Bonus Reading: First Things

‘Quiet but lively and entertaining, First Things
also reminds us that growing up can be anxious and uneasy. There’s
constant learning through mistakes and refreshing honesty in just how
awkward it all was.’ – Harry Ricketts talks to Mark Amery for RNZ’s Culture 101.

‘It’s as though the book was written entirely in lower-case. The ego has not
landed; there is no skiting, not a brag in sight, and First Things
gently wanders, dream-like, sometimes letting go of prose entirely as
Ricketts – one of New Zealand’s best and consistently overlooked poets –
tells his story in poetry.’ – On Newsroom, Steve Braunias.

‘It wasn’t until his return to Hong Kong, as a lecturer at the university,
that Ricketts participated in his first poetry reading. This event, at
the Goethe Institute Hong Kong in February 1977, was written up in the
local paper as having atmosphere of “morbid mutual respect’- Stephanie Johnson on the Aotearoa NZ Review of Books.