Further Conviction Pending: Poems 1998-2008

Further Convictions Pending is the definitive collection of Vincent O’Sullivan’s celebrated poetry of the last decade. Forty or so poems from each of four previous volumes are gathered here with forty-two new poems, displaying the wit, intellectual agility and arresting beauty for which O’Sullivan is renowned.

Praise for Further Convictions Pending

This substantive collection will help cement O'Sullivan's place as one of the leading men of letters in New Zealand literary life today.

Peter Dornauf WAIKATO TIMES

As any poetry lover knows, there’s often a moment of secret anxiety when starting a much-anticipated collection. Novels can be baggy and are forgiven for it. Short fiction occasionally trips up, and its stumbles are forgotten. But with poetry, there’s no room for lenience. A poem must be like a swing bridge: light yet steely-strong, capable of bearing great expectations.

If the poet in question is Vincent O’Sullivan, however, any pre-crossing anxiety is significantly lessened. For when it comes to words, O’Sullivan is a master bridge-builder.Sarah Quigley THE LISTENER

O'Sullivan is a witty, intellectual poet and these are poems full of story, full of detail. ...Auden talks about poetry as 'memorable speech' - that's what these poems are. ...I love the life in these poems. Recommended!

Harry Ricketts SPEAKING VOLUMES Radio NZ National

Vincent O'Sullivan at his launchVincent reading at his Unity Books launch.

Praise for Seeing You Asked, winner of the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry: one of the outstanding books of poems of the decade. Kevin Ireland

Praise for Lucky Table, shortlisted for the 2002 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry: There is a kind of luminous spirituality about O’Sullivan’s poetry, that long after you have read the poems, continues to reside in the objects or situations the poems describe. Anna Jackson

Praise for Nice morning for it, Adam, winner of the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry: The poems shimmer with skill and vigour . . . With this collection his reputation as one of New Zealand's foremost living literary figures takes another step forward. Paul Thompson

Praise for Blame Vermeer: Blame Vermeer is the real thing, wise beyond the attitudes of wisdom, deft beyond the posturing of deftness, brimming with O'Sullivan's exciting ability simply to talk his understated way into sheer bloody poetry. Michael Hulse

Vincent O’Sullivan is one of New Zealand’s leading writers, author of the biography of John Mulgan, Long Journey to the Border, the novels Let the River Stand and Believers to the Bright Coast, and many plays and collections of short stories and poems. He is joint editor of the five-volume Letters of Katherine Mansfield, has edited a number of major anthologies, and is currently writing the authorised biography of Ralph Hotere.

An Emeritus Professor of English at Victoria University, Vincent O’Sullivan is a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.