A Day Like No Other

James Norcliffe, awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2022, is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most distinguished and beloved contemporary poets. A Day Like No Other gathers poems from his remarkable career, which includes eleven collections spanning nearly four decades.

Often conversational in tone – talking (it may seem) of you and me – these poems are perceptive and witty. They ring with clarity as they pay witness to the turn of the seasons, environmentally, domestically and politically. Their range of reference is both broad and local, as Norcliffe sweeps his lens through time and space and, with superb control of focus, zooms in and out on the peculiarities of our species and our planet. The ‘here and now’ is vividly present in every poem, and every poem also quietly insists that there is much more to ‘here’ and ‘now’ than is obvious at first glance. To read a Norcliffe poem can be to feel the sun on one’s face and, simultaneously, a shiver down the spine.

A beautifully designed and artfully curated volume, A Day Like No Other is a fine selection of James Norcliffe’s like-no-other poems. It will be read and re-read for generations, and is a must-have for confirmed Norcliffe fans and Norcliffe newbies alike.

 

Ice falls from the trees like white petals and
the great, bare branches reach up struggling with

the memory of birds. The wind picks up, colder now,
lifting the paper. You’d almost think it was alive.

                                   From  ‘The Museum of Unnatural History’