Age and mercy

Poetic takes on the human condition - both mental and physical - range from affectionate to bracing.

- BY NICHOLAS REID

BONFIRES ON THE ICE
by Harry Ricketts (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $25), out on November 6

A seasoned poet with 11 collections already behind him, retired academic Harry Ricketts is an urbane writer with much wit but who is always aware of the human condition. His earlier collection, Winter Eyes, had him beginning to consider older age. Bonfires on the Ice goes further into that territory, especially in the three poems he writes about his late mother, Pink Blanket, Last Day and Irregular Villanelle for My Mother. They might seem almost frivolous at first, but they show warmth and real affection. In The Lecture 3, he says “I’m counting down the lectures / I’ll never give again” and sees how his students reacted – sometimes negatively. But he reminds us, in Another Footnote to Larkin, that even the mainly pessimistic British poet Philip Larkin could say such positive things as “we should also be kind while we may”. Ricketts’ reach takes him to a cowboy version of Robert Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came – a great 19th-century poem – and a version of a medieval tale told completely in limericks. Very engaging and soothing in a messy world.

IF WE KNEW HOW TO WE WOULD
by Emma Barnes (Auckland University Press, $24.99)