James Norcliffe 
Shadow play [PDF ebook] 

The poems in SHADOW PLAY were written during the five year period since James Norcliffe’s previous collection, Villon in Millerton (Auckland University Press, 2007). Norcliffe professes himself not to be a confessional poet; nevertheless he freely acknowledges that places and people served as prompts for the poems. New Zealand based, Norcliffe is well-travelled and his poems have international resonance. Placing Shadow Play with one other poetry collection as a finalist for the annual international Proverse Prize for unpublished writing in 2011, the judging panel (reviewing entries with no knowledge of the writers) found an expert hand behind a wide variety of well-wrought poems on a range of topics, pleasingly interwoven with literary allusions.