By prize-winning poet Elizabeth Smither, The Year of Adverbs is full of the stuff of daily life, fizzing with personalities, alive with incidents and travelling from New Plymouth to Paris and back again. 

There is a wedding, a birth, several deaths and funerals as well as glimpses of Walter Ralegh, Fats Waller, Eliza Bennet, a car, a bicycle and a horse playing an accordion. Smither’s eye for unexpected likenesses, her verbal playfulness, her distinctive wit and style are everywhere apparent. 

The Year of Adverbs ends with a delightful sequence of ‘little Parisian poems’ revelling in small details of that city and finishing, ‘Au revoir, bonne journee’.

Author

More about Elizabeth Smither 

Reviews

. . . Shows us the same high wit, supple intelligence and attentive ear that characterises her earlier works. – Hugh Roberts, NZ Books