Monthly Archives: March 2021

Poetry Shelf celebrates new books: Victor Billot reads from The Sets

The Sets, Victor Billot, Otago University Press, 2021

Victor Billot reads ‘The Sets’ from his collection plus two new poems: ‘An Award Winning Campaign’ and ‘The Youngest One’.

Victor Billot was born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1972. He has worked in communications, publishing and the maritime industry. His collection The Sets was published by Otago University Press in February 2021.

In 2020 he was commissioned by the Newsroom website to write a series of political satires in verse and is now embarking on a new series. His poems have been displayed in the Reykjavik City Hall and in Antarctica.

Otago University Press page

Victor’s website

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Tonight Food Court / Enjoy Poetry Reading

At Enjoy Contemporary Art Space 211 Left bank, Cuba Street

Join a selection of readers invited by Food Court Books and Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, writing around the edges of queerness and culture, intimacy and (literary) history.

Readers for the night include


Chris Tse
Sam Duckor-Jones
Khadro Mohamed
Dani Yourukova
Hannah Mettner
Joanna Cho
Areez Katki
With more to be announced.

This event is programmed alongside Areez Katki’s exhibition History reserves but a few lines for you, on until 3 April.

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Poet Laureate David Eggleton picks two Peter Olds poems

The sky turned black as night,
sirens wailed, streetlights blinked
at stalled streets, the air streaked
like some New York modern painting:
Surreal, unreal, leaving high tide
marks of ice in the doorways of
mid-town shops

from ‘Hail & Water ‘ by Peter Olds

Two terrific poems by Peter Olds on The Poet Laureate site

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Going West podcast – Paula Green in conversation with Bill Manhire and Norman Meehan

This is one of my favourite sessions I have chaired ever!

Paula Green, poet, anthologist, reviewer and children’s author, with her newly minted honours and awards, shares the stage in a charming conversation with poet, short story writer and academic Bill Manhire, and jazz composer and performer Norman Meehan, as they disclose the alchemy of setting poetic text as song. They discuss their latest collaboration, the riddle project, Tell Me My Name, and along the way Bill Manhire reads two of his poems Frolic and I am quiet when I call.

This session took place the day after Manhire, Meehan and friends delivered a captivating opening night performance, Small Holes in the Silence for the Going West audience.

Listen here

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Rebecca Hawkes’s ‘Poem about my heart’

Poem about my heart

you have one job
which is to hold this
disturbingly large moth
battering the woven
basket of your fingers

every instinct whirring
to close your fist and crush it
or open your palms
set the gross insect loose
free your hands for other tasks

but this is your job
the having and the holding
the moth fluttering scaly wings
into moon dust that stains your skin
ghastly silver as you do not ask

how did this thing even get in here
just maintain your grasp
on the fragile stupid alien
that flew to your light and would not go
until you caught it and it was yours

Rebecca Hawkes

Rebecca Hawkes is a queer pākehā poet, painter, and PowerPoint slide ghostwriter living in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara. Her chapbook ‘Softcore coldsores’ can be found in AUP New Poets 5. She is co-editor of the journal Sweet Mammalian and an upcoming anthology of climate change poetry, and is a founding member of popstar performance posse Show Ponies. More of Rebecca’s writing and paintings can be found in journals like Starling, Sport, Scum, and Stasis, or online at her vanity mirror.

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: CubaDupa Interactive Karaoke Participatory Poetry 27 / 28 March

Interactive Karaoke Participatory Poetry

Book a spot on our glittering Leftbank stage this CubaDupa, where you’ll get to choose from a selection of high-rotation poems to perform to a rapt audience of friends, strangers and the occasional pigeon. Feeling emo? Seducing a crush? Or do you just love…. words? HIT ME BABY ONE MORE RHYME: POETRY KARAOKE is a sequinned love letter to two of our favourite art forms. Presented by Satellites and curated by Chris Tse, this experience features chart-toppers like Mohamed Hassan, Tayi Tibble, and William Shakespeare — and brought to life by a rotating cast of hosts and pop-up performers including Rose Lu, Freya Daly Sadgrove, Brannavan Gnanalingam, Rebecca Hawkes and Eamonn Mara.

Go here

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Landing Press’s new project for 2021- an anthology of poems about housing

Here’s Landing Press’s new project for 2021: an anthology of poems about housing

Whether you own a house, rent or are homeless, housing is a source of nostalgia and comfort, a source of stress and fear, a changing landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand. We want to hear anything you have to say about housing.

We want poems by people who have written a lot. We want poems by people who have never written before but have something to say. If you haven’t written before and would like some help, we’ll help you. 

You can send us up to 3 poems. Maximum length of each poem 40 lines. Put each poem on a separate page, and with each poem, include your name and contact details (email address, postal address and ph no). There also might be a small story behind your poem you want to include. 

Send your poems to landingpresshousing21@gmail.com  by Friday 18 June  2021. 

And please forward this information to anyone who might be interested.

We plan to publish this anthology in October 2021. All writers included in the anthology will get a complimentary copy of the book.

Landing Press is a small Wellington publisher of poems that many people can enjoy. Our most recent book, Somewhere a cleaner, is a collection of poems by cleaners

 

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: FfFast Fibres Poetry 8 call for submissions

FfFast Fibres Poetry 8 call for submissions

The theme of Fast Fibres Poetry 8 this year is open. 

We invite poets with a strong Northland connection to submit 3 of your best poems.

Please include a two line biographical statement.

Deadline: June 11  

Send submissions by email:fastfibres@live.com

Note: Each poem should preferably be no longer than 20 lines single spaced and typed in 12 pt. Times New Roman. Poems must be submitted as a single Word document with your name in the filename. PDFs and handwritten submissions will not be considered.

Fast Fibres will be launched in print and online on National Poetry Day, August 27, 2021

Website