The Mata New Zealand Poet Laureate
Elizabeth Smither's poems - brief, darting, and full of unexpected  insights - inhabit back gardens and vast 
landscapes, art galleries, restaurants, educational courses, public transport and are peopled with family 
and friends from the present and the past. They fit together in a quite distinctive way: "the point is not 
simply the pleasure of juxtaposition, it is the way ... details transform each other through mutual 
awareness", writes fellow poet Bill Manhire. Smither writes with a fluency and assurance, 
and is so comfortable in her own voice, that it is easy to take her gifts for granted. Her first full-length 
UK publication, A Question of Gravity, is an extensive selection from five of her most recent 
collections, including Red Shoes (Godwit, 2003), the result of her now concluded two-year term as 
The Mata New Zealand Poet Laureate.  

	Cela says grace

	First mouthfuls. What if
	the Inquisition in its cart

	were parked outside? We've
	broken the grace, you, my

	most religious and applying friend
	always say at my prompting.

	We can't take back that first
	delicious forkful, that knife

	that's cut into the fish, marked
	with Christ's thumb. You start

	For what we have already received...
	We laugh, lift napkins to our faces

	you go on, for excellent cooking by
	Elizabeth you improvise to enchant

	whoever's listening, and we,
	eyes lowered over our smeared forks

	those plunging knives, the crumbs
	of our misdeeds, turn back

	time several seconds, settle down
	the sipped wine's walking on water.


		

	Inflating a dinosaur


	Mouth over the blowhole. When
	T-Rex is fully inflated: some thirty breaths
	shared among those who are breathing-
	my tiny-waisted small-framed daughter
	
	her partner's superman shoulders
	who will arrive in time to delete
	the last creases from T-Rex's neck
	those old men green creases that
		
	inflate last to taut plastic skin
	and my contribution: I never knew
	how deep my lungs could breathe or expel
	what might be stale residual air

	residing in their twin pink tanks. Or
	how deeply satisfying to suck so hard
	on life under the cover of this chore
	the T-Rex hanging from my lips.



	Pencil from the Algonquin

	That dull matt black I adore
	black with night fallen on it
	but not overcome, deepened
	without the shine. Each end

	the black lead, the black rubber tip
	like a black shirt emerging from a cuff
	and between the legend in silver
	Algonquin Hotel 59 West 44th Street.

	Isn't there a cat on a pink chaise-longue
	descendant of a cat of a  cat
	who may deign to condescend
	to certain favoured guests?

	But I who have not been
	to the Algonquin or New York
	have this pencil, so stylish
	so dark, so full of wit.