Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Memory is a Family Circle by Michelle Elvy

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Memory is a Family Circle

Memory scratches from LPs played on a turntable in
a mahogany cabinet, the one with crystal bottles behind
the little door, all these things we did not yet understand:
Jesus Christ Superstar, whiskey and Hair and cycles of
revolution and change, the dizzy spinning (way before we
opened the liquor cabinet), worlds we were stepping into
as we set the discs in motion.

We handled them with care, as shown by our parents: Set
the needle down gently, just so, and make sure to select the
right speed: the big ones are 33s, your Home on the Range
and Bambi, 45s. We were proud when allowed to handle
the arm, our little hands pushing it over, our breaths
held before the music began. We did not know then
how important speed was,

that these numbers meant revolutions per minute, how
this record meant record, made voices come alive, speak
to us from a distance. We went to sleep with Yvonne
Elliman’s lullabies and Bing Crosby singing from wide open
plains, zephyrs gently tickling our dreams. We did not yet
know that sound is memory, how it’s physical, and real
how dance becomes muscle memory,

how we can still do the hustle today, our old hearts
thumping in time to the music, rocking to raucous 70s
beats that turned over Elvis and Chuck Berry, even when
we grew into rolling stones. And later, when I could
not stop moving, I learned memory is a rolling ocean,
carrying all creatures past present and future, all sense of
what matters most,

hydrogen and oxygen in the right amounts water balancing
everything, the sea floating our boat and carrying us
forward, perpetual rhythm, day after day and so on and
so on. The moon pulling seas, night after night, the suck
of tidal breath as ocean currents and tradewinds move in
constant flow round our beloved earth and we give into this,
this natural cycle of our turning world,

our westbound lives illuminated by everything we’ve ever
learned, ever danced, ever heard from before. My mother
told me: memory is the garden your Ma planted, the cycle
of her farm, the sun and moon and sun and moon again,
memory is this candle we light, she said, it’s the way we
celebrate Christmas each year, not the photos of lost ones
but the way they keep

shining. I tell my children: memory is a ship sailing round
the globe, romping with wind and current, dolphins
and whales and animals we cannot see, all singing in the
depths beneath, their frequencies their own, circling the
globe, too, our ship trailing this phosphorescence, this
remarkable light, this idea of all living things, a glowing
and a disappearing 

Michelle Elvy
from Motion Sickness, At the Bay | I Te Kokoru, 2026

NOTE: after The Family Circus comic originally The Family Circle,
created in 1960 by cartoonist Bil Keane

Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her books include the everrumble, the other side of better and Motion Sickness, shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award and Runner up in the John O’Connor Award. Her poem ‘Will’ is joint-Runner-Up in the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Competition. Her numerous anthologies include the forthcoming MAYDAY (edited with David Eggleton and Siobhan Harvey), an urgent call to the world from Aotearoa launching in December 2026.

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: essa may ranapiri poetry launch

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Join us to launch Puke, a new book from essa may ranapiri. The book will be launched by Jasmine Sargent; Ruby Solly and Midden Rahurahu will read poetry in response to Puke; and there will be hot chips.

Tuesday 10 November, 6pm
Unity Books, 57 Willis Street, Wellington
Free event – all welcome!

They first meet a million years ago, in the eruption of a volcano.

The second time, it’s in a liquor store: Hinenuitepo is buying a lighter for Mahuika; Hinemoana is picking up drinks.

Before long, they become entangled in rituals of mortality—love, hot chips, a carved bone strap-on, multiple evictions and a new puppy—all while holding down their duties as Death and the Sea.

But there is a great sickness rising in them both. The other atua have begun to disappear, and their world is slowly dying. Somewhere, an insidious power waits.

As the story shifts between our two lovers, Puke weaves a modern puuraakau of desire, decay and decolonisation.

Poetry Shelf Plays Favourites: Moonlight by Bill Manhire

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Moonlight
       Kate Gray (1975–1991)

I start up a conversation
with occasional Kate. Too late,
too late, but with a big sigh
she appears in the sky.

I tell her the home doesn’t forget –
her mother’s lullaby step
still reaches the chair
where her father sits deep in the forest.

I hear myself saying
please and please and please;
I want to go back
to the start of the nineties.

Sleepless night, big almond eyes,
and a hand rocks a pram in the passage;
from somewhere a long way
outside of our houses

the moon sends its light to this page.

Bill Manhire
from My Sunshine, VUP, 1996

Poetry Shelf is hosting another festival season of Playing Favourites. Poets have selected a poem of their own that they love, usually previously published. Bill Manhire’s choice struck multiple chords with me, and is the perfect poetry to be reading when I crave the boost of lingering with a poem, with its connections, surprise and wonder delight. Maybe you will love the last line as much as I do and then find yourself drifting back to the first line. Paula Green

Bill Manhire’s latest poetry collection is Lyrical Ballads, THWUP, 2026. He has won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry five times, and was New Zealand’s inaugural poet laureate. He founded and directed the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. He has edited major anthologies of New Zealand literature, including, with Marion McLeod, the now classic Some Other Country: New Zealand’s Best Short Stories (1984). In 2018 Bill was awarded an Icon Award Whakamana Hiranga from the Arts Foundation.

Poetry Shelf Playing Favourites: 1968 by Paula Green

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1968

Copernicus is giving Watermelon Sugar a go
under the shade of the pōhutukawa tree.

Simone de Beauvoir has her shades on
so no one knows what she is thinking.
She is in charge of the stereo and has
John Lennon finding words to rhyme with revolution
Grace Slick feeding her head with Alice and
Aretha Franklin singing ‘think think think’.

I was thirteen and saw no signs of barricades
flower power LSD Molotov cocktails or the like
and I’d never used capitalism and consumerism
in the same sentence or feminism and authority.

I did draw an anti-bomb sign whenever I got the chance
and mushrooms on the school walls,
and wear a string of love beads to match my flowing skirt.

Simone picks ‘All Along the Watchtower’ next
and I lie back under the pōhutukawa shade
and try to imagine finding myself
in a sloop of spinning colours.

Paula Green
from The Baker’s Thumbprint
Seraph Press, 2013

For all kinds of reasons I can’t cross the bridge to my own writing at the moment, to the numerous books I have on the go, and as you know, when you can’t cross the bridge to your own writing on the page, it is damn tough. At least I have things simmering in the rooms in my head. Yesterday I picked up an old poetry book of mine, The Baker’s Thumbprint, one of several published by dear Helen Rickerby, and fell into the glorious sloop of 1968, of being 13, of having doors and roads and windows to explore. I loved being in the same poem as Simone and Grace and Jimi and Aretha and Copernicus! I had wanted to rewrite my protest poem, ‘The Suffragette’, because today feels like a time to speak out but I’ll do that on Friday. Instead I’m relaunching my Playing Favourites series because poetry feels like an essential tool for us at the moment, whether as protest or balm. Go well dear poetry fans, go well.

Poetry Shelf Monday poem: Anchor Me – A work in progress by Serie Barford

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Anchor Me
A work in progress by Serie Barford

Preface

Anchor Me is a syncretic work inspired by the concept of a European medieval anchoress and the Samoan principles of the Four Harmonies, as explained by Tui Ātua.

An anchoress withdrew from secular life for religious reasons. Was permanently enclosed in a specific location. Symbolically buried alive. She was permitted to keep a cat – not a cow or a goat. The geographical co-ordinates of her anchorhold were a beacon for people seeking healing, spiritual guidance, the peace and glory of heavenly communion.

According to Tui Ātua, in order to achieve peace one must achieve harmony. The four harmonies are:

• Cosmic Harmony: Connecting with the universe and the broader spiritual realm

• Environmental Harmony: Protecting and respecting the land, sea, and all living things

• Social Harmony: Respecting and supporting fellow human beings and the community

• Personal Harmony: Maintaining inner peace and health.

Each poem is a monologue: a vignette designed to be read aloud. The  collection as a whole is envisaged as a hopeful, joyful, healing interaction between a 21st century anchoress, her visitors, and the audience.

Note

His Highness Tui Ātua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi is a former Head of State, Prime Minister and MP for Samoa. Widely acknowledged to be one of the leading cultural custodians of the Pacific, he is the author of Su’esu’e Manogi: In Search of Fragrance exploring Samoa’s ‘indigenous reference’.

Becoming an anchoress

My world is physically shrinking. I’m increasingly anchored within an 85 m² house built in the 1950s. Imagine apple-green timber, blue window frames, a concrete tile roof perched in an overgrown garden. Feline companions sprawled in the sun.

Little Cat was born into the wild cat colony squatting in a local school. She’s ginger, with lentigo simplex – cat freckles – on her nose. Has short legs, a long tail, topaz eyes. She breached Covid lockdown. Streaked into my house. Hid behind a divan. Whelped six kittens. Five survived.

I kept Little Cat. Rather, she kept me. I’m her human. She evades caresses. Meows for food. Purrs on my bed. Resembles a fluffy sphinx. Tabitha is Little Cat’s daughter. She’s mottled ginger, black, and white. Has green eyes. Nestles into the scoliotic curve of my back at night. Adores me. Distances herself from Little Cat’s swiping paws.

I’m living with metastatic breast cancer. A rapidly approaching expiry date. Greet each day with wonder and gratitude. These poems are small acts of devotion. My ultimate lock down project.

Cuppa for a voiceless visitor

Welcome, my friend. Leave your shoes on the BEWARE OF THE CAT doormat. Ha! Great you’ve still got teeth. Can tweak a grimace into an almost smile.

I’m guiding you toward the big window. A peaceful vista. A focus as the adrenaline surge abates. You’ve flown well. Found sanctuary atop a rutted driveway. Beyond the brown rickety gates festooned with yellow and orange lichen.

Here, rest on the couch. Safe places slow breathing. Are soporific. I’ll boil the kettle. You don’t have to say anything. I can read bodies. And if you want – just sink into the lullaby of my overgrown garden. My anchorhold. Sleep.

Ahhhhh …. you’re showing me your tongue. Hmmmm …. blistered from unvoiced rage, grief, fear, lack of nourishment. And your throat – corded and clenched. I’m guessing you haven’t cried for years. Became a chameleon to remain invisible. Keep yourself safe. Emotions so strungout they ran out. Trauma can do that. Turn us into the living dead.

You’re pointing … to that box of tissues? I’ll put them next to you. They’re ready when you are. That’s such an act of courage and hope. To reach for tissues. To believe you’ll cry again. Find your voice.

May I settle you onto cushions? Create a crash pad to absorb exiting impact? It’ll relax your shoulders. Support your hips. Distribute and support stress. Then I’ll gently cover you with a light blanket. Is that okay? ….. Alright then ….Thanks.

You’re patting my hand. Almost smiled again. That’s a good sign, my friend. We’re loosening the emotional tourniquet strangling your voice. 

Softly breathe in. Breathe out.  Hā ki roto, hā ki waho.

Sip this tea. Swallow. 

NOTE: Hā ki roto, hā ki waho           (Māori)                          Breathe in, breathe out

All is one

Dawn brought news of a significant maritime earthquake. I’m reminded of the Samoan expression: A logo tai ua logo uta – What is felt in the ocean is felt in the land.

For we’re interwoven. What one part of the body feels is sensed by the entire body.

Dahlias on a windy day

Faʻatiu whips the exposed flesh of dahlias. Almost topples an elderly man wrestling flailing gates to posts. He inserts galvanised zenith hooks into matching metallic eyes. Secures an entrance for his car. Grinds a manual gearbox to a halt outside the back door. Pegs each step from the driver’s door to the coir doormat with a worn walking stick.                                         

Welcome uncle! You’ve brought slippers? Lean on the porch wall beneath the electricity meter. It’s a wind shelter. I’ll remove your outside shoes. Slip on the comfy soles you brought. Oooooh! Tartan uppers. Are you going to caper?

Ach, nae. You’re never too old, uncle. I’ll dance with you. What’s that? ….  You brought a hip flask. Some whisky – the water of life. And mechanically wrapped slices of cheese.

I’ll put the kettle on. Butter scones for the cheese.

Choose a teacup. Each one has a story…. So do your hip flasks? Ha! Bet they do. We can swap stories. Have a laugh. A cry. Whatever.

I’ll play maw. Pour the tea. … Aye …. you’ve brought what you need for a hot toddy.

I didn’t know your estranged father was an inventor. Cast imagination to the wind. You’ve always told me to sit on my creativity. That it doesn’t pay bills. Turns people into loose canons.

That’s what you feared? …..Not knowing what your da would do next. Being abandoned during creative phases. The devious truth he’d fabricate to excuse absence. The despair of a hungry family competing with imagination for resources and recognition…… Dear oh dear ….

What’s that? You’re fascinated by individually wrapped cheese slices. How automated machines delicately flip, wrap, seal each fragile slice without breaking them. Wish you’d invented the machine. Spent more time with your da.

It’s okay to bawl, Uncle. A watershed relieves a heavy heart….. There’s a hanky in your pocket ….

I’ll open the doors. Let wind rush in – rush out. Cast your sorrow to the wind.

Feeling lighter? …… Peace be with you, Uncle.

Let’s refill our cups. Stand together. Toast your maw and da.

Slàinte Mhath!



NOTE
Fa’atiu               (Samoan)                       Wind and storm deity
Ach, nae (Scottish)                       Oh no!
maw                  (Scottish)                       mother, mum
Aye                   (Scottish)                       Yes
da                     (Scottish)                       dad, pa
Slàinte Mhath!     (Scottish Gaelic)          cheers, good health  (pronounced Slan-cha-VA)

Serie Barford

Serie Barford was born in Aotearoa to a German-Samoan mother(Lotofaga) and a Pālagi father. She held a 2018 Pasifika Writer’s residency at the Michael King Centre, performed at the 2019 International Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv, and collaborated with filmmaker Anna Marbrook for the 2021 Going West Different Out Loud poetry series. Her poetry collection, Sleeping with Stones (Anahera Press 2021), was shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Standing on My Shadow (Anahera Press 2025) was longlisted for the 2026 Ockham Book Awards.

Poetry Shelf review: Material Distance by Jodie Dalgleish and Louise Stevenson

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“After all, there’s an inventory of the body too, as our senses work
together with movement to create a tactile kind of memory”

Jodie Dalgleish

Material Distance (2026), a limited edition book with text by Jodie Dalgleish and artwork by Louise Stevenson, is a beautiful object to hold in the hand. Before entering the physical and cerebral rewards inside, I stop to admire the production, the paper stock, the shifting font colours, the layout, each contributing to this object of beauty. I am reminded of the word ‘review’, of how review is most importantly to see again, and that is what this book of return offers, a productive re-viewing, re-musing, re-absorbing.

“as texts loop into a florilegia, the way a (persistent) grief would”

Jodie Dalgleish

Jodie currently resides in Luxembourg while Louise lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. For three years Jodie and Louise have explored the distance between them through art and text. Two people, separated by distance, use the hue and rhythms of watercolour paints and words to navigate the gap, to cross the bridge, to record and respond to the inbetween, to the here and there.

The book’s opening words place author, artist and reader at the edge of the ocean where water extends far into the distance, igniting and extending the allure of the beyond, as well as revealing vital attachments to the present. This movement into electric foliage, between one and the other, is as much through ideas as through the material touch of ocean wind weather.

Louise’s watercolours effuse a delicacy, a palette smudge that might be lilac blueberry grape. Or then again, the brighter hues, red yellow orange. The text also becomes a visual imprint with its blue font evoking sea, the green leading to medicinal plants, oxide red to a circle of islands. The poetic lines hosting a glorious visual density of word, with senses compounding the tidal ebb of musing.

And then, and then, I am hooked on the notion of wave, a word that may be noun or verb, that may be attract ear or eye, memory or envisioning. And suddenly I have an ear and eye out for the precious ocean at the end of our valley.

“and how the only ‘art’ I can
naturally create is curiosity”

Jodie Dalgleish

The degrees of ambiguity are arresting, yes, I stop entranced in my reading and viewing tracks. I might stall on a watercolour, a painting that sometimes has a square cut out from it. A missing gap that you slip into. A distance lure. A material detail. And then there on the next page, the missing and missed square from an artwork. At times there are the stitchings, the stitched threads, a repeated motif worked in the hand of the visual embroiderer, and then there on the next page, a garment stitched and worn by the writer. I am sideways reminded of a writer’s stitchings and missing shapes.

“as in making a criss-cross of work, from your south to my north”

Jodie Dalgleish

As I read this gift of a book, that satisfies my attachment so beautifully to both art and poetry, I muse upon how the art might stand alone, the writing might stand alone, but how symphonically essentially irrefutably art and writing are moving in tandem, in weave and woven brushing and caressing each other. This book. This gift of braided returns.

Jodie Dalgleish is a writer based in Luxembourg whose poetry and prose has been published in both Europe and Aotearoa New Zealand. She has a particular interest in bodily sensorial experience and how that can be transmitted through poetry and works of art. As a curator she has worked closely with artists to explore how her words might share the impact of their practice. As a critic, her close attention has taken the form of reviews in both journals and online platforms, such as Landfall and Contemporary HUM. Winner of the New York publisher Lazuli Literary Group’s prize for her poem ‘Learning to Walk’ in 2021, Jodie continues to seek ways for the minute and the grand to ‘cohere in a manoeuvring of language’. Jodie’s collaboration with Louise Stevenson is no exception as she follows her love for looking at an artist’s work very closely, from one day to the next.

Louise Stevenson is an artist based inTāmaki Makaurau Auckland whose practice unfolds largely on paper, working across drawing, painting, photography, moving image, and stitched interventions. Her work moves between private storytelling, personal archives, and wider global stories, and has been shaped by formative years in Honiara, Solomon Islands, as well as time living in Budapest and travelling throughout Europe. Attentive to surrounding environments, her practice is grounded in close looking, material sensitivity, and the slow accumulation of lived experience. Her long-term project Someplace Else—a drawing series developed over thirty years across Hungary and Aotearoa—was published as an artist’s book and won a DINZ Best Awards in 2021. From this project emerged a collaboration with Europe-based writer Jodie Dalgleish, where together they explored distance, place, and how meaning travels through sustained, shared attention. Stevenson is currently Director of Te Toi Uku: Crown Lynn & Clay Museum, where storytelling remains central to her work.

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Peter Porter Poetry Prize closes soon

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Celebrating twenty-three years of world poetry, Australian Book Reviewwelcomes entries to the 2027 Peter Porter Poetry Prize, one of Australia’s most lucrative and respected poetry awards. The prize – worth a total of AU$10,000 – is open to all living poets writing in English. The winner will receive $6,000, with the four other shortlisted poets receiving $1,000 each.

Entries must be an original and unpublished single-authored poem of not more than 60 lines. The five shortlisted poems will be published in the January–February 2027 issue of ABR and the winner will be announced at a ceremony later that month.

This year’s judges are Mindy Gill, Nam Le, and Felicity Plunkett.

Good luck, and we look forward to receiving your poems!

Note: Please use the online entry form to submit your poem. Click here to find out information about past winners. Before contacting us with queries, see our Frequently Asked Questions and Terms and Conditions.

Click here to enter the 2027 Peter Porter Poetry Prize

Entry costs

Entry costs AU$20 for current ABR subscribers or AU$30 for non-subscribers*. Entrants who are not current ABR subscribers can choose to subscribe when submitting their poem for the special combined rates listed below:

Entry + ABR digital one-year subscription – $100

Entry + Print and digital one-year subscription (Australia) – $120

Entry + Print and digital one-year subscription (NZ and Asia) – $200

Entry + Print and digital one-year subscription (United States) – $370

Entry + Print and digital one-year subscription (Rest of World) – $220

*Non-subscribers will receive digital access to ABR free of charge for four months from entry.

Terms and Conditions / FAQs

Before entering the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, all entrants must read the Terms and Conditions. Before contacting us with a question, please read our Frequently Asked Questions.

Click here for more information about past winners.

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Sam Duckor -Jones launch

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Book Launch: Gloria of Greymouth by Sam Duckor-Jones
Wednesday 21 October, 6pm, Unity Books Wellington
Join us to launch Gloria of Greymouth, a stunning new book from Sam Duckor-Jones. The book will be launched by Jenny Neligan (in person) and Freya Daly Sadgrove (from afar). Free event – all welcome! More info here