John Geraets has been running Countertop for awhile now, nurturing a terrific celebration of poetry. The site includes book reviews, recorded interviews with poets, his own poetry musings, poems. He includes essays that were published in ka mate ka ora: a new zealand journal of poetry and poetics. To date, the conversations are with Chris Tse, Stephen Bambury, Janet Charman, Richard von Sturmer, Lisa Samuels, Vaughan Rapatahana, Orchid Tierney, Kim Pieters, Bob Orr, Mark Young, Ian Wedde, Emma Neale, Michael Harlow.

The latest conversation is with Rebecca Hawkes and it’s a treat getting to hear a poet whose work I love, muse on writing, her origins, predilections, the questions that surface, the impulse to move to USA. She reads an extract from, as she says, “a poem in sentences or a very brisk lyric essay” that she is currently working on.

You can listen here.

Counterpoint is a treasure trove to explore indeed.

John Geraets lives in Whangārei, Aotearoa-New Zealand. His Everything’s Something in Place appeared from Titus Books in 2019. He has published a number of poetry collections and edited A Brief Description of the Whole World (1999 -2002). He curates the online magazine remake, the latest issue of which is available here.

Rebecca Hawkes, poet and painter, debuted in AUP New Poets 5. Her collection Meat Lovers won Best First International Collection in the Laurel Prize and was a finalist in the Lambda Literary Awards. She edits the journal Sweet Mammalian and co-curated the Antipodean climate poetry anthology No Other Place to Stand. She is a founding member of popstar poets’ performance posse Show Ponies. She is currently doing an MFA in poetry at the University of Michigan as a Fulbright grantee.