Bill Manhire and Kay Ryan by Chloe Garner

As a programmer when I pair two poets together it means I often end up reading their books at the same time as their event approaches. Without really meaning to I begin to view them as a couple! So I have spent time moving back and forth between the succinct and sculpted verses of Kay Ryan to some more rangey and seemingly less controlled poems of Bill Manhire. But then I remind myself that they are not an item and so I am determined to reflect on each, one at a time before they become too intertwined in my head!

Kay Ryan's poems are completely particular, by which I mean that although I am new to her work (and am since discovering how greatly and passionately she is revered by people who do know about her) I now feel I could recognise a Kay Ryan poem anywhere! As I read them they remind me of nursery rhymes. Why? Maybe because they do rhyme and they are playful! Also in the sense that they are so pointed and sharp and contain a sense of fable or myth and actually they do refer back to fairy stories, as in Glass Slippers. Failure is described as "the ribbons stalled approach, the helpless/ red-faced urgings of the coach." Such a brilliant image! I love New Clothes as well. I feel her sagely whispering in my ear when I read, "You will cast aside/ something you cherish/ when the tailors whisper,/ Only you could wear this."

Many of Bill Manhire's poems also grow out of stories, memories, myths, as in The God's Journey in his new collection Lifted. In one of my favourite lines, the puffs of dust of his cart come to resemble "the wings of birds". The poems are by turns humourous and absurd, then dark and monumental and feel truthful to human experience, what we mean to do and how we mean to live and then reality cracking open. "We want/ to sit by the shining lake yet settle/ under the surface of ourselves...secretly real.../ submerged." They play at revealing the crafting of the poem, with crossed out lines left in place so we sense the choices being made or not made or held for a long time in balance. Some poems are very moving as in The Ladder, "And, as you can see, it is rotten. Nevertheless, it longs to be lifted." As we all do. 

I am so excited to have discovered both these poets and am wholeheartedly anticipating their reading together on Friday 6 July at 6pm.