Coming to it: selected poems. Sam Hunt

Sam Hunt is New Zealand's best-known and, arguably, best-loved poet. Coming to it: Selected poems is the latest collection of Hunt's poems to be published. It is intended to replace both Doubtless: New and selected and Knucklebones: Poems 1962-2012 (both out of print) to ensure that a substantial selection of his poems remain available to the general reader. In Coming to it, a broad selection of Hunt's older poems sit ahead of his more recent work from Chords (2011), Salt River Songs (2016) as well as 19 brand new, previously unpublished poems written in 2018. As always, Hunt's unflinchingly honest, elegiac and moving poems roam around familiar themes of family, friends and lovers; landscapes and the play of the weather; and the challenges of ageing and mortality. Sam Hunt has had a remarkable and enduring career, and Coming to it is a fitting tribute to the quality of his poems.