Remember Me Poems to Learn by Heart from Aotearoa New Zealand

A delightful, inspiring anthology of New Zealand poets ranging from the likes of James K. Baxter and Allen Curnow to those poets practising their craft today: Chris Tse, Tusiata Avia, Jessie Puuru, Hera Lindsay Bird just to name a few of my personal favourites.

Each section is a small anthology of its own. It begins with whakataukī or wisdom and ends with politics. In between we experience the wonder of odes; whenua, moana, rangi/earth, sea, sky; love songs; and histories, stories.

As an added bonus, the anthology finishes with two articles on performing poetry. Zech Soakai, insightfully provides a structured guide on memorisation of poetry in his article titled 'Verse, Vessel and Voice'. Rosalind Ali then goes on to elaborate on four key steps on her article 'Teaching, Learning, and Performing Poetry'. A wonderful resource for any teacher who knows that for our students, “To remember a poem is to carry it with you always.”

“To remember a poem is to carry it with you always – the poem a distillation of thought, feeling, sound. To remember a poem is to go freely, without your keys, your bag, your baggage, yet to possess a valuable taonga. It's the ability to speak a poem out loud, to yourself, to the air, to your folks. There’s a reason we say ‘off by heart’ when we commit words to memory: to remember a poem is to hold that poem close to your heart.”

— from the introduction by Anne Kennedy