Bøger af O'Brien Gregory

Between 2011 and 2014, poet and artist Gregory O'Brien found himself following the migratory routes of whales and seabirds across vast tracts of the South Pacific Ocean, resulting in work that O'Brien describes as 'acts of devotion - a homage to a series of remarkable locations and to the natural histories of those places'. In three parts, this collection stretches across the Pacific, following whale-roads, weather balloons and sons at sea, charting historical explorations and recent disasters such as the grounding of the Rena, along with other Pacific realisms - the 'Pacific trash vortex', the wavering democracy of Tonga, the political history of Chile. These poems are an exploration of outlying islands, the ocean that lies between them, and the whale-species and sea birds found there. From Waihi looking east and Valparaiso looking west, O'Brien surveys the cultural heart and health of an ocean in memorable, musical, moving lines.

Gregory O'Brien's first collection since Afternoon of an Evening Train (2005), Beauties of the Octagonal Pool is centred on the 'octagonal pool' of the Waitemata Harbour. Arranged in eight sections, the book collects poems written from and out of a variety of times, locations and experiences, from the water-frontages of Fiji, Fiordland and the Mediterranean to the built history of Moscow and Berlin. Expansive, charming, wide-ranging, O'Brien's poetry always has a thoughtful musicality, a shambling romance, a sense of humour. In testament to this, the poem 'Beauties of the Octagonal Pool' does not itself appear in the book, having been abandoned after O'Brien became marooned in it, half way through. But its ghostly themes haunt the collection and add ballast to its ambitious eight-part structure - a structure held together by the supremely assured and inviting voice of one of our best poets.