Scenery and Agriculture

Overview

David Beach has written a collection of nature poems that reject easy ideas of romanticism or landscape poetry. Although the poems have a deep connection to the landscape, they tend to focus on the everyday rather than the scenic, on the matters at hand rather than grand themes; these are poems to be read in any circumstance, but particularly where society is confronted with nature and the effects humans have wrought upon it. The winner of the 2008 Prize in Modern Letters from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Beach is a kind of antipoet, reflexively suspicious of language’s ability to dazzle or seduce and thriving on the disjunction between high-flown literary associations and the insistently prosaic.

Reviews

“The poems in this volume stake out new territory in contemporary New Zealand poetry and make a powerful case for further exploration.”  —Hugh Roberts, columnist, New Zealand Listener

Author Biography

David Beach is a poet and a recipient of the Prize in Modern Letters, New Zealand's largest literary award. He is the author of Abandoned Novel and his poems have been published in newspapers and magazines that include Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Bulletin, and the Canberra Times.