Emma Neale, a poet and novelist based in the South Island, is this year's editor of Best New Zealand Poems 2004, produced annually by the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) and available online Best New Zealand Poems 2004

Neale compared the selection process to the challenges that there must be in putting together a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide travel series.

"It was like trying to put together 'Destination New Zealand' for poetry, where I only had a limited time to find an appropriate selection of 2004's best poems, despite exploring a field full of variation and intrigue."

Image: Ralph Hotere, drawing for the first edition of James K Baxter's Jerusalem Sonnets Emma Neale, a poet and novelist based in the South Island, is this year's editor of Best New Zealand Poems 2004, produced annually by the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) and available online Best New Zealand Poems 2004

Neale compared the selection process to the challenges that there must be in putting together a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide travel series.

"It was like trying to put together 'Destination New Zealand' for poetry, where I only had a limited time to find an appropriate selection of 2004's best poems, despite exploring a field full of variation and intrigue."

Image: Ralph Hotere, drawing for the first edition of James K Baxter's Jerusalem Sonnets"I've chosen poems that spoke to me_when I read a fine poem, there is usually a sense of actively arriving at layers of new knowledge, of discovering experience, or even belief, simultaneously with the speaker or personality in that poem. Although poetry alone might make nothing happen, it can italicise the collective voice of any particular cause."

Emma Neale says, "that the poets here, in all their variety, speak persuasively, comically, shockingly, movingly, iconoclastically, resonantly, intimately, courageously, irreverently, with compelling ambiguity: beautifully."