The Caselberg Trust presents Poetry in the Garden as a fundraiser for a local residency
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Monthly Archives: January 2015
Dazzling new poetry collection from David Eggleton
Press release from Otago University Press:
Dazzling new poetry collection from David Eggleton
The Conch Trumpet calls to the scattered tribes of contemporary New Zealand. It sounds the signal to listen close, critically and ‘in alert reverie’. David Eggleton’s reach of references, the marriage of high and low, the grasp of popular and classical allusion, his eye both for cultural trash and epiphanic beauty, make it seem as if here Shakespeare shakes down in the Pacific.
There are dazzling compressions of history; astonishing paens to harbours, mountains, lakes and rivers; wrenchingly dark, satirical critiques of contemporary politics, of solipsism, narcissism, the apolitical, the corporate, with a teeming vocabulary to match. And often too a sense of the imperative, grounding reality of the phenomenal world – the thisness of things:
Cloud whispers brush daylight’s ear;
fern question-marks form a bush encore;
forlorn heat swings cobbed in webs.
– from ‘Nor-wester Flying’
In this latest collection David Eggleton is court jester/philosopher/lyricist, and a kind of male Cassandra, roving warningly from primeval swampland to gritty cityscape to the information and disinformation cybercloud.
| David Eggleton lives in Dunedin. He has previously had published six books of poems
and a book of short fiction, as well as a number of works of non-fiction. Well known as a performance poet, he’s also released several poetry recordings featuring his collaborations with musicians, and been involved in poetry text collaborations with practitioners of a variety of other art forms, from sculpture to fashion design. His poetry and short stories appear in a wide range of recent anthologies. |
‘David Eggleton’s word-blasts feel like they come from further left-of-centre than anything else written in New Zealand … It is endlessly imaginative, it’s funny – plus intellectually rewarding.’
Nick Ascroft, Landfall, 2002
‘His poetry is vital and contemporary, steeped in popular and postmodern culture. It offers a vision of New Zealand which is at once resolutely local and yet not quite recognisable or predictable – offers a vision of ourselves which defies expectation to surprise and charm.’ – Louise O’ Brien, Dominion Post, 2001.
Release Date: February 2015
ISBN 978-1-877578-93-9, $25
Robyn Marsack makes picks for Best American Poetry Site
The judges for the 2015 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize
| The judges for the 2015 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize are: | |||
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2015 GUEST JUDGE |
2015 JUDGES |
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 Vona Groarke Vona is an Irish poet. She has published six collections with Gallery Press, the latest being X, (2014), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Others include Spindrift (2010), Flight (2002) – which won the Michael Hartnett Award, and her translation from Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s eighteenth-century Irish, Lament for Art O’Leary (2008), which is currently being adapted as an opera by Irish composer, Irene Buckley. In the U.S., she publishes with Wake Forest University Press. Her poems have recently appeared in Yale Review, The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, The Guardian, The Times and Poetry Review. She teaches poetry in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester in the UK and is the editor of Poetry Ireland Review. |
 Sarah Ross, BA (Hons) Canterbury, MSt (Distinction) Oxford, DPhil OxfordSarah is a Senior Lecturer in English at Victoria University of Wellington. She specialises in early modern literature, poetry, and women’s writing, and she is the editor of Katherine Austen’s Book M (ACMRS, 2011) and the author of numerous articles on early modern women’s writing, poetry, and manuscript culture.
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Michael Gleissner, LLB (Hons), MBA, CPANominate your Great Kiwi Classic — Could be poetry! Hmmm
The hunt for the Great Kiwi Classic returns in 2015 and New Zealand readers nationwide are invited to join our celebration of iconic Kiwi books by nominating their favourites.
Launched in 2014 by the New Zealand Book Council and Auckland Writers Festival, the Great Kiwi Classic initiative is an annual opportunity for readers of all ages and interests to celebrate our most treasured books and writers.
Last year Keri Hulme’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Bone People was selected as the inaugural Great Kiwi Classic after a wealth of public nominations. One year on, we are once again asking enthusiastic readers to help decide which book deserves to be crowned this year’s supreme title.
We want to hear what your most loved classic is and why. Your choice might be decades old or hot off the press, celebrated or obscure, a charming romantic romp or a piece of social commentary so searing it has ended friendships. Any book written by a Kiwi writer is in the running.
To nominate your Great Kiwi Classic and tell us why it’s the one, visit the Great Kiwi Classic Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/GreatKiwiClassic, or email your suggestions to greatkiwiclassic@bookcouncil.org.nz.
Nominations open Thursday 15 January and close 5pm Friday 13 February.
Throughout the campaign join us on Facebook for fresh debate, book giveaways, competitions and more. Nominate the same book you put forward last year, update your choice or join in the discussion. Follow the vote and read expert literary opinions on the New Zealand Book Council’s online magazine Booknotes Unbound (http://booknotes-unbound.org.nz/).
After nominations close our panel will convene to consider nominations, with the big reveal of this year’s classic announced at the launch of the Auckland Writers Festival programme on Tuesday 17 March.
The Great Kiwi Classic 2015 will then be the subject of a lively event at the Festival in May, featuring top writers and experts in a book club style discussion where all views on the book and its claim to classic status will be entertained.
Spread the word and make your vote count in 2015. The hunt for the next Great Kiwi Classic is on!
Call for Entries to the Kathleen Grattan Award 2015 – Emma Neale to judge
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Call for Entries to the Kathleen Grattan Award 2015
Otago University Press has great pleasure in putting a call out for entries in to the Kathleen Grattan Award 2015 – it’s time to get those manuscripts into shape! Emma Neale – celebrated poet, novelist and prose writer – is this year’s award judge. The closing date for entries is 31 July.
The Kathleen Grattan Award is one of New Zealand’s most substantial awards for poetry: the winner receives $10,000 and Otago University Press considers the winning manuscript for publication. The winner also receives a year’s subscription to Landfall.
See the award web page for details of how to enter.
http://www.otago.ac.nz/press/landfall/grattanaward.html
About the Kathleen Grattan Award
Auckland poet Kathleen Grattan, a journalist and former editor of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, died in 1990. A member of the Titirangi Poets, her work was published in Landfall and other volumes including Premier Poets, a collection from the World Poetry Society. Her daughter Jocelyn Grattan, who also worked for the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, shared her mother’s love of literature. She has generously left Landfall a bequest with which to establish an award in memory of Kathleen Grattan.
The Kathleen Grattan Award, initially established as a yearly award, is now awarded biannually.
Previous Award Winners
2013 Siobhan Harvey (Cloudboy)
2011 Emma Neale (The Truth Garden)
2010 Jennifer Compton (This City)
2009 Leigh Davis (Repairing of a Life)
2008 Joanna Preston (The Summer King)
NZ Poetry Shelf 