Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2025 is entitled “breath”. It is a potent theme for an anthology of poems because it generates multiple possibilities for the reader. Breath is a key component in writing a poem, just as it is a key player in our mind and body partnerships. Breath stretches into a broad-ranging field of human experience: relationships, politics, moods, self care. Breath is the vital sign of life, and that is exactly what the anthology delivers, signs of life: distinctive, diverse, captivating.
Reading the 141 poems underlines poetry cannot be forced into square boxes that limit how and why we are writing across communities in Aotearoa in 2025. There is no singular setting for style, politics, the personal, recurring motifs. Both subject matter and mood are eclectic. As I read, I have a heightened awareness of shifts in my own breathing: slow and steady, gasps, skin prickling fast. The journal will affect and attract each reader in different ways – depending upon our own predilections, our favoured reading routes.
Read the full review and watch ten readings from poets featured in the book at Poetry Shelf here.
