Best New Zealand Poems is published annually by the International Institute of Modern Letters, and aims to introduce readers—especially internationally—to leading contemporary New Zealand poets. The poems are chosen to show the vitality and range of current writing. We have shamelessly modelled this online project on the successful US paperback anthology, The Best American Poetry. Each year we publish 25 poems from recent literary magazines and poetry collections, where possible including notes about and by the poet, as well as links to related publishing and literary websites. In this way we hope that readers will be able to follow up fresh discoveries. There are plenty to be made.

This year finds us in a period of transition from our longstanding partner and host, the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection, to a new home, a process that has unavoidably detained this issue beyond our usual early April launch date. We are grateful to Max Sullivan, Michael Parry and the NZETC for their commitment to Best New Zealand Poems over the last decade, and to poet Rachel O’Neill, who has designed and produced the new website for Best New Zealand Poems 2016,  reinventing the structure and adding new features such as author photos.  We will eventually relocate all back issues of the journal to a new platform, which will offer a welcome chance to fix the now somewhat broken aspects of our earliest issues.

Best New Zealand Poems has recently begun to travel across linguistic as well as national borders. We are delighted that our colleagues at Waiteata Press have this year followed up their English/Chinese print bilingual edition of Best New Zealand Poems 2014 with translator Francesca Benocci’s English/Italian edition of Best New Zealand Poems 2015.

The editorship of Best New Zealand Poems changes annually. This year’s editor is Jenny Bornholdt. Earlier editors were John Newton (2015), Vincent O’Sullivan (2014), Mark Williams and Jane Stafford (2013), Ian Wedde (2012), Bernadette Hall (2011), Chris Price (2010), Robyn Marsack (2009), James Brown (2008), Paula Green (2007), Anne Kennedy and Robert Sullivan (2006), Andrew Johnston (2005), Emma Neale (2004), Robin Dudding (2003), Elizabeth Smither (2002) and Iain Sharp (2001).

The 2017 editor will be Selina Tusitala Marsh.

Bill Manhire is the founding editor, and was Series Editor from 2001-2010. With Damien Wilkins, he co-edited a print anthology, The Best of Best New Zealand Poems (Victoria University Press, 2011), which offers a condensed view of the first decade.

Best New Zealand Poems is supported by a grant from Creative New Zealand, whose assistance we greatly appreciate.  We remain grateful to the late Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) for permission to use his drawing for the first edition of James K Baxter’s Jerusalem Sonnets (Bibliography Room, University of Otago, 1970) on our opening page.

Chris Price

Series Editor
Wellington

May 2017