Selected poems

Charles Brasch (1909-1973) was the founder and first editor of "Landfall," New Zealand's premier journal of literature and ideas. Born in Dunedin, he grew up to be at home in the literature, art, and architecture of Europe, but returned to devote his life to the arts in his own country--as editor, critic, collector, and patron. Brasch's vocation, however, was to be a poet. As he said in his memoir "Indirections," in writing poems he "discovered New Zealand . . . because New Zealand lived in me as no other country could live, part of myself as I was part of it, the world I breathed and wore from birth, my seeing and my language." This selection of Brasch's poetry shows his journey of discovery as he learned by reading poets such as Rilke, W. B. Yeats, and Robert Graves to find his own voice as "a citizen of the English language."