Three Regrets and a Hymn to Beauty: paperback

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Five extended poems linked by themes of beauty and language make up this lively new collection from one of the best New Zealand poets writing today. The long poem gives Wedde room to explore these themes in detail, weaving back and forth, accumulating phrases, images and sounds, always with characteristic exuberance and humour. The central 'Hymn to Beauty' is a kind of zany calendar of a search for beauty among the everyday, made up of song lyrics, favourite people, quotations and conversations. In 'Letter to Peter McLeavey' the poet travels the country, delighting afresh in its beauty but also seeing it through the eyes of painters who have preceded him as interpreters of the landscape. The 'Three Regrets' that open the collection and the concluding poem for his mother provide vivid and moving frames for this wonderful book.

Author Bio

Ian Wedde, poet, fiction writer, critic and art curator, was born in Blenheim in 1946. When he was 7 his family went overseas for 8 years, living first in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and then in England. They came back to New Zealand when Ian was 15 and he attended Kings College, Auckland, and then the University of Auckland, where he gained a MA in English. From 1966 his poems began appearing regularly in journals, including Landfall and Freed, and he has now has published nine collections of poems including The Commonplace Odes, three novels, short stories, essays and criticism. He has edited several anthologies including The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse (with Harvey McQueen) and The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Poetry (1989). Ian Wedde won the 1977 Book Award for Fiction for his first novel, Dick Seddons Great Dive and the 1978 NZ Book Award for Poetry for Spells for Coming Out (AUP). He was the Burns Fellow in 1972 and other recognition of his writing includes the Writers Bursary 1974, the Scholarship in Letters 1980, 1989 and the Victoria University writing fellowship 1984. He was a member of the Literary Fund Advisory Committee 197779 and of the Queen Elizabeth II Visual Arts Panel in 1990.