Poems for our times and for the future from three striking new voices.

AUP New Poets 12 brings together three careful observers of the everyday and the ineffable. Anuja Mitra, Loretta Riach and Zephyr Zhang tell of wandering through cities, ghostworking from office cubicles and sweating through heat waves and tax season; of grappling with questions of alienation, belonging, lust and grief.

Though irreverence and a generational malaise might hover at the poems’ edges, tenderness forms their centre, as when Zhang encounters a house on the back of a truck in the small hours of the morning:

I would say look!
how lucky we are
to know that magic still happens
if we stay awake to see it

With humour, vulnerability and flair, these collections navigate being young in precarious times – and mark the arrival of three confident new voices in New Zealand poetry.

Endorsements

‘AUP New Poets 12 carries on the high standard set by the series and gives a fuller canvas to three young poets who I know we will read much more from in the years to come. Open-hearted, funny and extremely current, Anuja Mitra, Loretta Riach and Zephyr Zhang all write engrossing collections that deliver on the promise of their appearances in local and international journals.’
— Francis Cooke

Authors

Zephyr Zhang 张挚 is a queer writer, developer and ex-geotechnical engineer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Their poetry has featured in various literary crevasses including Starling, Sweet Mammalian, Cordite, Landfall and Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems. They are nocturnal.

Loretta Riach is a queer artist and writer from Tāmaki Makaurau currently living in Naarm. Their writing has appeared in journals in Aotearoa and Australia, including Starling, The Spinoff, Sweet Mammalian, Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, Minarets and Sick Leave. In 2025, they were an artist-in-residence on the island of Klovharun, Finland.

Anuja Mitra was born in San Diego but calls Tāmaki Makaurau home. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in local and international publications including Landfall, Cordite, Poetry Aotearoa, Turbine | Kapohau, Starling, Sweet Mammalian and takahē, as well as several anthologies. She has also reviewed books and theatre for online platforms.