Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems is an annual online anthology of poems chosen by guest editors. The anthology began in 2001 and is published by the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. It is supported by a grant from Creative New Zealand.
History
In 2001, poet and professor Bill Manhire of the International Institute of Modern Letters founded Best New Zealand Poems. The anthology is published online and features 25 poems from New Zealand poets, each year selected by a different guest editor. Journalist Philip Matthews has described it as "a reliable guide to local poetry". The first annual editor, Iain Sharp, wrote in his introduction to the 2001 selection that the site's approach was inspired by The Best American Poetry series. He also noted that the poems must have been published that year either in magazines or books, and that in order to qualify as New Zealand poetry, a "steady association with the country is sufficient".
Due to Manhire's association with the anthology and role as series editor, his own poems were originally ineligible for inclusion. In his introduction to the 2005 selection, Andrew Johnston wrote, "I couldn't include a poem from Manhire's latest and best book, Lifted, because he is effectively the publisher of Best New Zealand Poems." In 2011 Manhire stepped down from the series editor role, and his poem "The Schoolbus" was selected by editor Bernadette Hall.
In 2003, Shelley Howells, a columnist for The New Zealand Herald, noted the features on the website, including links to publishers, New Zealand literary sites, poet biographies, and poets' comments on their work, provide a "more bang for your verse' approach" that is "more satisfying than simply reading a poem on a page".
In 2007, Manhire noted that most of the website's viewers were from overseas, and that the online publication allowed the anthology to break "through the distribution barrier which prevents New Zealand poetry from reaching an international audience".
Annual selections
Unlike Best American Poetry, each year's selection is identified by the year in which the poems were first published, not by the year in which the selection is put out: so the 2001 list, for instance, came out in 2002.
2001
The editor, Iain Sharp, is books editor of the Sunday Star-Times and himself a poet and critic. In his introduction, Sharp wrote that although he has a preference for poets like Billy Collins, he tried to include a variety of poets in his selection. Sharp also wrote that he found it impossible to properly excerpt Michael O'Leary's book-length love poem, He Waiatanui Kia Aroha, or take a single poem out of Hone Tuwhare's Piggyback Moon because none "seemed quite to capture the warm, rebellious spirit of the whole."
James K. Baxter
Jenny Bornholdt
Bernard Brown
James Brown
Alan Brunton
Kate Camp
Alistair Te Ariki Campbell
Allen Curnow
Leigh Davis
Chloe Gordon
Bernadette Hall
Dinah Hawken
Anna Jackson
Jan Kemp
James Naughton
Gregory O'Brien
Peter Olds
Bob Orr
Vincent O'Sullivan
Chris Price
Richard Reeve
Elizabeth Smither
Brian Turner
Ian Wedde
Nick Williamson
2002
This year's editor, Elizabeth Smither, recalled what Allen Curnow, a New Zealand poet who died in 2001, said about "the visceral nature of true poetry. 'Try poking it with a stick and see if it’s alive,’ was Allen’s test for a poem and it has been my first line of selection." Smither also used her assumptive "editor's privilege" to wedge in a 26th poem at the end of her introduction: Jon Bridges' "Poem for the Beasts".
Jenny Bornholdt
Diana Bridge
Rachel Bush
Kate Camp
Glenn Colquhoun
Murray Edmond
Paula Green
Michael Harlow
David Howard
Andrew Johnston
Anne Kennedy
Michele Leggott
Emma Neale
Bob Orr
Chris Orsman
Vincent O'Sullivan
Bill Sewell
Anna Smaill
Kendrick Smithyman
C. K. Stead
Robert Sullivan
Jo Thorpe
Rae Varcoe
Louise Wrightson
Sonja Yelich
2003
This year's editor, Robin Dudding, citing a similar comment by John Ashbery in The Best American Poetry 1988, discounted the idea that the best 25 poems of a country can be picked, since any editor will be inevitably biased and won't be able to find all the best poems. It might be better to call the selection "OK New Zealand poems", Dudding indicated.