Twelve months of a laureate: in 2008 Michele Leggott wrote a poem a week to record her term as the inaugural New Zealand Poet Laureate. In her new collection of poems Mirabile Dictu ('mi.rah.buh.lay dik.tu' - Wonderful to relate; amazing to say), she relates the wonders of those 12 months, which took her to Matahiwi Marae in Hawke's Bay to receive her brilliant sky-blue, specially carved tokotoko, Te Kikorangi; through a time of mourning for and celebration of former poet laureate Hone Tuwhare; to Florence, across a 'poetic bridge'; and to Wellington 'hand to hand' with four other laureates. With her is Te Kikorangi as guide and companion - 'almost as good as the blue from Kapiti/ we eat when the good times roll'. Leggott also delves back into the past, layering poems of today with poems of then - and finds, among others, Isabella - growing up in a colonial town, 'named for a grandmother over the sea'. The poems in Mirabile Dictu are gifts; they are lush and supple; they glory in language; they go 'looking for a good time' and find rose cuttings, great-aunts, an elephant, several feasts, adorations and assumptions - 'the breathing world'. Through the poems Leggott explores languages within languages, hearing and seeing, coming and going, the porousness of experience and its representations. In this collection she is a daily traveller, crafter of words and maker of fire.
- ISBN10 1306476356
- ISBN13 9781306476355
- Publish Date 1 January 2009
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 4 March 2015
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Auckland University Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 161
- Language English