In the beginning there were shark teeth
from “Residue from the Fert Works”
in the bite
of the phosphate pile, at the end
superphosphate bitching in my skin-split knuckles,
curved like the holy tannins around my mug
Grit
by Viv Smith
Available late March 2026
ISBN: ISBN: 978-1-0670252-2-9
paperback; 108 p.
148 mm x 210 mm
rrp: $25
Passion, persistence, and reluctant realism – the link between grit and grief echo throughout this powerful first collection. From those who “scratched dragons inside Maeshowe” to those who “hear the shrapnel scream when a family explodes”, Smith’s collection presents pithy, punchy, and resonant observations of heroism, frailty, and “buttoned secrets unfurling”; the tension between holding-on and letting go. With a searching compassion and flashes of humour, these poems speak of overcoming obstacles and enduring – how we adjust to the grit we rub up against, what that costs, and how empty the alternative would be.
Viv Smith grew up in Taranaki, journeyed into writing in Canterbury, and now lives in the Manawatū. She trained as a geologist, then as a hydrogeologist, before taking up roles leading research/investigation teams in regional councils and government. Through subsequent research management roles, although full of stimulus and challenge, nothing has provided more enjoyment than when she’s introduced words to each other and they start sparking. Viv has published in takahē, Blackmail Press, Deep South, 4th Floor, and the anthologies Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand, Paint Me, and There are Rabbits Here. Grit is her first poetry collection.
I made it up. The bit about pirates.
from “Eating Lemons”
She’d have admired the romance,
the rampaging spirit, knowing
her words were harsher
than the tale we all told ourselves
about sailing on through.
Of course these are gritty poems, elemental poems, but also wise, wry, off-beat poems full of surprising juxtapositions and imaginative connections that push at the membrane of language. In Grit, Viv Smith reveals herself to be a complete poet, ever alert to the music of words, the architecture of form, and the exactitude of images that surprise and remain long after the poem is laid aside.
– JAMES NORCLIFFE
He raised no children –
from “Monumental”
only islands from the seabed
created little wealth –
but accumulated knowledge
saved no lives –
except his own from a sea of sadness
held no patents –
yet invented laughter in unlikely places.
This is Leonard Cohen with a dictionary and a rich Pākehā history, who sings toikupu from the gravel of her voice. This is from a poet who refuses to befriend the invisible, but will hold you in the steady hand of her language, who can take you through the squalls and rage of grief as easily as navigate the ‘deep pools’ and ‘hopeful springs’ of hanging on.
Grit made me ‘kee kee kee’ and jump in ecstasy – for the ache these poems carry, for the way she finds us – tangata Tiriti – in our dad’s shed, growing up on cream street, working in the ‘fert factory’, all of it, the piss, the ash, the grit. Every word that comes out of her mouth is earned, each phrase ‘a sweet focus / on a bleak day’. These are poems of loss, of parents, unborn babies, pets, friends, lovers, all framed by the opening “When a Pepeha is Required”, where her tūpuna of Scottish fisherfolk were ‘robbed of all but their whenua’s edge’ and then left ‘mermaids who could not swim’ to sail to New Zealand. But this is where she finds us, in the voices that ‘fall from heaven’ or ‘emerge from the earth’, in the unflinching gaze while we eat the lemons, this whole acerbic but hopeful truth of our shared history.
– GAIL INGRAM
… For you, I set my table
from “Metal”
with wooden spoons and meditate
with keys like mala beads. I calm
my skip-squeaky fantail breath
to light down on the branches
of my lungs, my chest full of slight
touch-point slivers, gentle clawing
for core wood. A careful adaption …
There is a sumptuousness in Viv Smith’s poems that reminds me of late summer, with its bounties. And there is a resistance that reminds me of dusk, when it gets harder to see. Add these together and you have Grit, which is rich, strange, knotty, vexing, rewarding. This is poetry where there is loss and readjustment, but where ‘a fall is not an ending’.
– ERIK KENNEDY
Available wherever good books are sold, or direct from SVP by clicking below:
Sudden Valley Press 