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From his green enclave and ‘avid for copy’, this poet is singing still – but also considering the acceptance of silence.

C. K. Stead has always swum through literature, cultures, surroundings both physical and social, with a deft stroke. Completed in his eightieth year, The Yellow Buoy sees the poet firmly attached to his memories, attuned to his craft and attentive to his world. The book is divided into three parts: ‘The Yellow Buoy’, ‘The Silence’ and ‘The Green Enclave’. Here, in classic vein, Catullus returns to receive the ONZ, write to friends and ‘read the world’. Various other literary fellows appear in person, dream or conversation – Allen Curnow and Hugh Kawharu, Frank Sargeson and Barry Humphries, Creeley, Mansfield and Wordsworth. The collection also includes warmly translated versions of poems by Eugenio Montale, Carlo Vita and Philippe Jaccottet; alongside glimpses of fantails and elegies for friends. From sonnets to syllabics, with settings ranging from Croatia and Colombia to Karekare and the Côte d’Azur, these masterly poems urge a reader to stay alert – to pay attention to ‘the poetic moment / so easily missed, / so quickly lost.’

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Reviews

This is a collection to savour on every level. You move from scholarliness to reflection to anecdote to confession. Every poem stalled me. - Paula Green, NZ Herald

If in a collection I find a line to marvel at I have been well served. Stead has written many such lines in this fine and accomplished book. We want to be transported and we are. We want to be touched and we are. We want to be dazzled at the freshness of language and insight: Stead’s poetry has both lightness and density. In short, this is an important collection from a poet whose work has delighted his readers for many years. - Patricia Prime, Takahe

It is important to state at the outset that while Stead’s poetry can be intellectual it is also intimate and close-up. We listen to the poems as if a friend was reading them to us. - Patricia Prime, Takahe