Bonfires on the Ice
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
Bonfires on the Ice
By (Author) Harry Ricketts
Te Herenga Waka University Press
Te Herenga Waka University Press
5th November 2025
New Zealand
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Modern and contemporary poetry (c 1900 onwards)
Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss
Physical Properties
Paperback
80
Width 138mm, Height 210mm, Spine 7mm
Description
Its getting colder as the flames
rise from the bonfires, real and virtual.
See how they flicker in the darkling air.
What is happiness in a suddenly unfamiliar world What happens to us once the old connections spark and disappear In this new poetry collection, with his characteristic humanity, intelligence and humour, Harry Ricketts writes of youth, hope, books and writers, and the friendships through which we come to know ourselves. Included in this book are poems about finding ones way through a world altered by loss, and the magical thinking that sustains us.
Author Bio
Harry Ricketts is a poet and literary scholar and has published around 30 books. He has lived in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, since 1981. Until his retirement in 2022, he was a professor in the English Programme at Te Herenga WakaVictoria University of Wellington. His books include the internationally acclaimed The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling (1999) and Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great War (2010). His recent books include the poetry collections Winter Eyes (2018) and Selected Poems (2021), and the memoir First Things (2024). With historian David Kynaston, he is the co-author of Richie Benauds Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic (Bloomsbury, 2024).
