The Year of Adverbs

Description

Eight years after her last, prize-winning, collection, The Lark Quartet, this is a new book of poems from a major poet. The Year of Adverbs is full of the stuff of daily life, fizzing with personalities, alive with incidents and travelling from New Plymouth to Paris and back again. There is a wedding, a birth, several deaths and funerals as well as glimpses of Walter Ralegh, Fats Waller, Eliza Bennet, a car, a bicycle and a horse playing an accordion. Smither's eye for unexpected likenesses, her verbal playfulness, her distinctive wit and style are everywhere apparent. The book ends with a delightful sequence of 'little Parisian poems' revelling in small details of that city and finishing, 'Au revoir, bonne journee'.

Taranaki writer Elizabeth Smither has written four novels, four books of short stories and 14 books of poetry. She has twice won the major award for New Zealand poetry and was the 2002 Te Mata Poet Laureate. She has held creative writing fellowships. She was made a Member of the NZ Order of Merit (MNZM; approximate to an MBE) and was awarded an honorary DLitt from The University of Auckland in for her contributions to literature.

"I feel confident ["The Year of Adverbs"] will be greeted with general applause as one of the poet's strongest and surest collections to date . . . I expect it to be a prizewinner." Iain Sharp, author, "Real Gold""