Bibliography
As Author:
Available Now
Rāwaho: The Completed Poems
The Ones Who Keep Quiet
The ones who keep quiet for the longest are the dead, yet there are echoes of them everywhere. A turn of the head brings a glimpse of a Victorian banker retrieving his top hat from the gutter. A walk across a bridge lets you pass the ghosts of a Catholic saint, a Marxist martyr…
The Speak House
In The Speak House David Howard takes “the common phrase ‘my life flashed before my eyes’ as a signpost”, and creates a “feverish tumble of impressions” that might have occurred in the final two hours of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life, either just before or just after he lost…
You’re So Pretty When…
David Howard’s collaboration with artist Peter Ransom revisits punk Christchurch in the 1970s and 80s. Limited to 75 hand numbered and signed copies, You’re So Pretty When You’re Unfaithful To Me was letterpress printed on a Littlejohn cylinder press. Designed & printed by Tara Mcleod…
The Incomplete Poems
“The Incomplete Poems is both a summation and a wiping clean of the slate. Here, in their definitive versions, are those poems that I am prepared to stand beside as chalk and duster come to rest next to one another.” – David Howard
Beyond What Is Said To…
Beyond What Is Said To What Is (2010). Lyttleton, New Zealand: Cold Hub Press. ISBN : 9780473166861.
The Word Went Round
Powerful historical poems about nineteenth-century Irish emigration to New Zealand, the colonial wars, Von Tempsky and Te Kooti, moving elegies for poet/painter Joanna Margaret Paul, the artist Reiko Kunimatsu…
How To Occupy Our…
Written by David Howard, with duotone photographs by Fiona Pardington, How to Occupy Our Selves suggests that art is an inscription of (and on) the flesh. Under duress a party girl offers herself; while crossing a bridge a child fears sniper-fire; an orphan mourns for his (or her)…
Shebang: Collected…
“Howard's greatest lyrical power is in apprehending the elusive. His is a poetry of the vanishing, of the shifting elsewhere, of loss lurking within the moment...the cerebral blends with the visceral with a brilliant lightness of touch.” – Kapka Kassabova, New Zealand Listener.
Holding Company
In Holding Company poetry is treated as “a form of prayer, both sacred and profane, but rife with little idiosyncrasies, sudden switches of pace, tone and meaning so as to create an ambiguous haze, almost at times an erotic reverie.” – David Eggleton, Landfall.
In The First Place
“What brings David Howard’s poems together is a finely textured sensibility. His reading is wide and he often works his ‘transformations’ on European models. For all that, his voice is his own and unmistakable, and his love poems with their often surrealistic edge have a quality rare in New Zealand poetry.” – James Norcliffe, Star Weekender.
Head First
“Poetic inspiration arises from many sources; what helps turn it into poetry is craft. Howard’s craft is that he expresses emotions through a background of thought-provoking ideas and images. He composes something rare in New Zealand, metaphysical love poetry…”
– Harvey McQueen, Evening Post.
As Editor:
A Place To Go On From…
Dunedin poet Iain Lonie (1932–1988), a Cambridge scholar who enjoyed an international reputation as a medical historian, died before his poetry was fully appreciated. This collection, assembled from sources public and private, is the result of poet David Howard’s determination…
Jacket2: Cracked Mirrors
Cracked Mirrors is a series on historical and contemporary New Zealand/Aotearoa poetry and poetics. Neither a corrective nor a supplement to previous conversations, we endeavour to nurture an ongoing exploration of New Zealand’s shifting poetic landscape. To this end…
The Blue Outboard…
“Christchurch poet, Nick Williamson, has been widely published. His debut collection, The Whole Forest, was published in 2001. The Blue Outboard is his second… Care for quality, integrity, craft, are evident in every aspect of the book. It’s a gem.” – Carolyn McCurdie, Takahe.
Push
“...there is playfulness...in David’s best work, at odds with the wistfulness... It is a tightrope strategy. A misstep one way could plunge the poem into wordplay for wordplay’s sake; a misstep the other could land the poem in sentimentality. In Push that David negotiates the tension beautifully.” – James Norcliffe, Tuesday Poem.
Complete With…
Here, in Complete With Instructions, represented by previously unpublished pieces, are the poets R.A.K Mason and James K. Baxter. Perhaps they can hear the piano of Don Poynton? Next door, an Australian academic, Keith Russell, attempts to engineer sense by referencing the barbecue in Homer…
Takahe (editions 1-16)
“Founded in 1989 [by David Howard and Sandra Arnold], takahe magazine publishes short stories, poetry and art, as well as essays, interviews, and book reviews in related areas. Many of Aotearoa New Zealand’s brightest literary talents made their first public appearance within our pages…”
Anthologies:
Available Now
In February 2022, the world watched in horror as news outlets began reporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since then tens of thousands of people have died, been wounded, and millions displaced.
The 47 poems in this collection, ranging from polemic to artfully crafted verse (and sometimes both) have been curated by editor Rebecca Graham to express solidarity with the victims of war. This is a collection of poems about war, atrocity, trauma, survival, and being a refugee – and consequently a book also about friendship, humanity, love, and the best of us.
One hundred percent of the sales profits will go to the Sanctuary Foundation, a charity that helps to relocate Ukrainian people to safety and homes in the UK.
Bonsai: Best Small…
Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand brings together a pioneering collection of flash fiction and associated forms (prose poetry and haibun) from 165 writers in Aotearoa New Zealand, along with intriguing essays on this increasingly popular genre. In 200 small stories of no more than 300 words…
Manifesto Aoearoa…
A poem is a vote. It chooses freedom of imagination, freedom of critical thought, freedom of speech. A collection of political poems in its very essence argues for the power of the democratic voice. Here New Zealand poets from diverse cultures, young and old, new and seasoned, from the Bay of Islands to Bluff…
Essential New Zealand…
New Zealanders adore poetry, and this expertly selected and handsomely packaged collection of over 150 poems published since the 1950s shows exactly why: New Zealand poetry is, by turns, distinctive, affecting, joyous, revealing, moving, challenging, startling, profound and intimate. It is our lyrical national voice…
Best NZ Poems (2012)
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…
Best NZ Poems (2009)
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…
Our Own Kind…
From Baxter to Hunt, Frame to Glover, Curnow to Edmond, animals are widely found in New Zealand verse and are the subject of some of our most famous and endearing poems. In Our Own kind Siobhan Harvey brings them together in an intelligently and affectionately chosen anthology…
New New Zealand Poets…
The third in the ‘Poets in Performance’ series, New New Zealand Poets in Performance collects the work of a new generation of poets…who came to prominence in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. These poets are notable for their variety…
Land Very Fertile…
Banks Peninsula on the eastern coast of the South Island, New Zealand, is a place of great natural beauty, an area rich in legend and history, territory of the heart. Land Very Fertile is collection of poetry and prose which seeks to capture the spirit of this much-loved…
Swings + Roundabouts…
Eighty of the finest poems on parenthood brought together in an endearing, intelligent and accessible anthology by editor Emma Neale. Beautifully packaged, this volume features stunning photographs by well-known photographer Mark Smith…
A Good Handful…
From Shakespeare’s sonnets to Japanese haiku, we all know that poetry is the literature of love. But do the poets have lustier moments… In A Good Handful, New Zealand’s most well loved poets give a great grunt in the affirmative…
Painted Poems…
In Painted Poems painter Eion Stevens has responded to 20 New Zealand poems…with an intelligent playfulness. Encountering the paintings alongside their companion poems is a thought-provoking and enriching experience…
Shards of Silver…
Shards of Silver, a visually striking anthology of photographically informed poems, is introduced with essays by photographer Paul Thompson and poet Anna Jackson and is interspersed with intriguing photographic meditations on language.
Best NZ Poems (2004)
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…
Best NZ Poems (2002)
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…
New Zealand Love…
One of New Zealand's best-loved writers, Lauris Edmond also gained worldwide notoriety before her death in January 2000. Her characteristically witty and passionate anthology, published posthumously, is the first historical survey of New Zealand's rich and varied tradition of romantic poetry.
Other Publications:
Coming Soon