A rose rescues a job interview and other everyday miracles from one of our most treasured poets.

The grass with little daisies in it springs

as if springs are under my feet. I poke

the ferrule of my umbrella in it, as if

I need a prop for steadiness and yet

it is a pretence: waterlogged or not

something like joy is running underneath.

In her twentieth poetry collection, Elizabeth Smither brings together a new ensemble of surprising images and charismatic companions. A herd of cows gathers around a radio to listen wide-eyed to a Mozart concerto. A frog leads us unhurriedly down the garden path. Jane Austen’s Emma makes an appearance. A cat critiques Wittgenstein. And a flamboyant fabric rose rescues a job interview.

Each poem in The Interview Rose is a bridge between the private self and the physical world, travelling the long route through art, religion, philosophy, and the pleasures of language.

Author

Elizabeth Smither has written six novels, six collections of short stories and nineteen poetry collections. She has twice won the major award for New Zealand poetry and was the 2001–2003 Te Mata Poet Laureate. In 2004, she was awarded an honorary LittD from the University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau for her contribution to literature and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. She received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2008. Her book, Night Horse (Auckland University Press, 2017), won the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry.

Endorsements

‘The Interview Rose has Elizabeth Smither’s voice, her distinctive tone, all over it – measured, wry, insightful, observant. Smither prefers understatement to melodrama, and the poems are directed outward, delighting in the world. The Jane Austen poems are little marvels of literary criticism.’
— Tim Upperton