In the first anthology of its kind to be published outside New Zealand in decades, Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets makes available to British readers the freshness and vitality of current New Zealand poetry. Starting in the mid-1980s, it captures turning points in the work of Allen Curnow and Bill Manhire, poets who are well known across the English-speaking world, and charts the advent of a generation of younger writers. These poets play freely with lyric expectations, extending the boundaries of poetry through constant formal innovation, intellectual inquiry and a fiercely fond attention to the uniqueness of New Zealand life and speech. Poems by writers born in the mid-1960s explore new ways of talking about the bracing challenge of living in a bicultural and multicultural society. With an introduction illuminating themes and contexts, and reflections by the poets themselves, Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets forms an indispensable map of a distinctive literary landscape.