Over the summer months Poetry Shelf is hosting a series of readings from the incredible range of poetry collections published by mainstream and boutique presses in Aotearoa in 2024. You can hear David Gregory read here.

anthology (n.) a collection of flowers 
Gail Ingram, Pūkeko Publications 2024

anthology (n.) a collection of flowers is like an ode to nature, a rich illustrated compendium of native flowers, that is encyclopedic, poetic, personal and that reaches out scented tendrils and draws nourishment from other poets, history, music, symbolism, myth, eco-fragility and wide ranging experience. Each poem is labelled with English, Te Reo and botanical names, a few facts and a photograph. The poetry is as multi-hued as the flowers, presenting a seeded and blooming meadow of past present future.

Gail reads two poems

‘They is gender diverse’

‘Grandmother and granddaughter choose a tattoo’

Definition of a buttercup

It’s easy with one word:
buttercup
but difficult with many:
it equals the sun, each calling
to the other; yellow shining
like melted butter in a porcelain cup 
under your chin
do you like butter?
grows using photosynthesis
and “water” (see later poem); 
hairy leaves as described by
alpine botanists 
with microscopic vision; 
it roots itself to
earth in a goldilocks position
between rocks, in bogs; the chance
that you stumble across one
looking up between milky
500-million-year-old karst 
under the giddy sun
this new year’s day 
in some new millennium, spinning outwards 
in an ever-expanding universe with other 
star-spiralling galaxies 
is so
immeasurably 
small.

Gail Ingram (she, her, they) writes from the Port Hills of Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand and is author of three collections of poetry. Her latest collection, anthology (n.) a collection of flowers (Pūkeko Publications 2024) weaves poetry and botanical and mountain art. Her second and third collections Some Bird (2023) and Contents Under Pressure (2019) were published by Sudden Valley Press and Pūkeko Publications respectively. Her work has been widely published in local and international journals and anthologies, such as Poetry New Zealand, Landfall, Atlanta Review, The Spinoff, Cordite Poetry Review and Barren Magazine. Awards include winning the Caselberg (2019) and New Zealand Poetry Society (2016) international poetry prizes. She has edited for NZ Poetry Society’s flagship magazine a fine line, Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction and takahē. She teaches at Write On School for Young Writers and holds a Master of Creative Writing (Distinction).