Roar Squeak Purr: A New Zealand Treasury of Animal Poems

                                                                         

Roar Squeak Purr: A New Zealand
Treasury of Animal Poems (2022)
Editor: Paula Green
Illustrator: Jenny Cooper

 

 

Roar Squeak Purr:
A New Zealand Treasury
of Animal Poems
Ill. Jenny Cooper (2022)
Puffin/Penguin Random House
269 pages, Hardback
ISBN 978 0 14 377514 0

  

In this mammoth poetry collection, Paula Green (poet, editor and mentor) promises animals both ‘real and invented, domesticated, wild, endangered, extinct,’ while illustrator Jenny Cooper apologises for the lack of unicorns but promises ‘barnacles and crocodiles galore.’ They both deliver.

Roar Squeak Purr: A New Zealand Treasury of Animal Poems contains an ark-load of animals, from tuatua to tardigrades, dolphins to dragons and karearea to flingamangos.   Paula Green encourages young people to enjoy and write poems, so there are plenty of poems by youthful bards. Equally well represented are such adult writers as James Norcliffe, Janet Frame, Ben Brown, Hone Tuwhare, Joy Cowley, Kyle Mewburn, Lauris Edmond, Bill Nagelkerke and Margaret Mahy.

The poems are all as lively as the creatures they depict. Jon Gadsby describes a hippopotamus as a ‘watery, snortery potamus thing’ while Joy Cowley creates an unforgettable cat in just four lines:

‘There was a cat called Moggy

Who used to swim in the sea.

It made her whiskers soggy

But it got her fish for tea.’

 

My favourites both turned out to be the work of the talented Renee Liang. Not only did she write the world’s first poem about Tardigrades (the tiny creatures who can survive in boiling springs or outer space) but she also wrote the highly educational ‘Zombie Wasp’ which follows the life cycle of a deadly insect:

silent surgeon

jewelled sheath

creeping through

the leaves beneath

 

stalks its patient

a crunching cockroach

unaware

it’s booked for lunch …

 

Every page carries magnificent colour illustrations by Jenny Cooper, who uses different styles to match each poem. For Peggy Dunstan’s witty ‘Centipede’ she has created a cartoon centipede undergoing a shoe crisis. For Anna Jackson’s ‘Tuatara’, however, the dignified portrait reflects the words perfectly:

‘the tuatara sitting still

It hardly seems to move at all.’

 

Note: There’s a reading of Sacha Cotter’s gloriously funny ‘Chook Chook’ available on YouTube.

 

Marvellous to just dip into, Roar Squeak Purr also has two indexes – one for Animals; one for Authors – so readers can find their favourites again.

 

The opening line of the first poem (‘Recipe for Happiness,’ by Tom Nalder aged 11) proclaims a perfect theme for this imaginative animal anthology:

 ‘Imagination  - let it free.’

 

Trevor Agnew 11 July 2026  [Review 3847]