Manhire - missing in action?

Bill Manhire has previously won the poetry book award (in its various guises) on about five occasions if my memory serves me correctly.


In 2010 VUP published his The Victims of Lightning  which many, including this blogger, thought was Manhire at the height of his powers.


However the judges for this year's New Zealand Post Book Awards couldn't find a space for it in their short-list which will have raised some eyebrows around the literary community.
Perhaps, like the fiction category, three-book short-lists don't give them enough room.
Can someone explain to me then why the two non-fiction categories both have short-lists of five while fiction and poetry are confined to three? How stupid is that?