrical about it that appeals to me. Don't know why, exactly, but it does.

[Lyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yay Bill