Best New Zealand Poems series

The Best New Zealand Poems series, begun in 2001 is an annual online selection of poems chosen by guest editors. The program is run 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.

The series, which is "shamelessly modelled" on The Best American Poetry series, takes one poem each from 25 New Zealand poets, the first annual editor, Iain Sharp, wrote in his introduction to the 2001 selection. The poems must have been published that year either in magazines or books. A new editor selects the poems each year.

"A steady association with the country is sufficient" to be considered a "New Zealander", Sharp wrote.

Bill Manhire, head of the International Institute of Modern Letters, is the series editor and writes a "Welcome" section to each annual collection of poems in the series. Sharp wrote in his introduction that he discussed the nature of the series with Manhire. 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."

"We feel that this publication is a real case where the internet has made possible an initiative which — in New Zealand — would simply not be viable in terms of conventional book publishing," Manhire said in early 2007. "Most of all, it breaks through the distribution barrier which prevents New Zealand poetry from reaching an international audience." Most visitors to the Web site come from overseas.

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.

The New Zealand Book Council has called the online series "a superb entry point for readers unfamiliar with the work of particular writers, and a treasure chest of information for students of New Zealand literature".

The features on the series web site, including links to publishers, New Zealand literary sites, poet biographies, and poets' comments on their work — provides a "'more bang for your verse' approach" that Shelley Howells, a columnist for the New Zealand Herald, called "more satisfying than simply reading a poem on a page".

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Wikipedia