Paper Cups: Poems by Peter Rawnsley (Marmac Media, 2025). RRP $30. ISBN 978-199-118545-7. Available from the publisher.
Peter Rawnsley, a Porirua poet, died in August 2026, aged 86. As an obituary says, Peter was “A lifelong lover of poetry, science and the natural world. He found his greatest joy in words, wild places and the people he loved. He lived a life shaped by curiosity and an enduring appreciation of the beauty around him.”
I read and enjoyed Peter’s first poetry collection, Light Cones, then missed the launch of his second collection, Stones & Kisses, so I was delighted to attend the launch of Paper Cups in Plimmerton in July. Sadly, I did not finish reading the collection until after Peter had died, so I can’t tell him in person how much I enjoyed it – but I still want to tell the world!
What I like most about Peter’s poetry is the way he combines imagination, concrete fact, and an awareness of the fragility of life and the world, plus his keen (and in my experience, comparatively unusual) appreciation for both religious faith and natural science – in fact, it was the science poems I enjoyed most in this collection. Here is an extract from “Sagittarius A*”, which is about the giant black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy:
Black hole, black centre will you turn white?
A seemingly infinite crush, not, and bounce
back in a flash (by your clock), like the
reverberation of a giant bell, become the
mother of all firecrackers, radiate, birth-out,
all that you took, crossed back across a
reversed event horizon, given back to us. (p. 39)
But I also loved the poems set much closer to home, like “Nine black swans”, which begins:
Nine black swans from Pāuatahanui Inlet have taken
up residence at Karehana Bay. They do this rarely,
It is astonishing, as if an orchestra set up on the beach
and played the Ninth Symphony consummately…. (p. 9)
Such a great image!
It would have been wonderful if Peter’s health had permitted him to produce more poems and more collections. In life, I don’t think Peter’s poems gained the readership they deserved. But the verdict of literature is often delayed, and in time, I hope that more people will discover what a fine and engaging poet Peter was and is. Marmac Media deserve a lot of credit for ensuring that this book appeared in time for Peter to take part in and enjoy its launch.
