Manhire made happy

Director of Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters and New Zealand’s inaugural poet laureate Bill Manhire has had a poem — My Childhood In Ireland — published in The New Yorker. It is the first time Manhire has been published in the magazine and, with characteristic humility, he said it was “very nice”. Arts Foundation director Simon Bowden said that, as far as he knew, Janet Frame and CK Stead were the only other New Zealanders published in the journal. “I can’t imagine how many people submit work. It’s fantastic for Bill and fantastic for New Zealand.” The poem begins: ‘I never climbed the hill / or strolled to the end of the pier / to see what the walkers in the rain / might be finding out there.’ It will be published in a collection due to be released in March.