“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 tet 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, an 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.
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!
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.
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
Join poet Helen Rickerby for a writing workshop in response to the exhibition Slow Burn: Women and Photography | Ahi Tāmau: Māreikura Whakaahua.
In association with VERB Wellington, join us for a day of photography and writing. Start the day in the Slow Burn | Ahi Tāmau exhibition as Curator Photography Lissa Mitchell delves into the stories behind the dynamic photographs.
Then, join poet Helen Rickerby to create your own written works of art inspired by the exhibition. Finally, finish with a Slow Burn-themed high tea to connect with other writers.
Time Out Bookstore has a terrific poetry selection. I have invited Frances Libeau, the poetry buyer, to feature a poetry book every now and then.
Perennial Counterpart Yongyu Chen Nightboat Books, New York, 2026 86 pp. $43 Timeout Chen page
When the right person is next to me I can see the abyss.
from ‘Pasolini and Callas’
Perennial Counterpart is a tender and erudite collection from Chen that – as its title might suggest – considers perception of and relationship with others across time and place. Through epistolary commune with myriad others (friends, writers, texts), Chen teases out how the self refracts through these prismatic relationships that bind the author to their world. While Chen has an enduring commitment to the lyric, they deftly push at the limits of the form, destabilising their inquiry through carefully sculpted rupture and fragmentation.
the next language could be not a language of images
but an image of language, of what it means to have an idea in language, in other people, intimacy. — I said to my friend just now,
the best place to put a crystal is writing.
from ‘Tombpetals’
In less attentive hands this could come off as cold: yet the intimacy of Chen’s lines is never burdened by their cerebral load. The book hangs in an elegant balance that is measured in pace, ambitious in scope and persistently disarming in its lyrical turns.
[…] In a dream
my family photos were taped onto photos
of the distant star and then, as the dream
reached its point of inflection, I realized the star could see us
through our backsides, and,
somehow, S was part of it, S was part of the dream, then part
of the star, part of the seeing
from ‘Theory of Mesh’
Frances Libeau is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and bookseller based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Recent publications include Min-a-rets 15 (Compound Press, 2025) and Radicant (Hocken Collections, 2025). They work part-time at Time Out Books and order in a selection of poetry titles for the store.
caught on the strap of my tote bag she crawls like an infant small and ruby- red a coal-spotted beauty foraging for warmth oblivious to my silly little ruminations of this new city the sharpness of its blues how the coastline curves up stealing kisses from the sky easing into hills of ancient green the houses tucked in and blinking tentatively the wind mouths a prayer asking for nothing naming me just another small living thing amidst these mountains it feels good to be reminded of the body of its place to feel the pull of every receptor o p e n i n g to the world the sun an anchor rooted deep within the sky my feet on uncertain ground I swing my bag over my shoulder and feel a shift in the wind a flash of wing startles the light her primordial call rings out in my chest and the air
echoing
Brecon Dobbie
Brecon Dobbie is an Early Childhood Kaiako by day and writer by life. She finds poetry to be her place of solace. She writes to make sense of things, often without meaning to. Some of her work has appeared in Starling, Minarets Journal, Noho Tahi, and Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook.
my mum lays out succulent cuttings like severed limbs she is always restless for the low thrumb of the plane that will take her elsewhere we will drift, as leaves in the wind, never settling
Zephyr Zhang
It is so beautiful to be here in this life. Everything is meaningful, even when the meaning is a terrible let-down. I want to make something out of this, even when it is hard and I feel far away from anything gentle, like the roadkill possum I pass on my bike, still warm and animal in its halo of blood. Every poem has a possum inside of it, and I have to poke it with a stick to make sure it’s really dead.
Loretta Riach from ‘Retired from Art, New Career in Sandwiches’
now you are a whole bruised history wrapped in a girl, and I am running behind your train, arms raised like an augur, offering my handkerchief to the wind.
remember me when you reach the skies on the other side of childhood: that place we go to never come back, only to find ourselves circling familiar tracks.
Anuja Mitra from ‘Bruised history’
AUP New Poets 12 is a terrific addition to a series that was launched by Auckland University Press in 1998. Current editor Anne Kennedy has selected three charismatic poets that offer distinct directions but that also enrich our reading experience with captivating links and echoes.
Poetry of a particular time doesn’t need to be pigeonholed into trends with particular tics and fancies. Every book I have read this year amplifies the surprise of where poetry might take me – whether the first-line launch pad or the opening poem. AUP New Poets 12 is no exception. For me, this is a poetic voyage of surprise with each chapbook unique, while also offering links and echoes.
I jotted down the word ‘intimacy’ – drawn to the way each poet translates intimacy within poetic forms. The recurrent tug of remembering, of becoming, of lilypad hopping different points of view, whether self or trolley or dog. This captivating anthology got me musing on what poetry can be and do and this is what keeps me hooked into reading, writing and reviewing poetry.
moonlight circuitZephyr Zhang Zephyr’s chapbook offers an eclectic and electric rendition of being and becoming, of moving in and out of character, and yes, rich and enriching characters, whether a trolley or an air noodle, whether watching ghosting violencing, whether sketching shadows, loving self, signalling notself unself besideself. There is the poignant drift and attachments of mother child child mother. There is angst and there is a mise en abyme of heart-catching poetic possibilities, holding prismatic self to light and dark, letting life jar and jag, raise doubt and questions, epiphanies. If there is a sublime moonlight circuit, we move in and out of the shadows and light, the loops of beauty and existence. Love!!!
Possum, Loretta Riach Again I am drawn deep and movingly into patterns of existence, along syncopating lines, along honeyed lines, with surprising image leaps, little poetic startles that catch my heart and ear, I’m moving and moved, as I travel between here and there, here home elsewhere home, with mountains and darkness and heirloom tomatoes, with touch and intimacy a vital pulse that carries me, with acute feeling a poetic beat alongside the admission the poet “might never know where this feeling goes / but at least i can make something from it”, and as we read and travel, the glorious poetry builds bridges to transform the gap, the enigma, the shadows. Love!
Bruised history,Anuja Mitra I absorb the light, so sublimely, because here poetry is a way of regaining the light, of transcribing recomposing redeeming the light, in the tangleweed grief ache for the poet’s father, with lines fracturing syncopating, the fracture a crevice down the middle of a poem, or the running helter skelter, or the shifting rhythms of place family history self, face to face with racism, the poet favouring diverse forms, and the gap, yes again the gap, an impetus to reach for poetry pen, and as the addictive detail assembles, the visual and aural go hand in hand, each enhancing electrifying the other, and it’s precious gift for both ear and eye, a shimmer slowing to sweet andante, an inhaled exhaled ode to existence.
I invited each poet to read three poems and answer five questions.
The poets
Zephyr Zhang
3 poems
‘please push me’
‘push me I dare you’
‘i dump my car for a horse and regret it for the rest of my life’
5 questions
Name five words that matter to you when you are writing a poem.
Can you share a few poets whose poetry boosts you as a writer?
Here are some poets who make me giggle and think about gender: Jiaqiao Liu, Always Becominging, Emma Barnes, Dani Yourukova.
Writing can be a process of discovery, illumination. Did you surprise yourself as you wrote? Make discoveries?
I love reading other poets’ collections, especially if they’re by people I know IRL. This is mostly because I am nosy, but also because I don’t think I ever truly ‘get’ someone until I see a corpus of their art. A poetry collection is a poet’s obsessions, anxieties and juicy vagueposting disguised as literature.
Sometimes I meet a person and I think, ‘Huh, you could be much kinder to yourself.’ They don’t yet know that self-compassion would solve all their problems. This is something they might discover if they wrote 100 poems and then tried to arrange them into a collection.
All this to say, I never know what I’m actually writing about until I’ve written a bunch of poems. Reading them all at once makes me realise that I can only talk about my feelings through inanimate objects, and that riding horses as a child left an indelible impression on me.
Is there a poem that particularly matters to you in your chapbook?
The opening poem, ‘roots | 漂叶无根’, about the restlessness of my immigrant mum. When Anne Kennedy first read the manuscript, she noted that it seemed almost like an epigraph. In a way it serves the same function – it sets the context for the rest of the chapbook.
Why poetry? Why poetry in this tumultuous world?
When everything feels bleak, it’s still fun to share poetry with friends and psychoanalyse all the poets around me.
Zephyr Zhang 张挚 is a queer writer, developer and ex-geotechnical engineer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Their poetry can be found in various literary crevasses including Starling, Cordite, Landfall and Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems. Their debut chapbook, moonlight circuit, was published this year in AUP New Poets 12. They are nocturnal.
LorettaRiach
3 poems
‘Kitchen for Tharushi’
‘Daisy, 1994’
‘The Night Shift’
5 questions
Name five words that matter to you when you are writing a poem.
Shape, attentiveness, nerve, sounds, horses.
Can you share a few poets whose poetry boosts you as a writer?
I was very lucky to start writing poetry in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, where there are countless poets, whose invention and generosity made poetry seem like something that I could do too- Margo Montes, Ruben Mita, Freya Daly-Sadgrove, Ash Davida-Jane, Rebecca Hawkes, to name a few- there are so many wonderful others. Other poets who I turn to for courage are Eileen Myles, Evelyn Araluen, Bernadette Meyer, Sophie van Waardenberg, Patricia Lockwood, Hana Pera Aoake, Emily Dickinson.
Writing can be a process of discovery, illumination. Did you surprise yourself as you wrote? Make discoveries?
One of my fine arts lecturers said to me once that the process of making art is like having to both invent and solve the same puzzle simultaneously, which I really relate to in my poetry; writing constantly feels like discovery to me, primarily because I’m always a bit surprised to find that I’m doing it, that the words are there. The thing I love about this is finding the form of the poem and the connections in language as they come together on the page (screen, really, I type my poems)- building the poem from within itself. Through writing this collection I realised my tendencies and reliances on different images, phrases, jokes- it’s been really interesting having the space to observe the patterns I follow when constructing a poem.
Is there a poem that particularly matters to you in your chapbook?
Yes, the poem ‘The Crossing’. The whole chapbook is laced with an aggressive strain of nostalgia that has run rampant through my early twenties and has been somewhat of a curse. I may never fully cure myself of this, but this poem is one that I am proud of for articulating that ache, and for being so located in the moment it was made. It marks a big change in a relationship, and the move from home to overseas. All of the poems in the collection are about this one way or another, but this is my favourite.
Why poetry? Why poetry in this tumultuous world?
What else is there! Poetry allows your one human mind to struggle feebly against all the language it has ever experienced, which teaches humility, connects you to the living breathing world, and makes you more impervious to being swallowed up by machines. It takes the tumult and translates it into something less numbing (even if still morbid), using bad jokes and references that only your friends will care about. It’s a ridiculous career path, but it’s better than no poetry. You can take it anywhere, especially on public transport.
Loretta Riach is an artist and writer from Aotearoa. Possum, as part of AUP New Poets 12, is their first chapbook. They have written a lot of love poems, and a lot of poems about rocks, which can be found in publications including Starling, Sweet Mammalian, Takahē, Minarets, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, and Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems. In 2025, they were an artist in residence on the island of Klovharun, Finland, and they are currently based in Naarm.
AnujaMitra
3 poems
‘Wintergarden, June’
‘At the vets there is language / for pain’
‘Private cinema’
5 questions
Name five words that matter to you when you are writing a poem.
Rhythm, play, image, impact, flow. I regret that this sounds like some kind of corporate motto but I guess these are things I have in mind subconsciously when trying to create something readers enjoy engaging with as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m a bit of a neurotic editor and working on self-censoring less to achieve more of that spontaneity and play when drafting. Spontaneity is often where the best stuff comes from!
Can you share a few poets whose poetry boosts you as a writer?
I’m definitely boosted by many talented people in the Aotearoa poetry scene and have to shout out my Tāmaki Makaurau writing group, especially Holly, Hebe, Laura, Grace, Elliot and Gemma. And I’m boosted in the ‘writer self-esteem’ sense by this quote a friend shared with me years ago from a poem titled “Berryman” by 20th century American poet W.S. Merwin (who has also influenced my writing), where Merwin asks the successful poet John Berryman “how can you ever be sure / that what you write is really / any good at all” and he replies:
you can’t you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don’t write
Vague though it sounds, I like to say I’ve been inspired by any poet whose poem(s) I’ve enjoyed. Sometimes before I sit down to write or when I feel stumped mid-writing session I look up a journal, say Poetry Magazine (published by the Poetry Foundation) and just read a bunch of poems to get the creative cogs turning.
Writing can be a process of discovery, illumination. Did you surprise yourself as you wrote? Make discoveries?
In assembling the chapbook I was surprised to find links between the poems, which were written at different times over a span of years. I could never really articulate what the recurrent ideas in my work were but after Bruised history I know I tend to return to themes of memory, place, childhood, connection and loss.
Is there a poem that particularly matters to you in your chapbook?
“Notes on a city with no identity” was my first foray into the ‘essay poem’ / ‘poetic essay’ form which I’d long admired, and it’s the longest and most ambitious poem I’ve penned yet. Though it’s written in second person and the speaker isn’t synonymous with me, it threads together a lot of personal topics I haven’t necessarily addressed directly in my writing before — arising from me thinking my city of Tāmaki Makaurau was too boring to write about despite spending most of my life in it, and then wanting to interrogate that. The warm reception to the poem so far has been encouraging and led to me wanting to return to that form and experiment more with the (illusory) boundary between poetry and prose.
Why poetry? Why poetry in this tumultuous world?
I think to be any kind of artist you have to believe that art is a constant and a comfort. There’s the oft-quoted (probably too oft-quoted) line from Bertolt Brecht about how even in dark times there will be singing because the singing will be about those dark times. The world has always been tumultuous but poetry has always survived. It’s a curious way of looking at and trying to make sense of the world and there have been great communities built around sharing that. As for why I myself write poetry — because poems are usually short but always challenging!
Anuja Mitra lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her poetry and prose have been published widely in Aotearoa and also some places overseas, including Landfall Tauraka,Cordite,takahē, Poetry Aotearoa, Turbine | Kapohau and several anthologies such as A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand and No Other Place to Stand: An Anthology of Climate Change Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her debut chapbook, Bruised history, was published in AUP New Poets 12.
Linda Collins at home in Kakanui outside her writing shed with her debut collection, Sign Language for the Death of Reason. Photo credit: Oamaru Mail
Linda Collins was awarded the 2026 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize
“I am Linda Collins, and only started studying and writing poetry late in life in my 50s, in 2018, after writing my memoir about the death of my daughter, titled Loss Adjustment (Awa Press). I live at Kakanui, a small settlement on the coast south of Oamaru. My debut collection in 2020 was Sign Language for the Death of Reason, published by Math Paper Press in Singapore, and my poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and was runner-up in the Mslexia Single Poem Prize. I have an MA from IIML and a Poetry MA with distinction from the University of East Anglia. I’m fortunate that the Poet Laureate, Robert Sullivan, lives in nearby Oamaru, and every Monday he hosts a poetry group for free in the Oamaru Library. These gatherings are amazing in how they involve the community, some of whom are completely new to poetry, and for how Robert conducts the group with such understanding and kindness. I’m also a member of the East Otago Poetry Group which meets at Waikouaiti Library, and the amazing talent in these rural poets is inspiring. People have been very encouraging about my work, and I am humbled to win the Caselberg prize ahead of some important, vibrant poets including Michelle Elvy, who has a new collection out, Motion Sickness; Margaret Moores; and the truly wonderful Sarah Scott.”
Full results
The winners of the 2026 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize have been announced. The competition is now in its sixteenth year, and this year attracted 192 poems from New Zealand, Australia, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, UK, USA, and Venezuela. This year’s competition was judged by writer Emma Neale.
The winner receives a cash prize of $600, a one week stay at the Caselberg house in 2027, and their poem published in Landfall Tauraka 252 in November 2026. The two runner up poets receive a cash prize of $300.
Winner: Linda Collins, Rambling, Oamaru
Runner up: Margaret Moores, Self-portrait: Still life 1973, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland Michelle Elvy, Will, Ōtepoti/Dunedin
Commended: Wes Lee, Persephone and time in the Underworld, Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington Kunal Sharma, The attendance of ash, Delhi Lee Fraser, Fear (Swadesh), Ōtautahi/Christchurch Susan Wardell , Hare or Fear, Ōtepoti/Dunedin Sarah Scott, Radiata, Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington John Kelk, Tuwhare, Muruhiku/Invercargill
The winning poem and Emma’s judge’s report will be published in November in Landfall Tauraka 252 – Spring 2026, and subsequently on our Caselberg Trust website along with the runner up, Highly Commended, and Commended poems.
In her judge’s report Dr Neale noted that ‘The 192 entries this year sent me off on a long and taxing quest. For extended reading stints, it seemed I was hunting for, say, a lost pounamu ring on a vast beach covered with stones glowing or glowering in every shade of green’.
Of the winning poem Rambling by Linda Collins she said ‘‘Rambling’ has fluent syntax and although dotted with contemporary language, it reveals a traditional notion of the poem. It’s tightly structured in ‘unheroic’ couplets; it’s bucolic in the sense that it celebrates a natural idyll, and the closure has the satisfying elan of a riddle arriving in almost the same instant that it’s resolved’
55 Cable Street, Te Aro, Wellington, New Zealand 6011
Join poet Helen Rickerby for a writing workshop in response to the exhibition Slow Burn: Women and Photography | Ahi Tāmau: Māreikura Whakaahua.
In association with VERB Wellington, join us for a day of photography and writing. Start the day in the Slow Burn | Ahi Tāmau exhibition as Curator Photography Lissa Mitchell delves into the stories behind the dynamic photographs.
Then, join poet Helen Rickerby to create your own written works of art inspired by the exhibition. Finally, finish with a Slow Burn-themed high tea to connect with other writers.
I flew over the North Island in a jetplane and noticed the clouds for once, how they covered the land like a forest, a huge forest billowing into the sky with its fungi, insects, bacteria, spores, cones, leaves, twigs, birds spilling up like little mountains of life and oh the streams of water upwards and downwards as I took a cup of tea and a biscuit.
Robert Sullivan
Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi Nui Tonu, Kāi Tahu Whānui) is the 14th Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate. Among his sixteen books are the bestselling Star Waka, Weaving Earth and Sky and Hopurangi Songcatcher. He has won awards for his poetry, editing, and writing for children. His year 6 teacher at Onehunga Primary School, Mrs Naire, first inspired him to write poetry, which was a cloud poem. He lives in Ōamaru on ancestral whenua, the beautiful coasts of Te Tai o Āraiteuru.
