Over Hear: six types of poetry experiment in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Literary Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. Lisa Samuels's long essay proposes an expansive set of definitions of six modes of experimental poetry in Aotearoa/New Zealand. An American poet, critic and scholar who has lived and worked in Auckland since 2006, Lisa Samuels examines these modes in the work of Albert Wendt, Jen Crawford, David Kārena- Holmes, Ya-Wen Ho, Murray Edmond, Kelly Malone and others. This essay is essential reading for anyone engaged with experimental poetry in the Pacific. Samuels's method is inclusive; she writes about Māori, Pakeha (white) and Asian writers in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The books will also be important to anyone engaged in experimental writing in English, or in contemporary poetry more generally. That there is writing in the Pacific that is indubitably experimental has long been an argument of this press. This essay, along with Rob Wilson's Pacific Postmodern, published originally by Tinfish Press, lays out some of that oceanic field.