Beattie's Book Blog

I was absolutely thrilled to open Beattie's Book Blog and find Graham Beattie's wonderful long post on my new anthology.  Graham writes:

"Harvey McQueen spent his adult lifetime in education. I had known of him for a long while before I finally met him back in the mid-1980's when I had the great joy and privilege of publishing The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse which he and Ian Wedde edited. That was but one of the books he anthologised in a long and illustrious career.'

"Now he has another anthology, published just this week by enterprising Wellington publisher Steele Roberts, a company which provides great support to poetry publishing in this country. In fact outside of AUP and VUP Steele Roberts is probably our leading poetry publisher."


"Harvey's new book, and he tells me it will probably be his last, is These I Have Loved - my favourite New Zealand poems, and it is an absolute gem. It is a marvellous, eclectic collection as you would expect of course from one whom I suspect has poetry running in his veins.Then there is his eight pages of Introduction where he talks of life and explains just how poetry got to be in those veins in the first place, then scattered throughout the book there are his thoughtful comments on the poems he has selected.... Thanks Harvey, These I Have Loved is a must-have for all who love poetry or would like to love poetry.A wonderful addition to my poetry bookshelf. Thanks too for all you have done for NZ poets and NZ poetry over your life. I salute you."

Thank you too, Graham. You can read the whole post here.