not everything turns away, Philomena Johnson, Sudden Valley Press, 2024
Coming Out of the Dark
off the beach a shadow empties itself into detached clouds
wind-vanes oscillate past magnetic north
ships are lost to view behind toppling wave crests
salt and sand spindrifts blind your way beside a heaping sea
scattered white-caps helpless before the wind
rafts of pumice islands
leaves of loose paper razed to dust
has there never been a choice but to step into the bright space
between clouds
Philomena Johnson
The readings
‘The Cast of a Net’
‘The House of Winds’
Philomena Johnson graduated from The Hagley Writers’ Institute in 2017 where her portfolio was short-listed for the Margaret Mahy Award. Her poetry has appeared in The Quick Brown Dog, The London Grip, takahē, Fuego & a fine line; in the anthologies broken lines / in charcoal, Voiceprints 4 and The New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology 2024. Philomena won The John O’Connor First Book Award in 2024 for her manuscript not everything turns away, published by Sudden Valley Press. She lives where the river meets the sea right beside Te Ihutai Avon-Heathcote Estuary where she gets to walk by water every day. Philomena tutors at the Write On School for Young Writers.
The End of the Beginning, Jenna Heller, At the Bay | I te Kokoru, 2024
Drawing lots
We go searching, digging deeply, soil on our hands and knees, earthworms wrapped round our fingers, digging in the dirt beneath the germination and tangled roots webbing a map to the underground where memory sings and rivers cry through crumbling rock and fault lines to the heat of the heart of the underworld. We build into the sides of mountains, thatch roofs, paint mosaics on stamped earth, scribble chalk drawings, dance for rain. We sleep with our ancestors, live on shells baked into the land, tend to flowers growing fire-wild and free like the sparking of pine and birch up the flue past wasps buzzing and humming, a hive caught between light and dark. We watch clouds braid through island skies and learn their mythology by pulling them apart as they reel past—on our backs, on our skin, on the compost of our gardens-in-waiting. Lurking underground, the edible legend flowers amongst the weeds, hardy like the southerly spinning through our mountains, ripping across our plains, shooting up our dry riverbeds, tearing at young gum bark drooping back to the ground just as sure as bare branches scream toward the sky.
Jenna Heller
The readings
‘The Change’
‘Sometimes I Wish I Didn’t Have Breasts’
Jenna Heller grew up in the United States but has lived in Aotearoa New Zealand for the last 26 years, mostly near the beach in Ōtautahi Christchurch. In 2021, she was runner-up for the Caselberg International Poetry Prize. As a fiction writer, she has won a handful of awards including National Flash Fiction Day in 2020 and she has appeared in three editions of Best Small Fictions (2020, 2021, and 2023). The End of the Beginning, a collection of flash fiction and prose poetry, was published by At the Bay | I te Kokoru (Ōtepoti Dunedin) in June 2024. Her second book, a collection of poetry, will be published by Sudden Valley Press (Ōtautahi Christchurch) in late-2025.
Our hands are stapled together & large wooden spikes have been driven through our feet. We wriggle at the prospect of unseen predators. Despite these somewhat uncomfortable conditions there is abundant food & a clean supply of water. There is no shortage of creative inputs. Even to a corpse, the water in winter is cold. Our bodies are treated like ice floes & pitched over the side of a rusty trawler. This is how they treat dissidents these days, so most of us have abandoned our subversive activities. Years later, when I resurface for a gulp of air, I find the world has become encrusted in a spiky vegetal material that slices those who would touch it into thin ribbons. Here comes the moon; drawn back & forth across this unforgiving surface by its yearning to touch the ocean, until there is nothing of it left.
The readings
‘Petroglyph – 2’
‘Petroglyph – 3’
Craig Foltz is the author of four full length books of poetry/prose (which have been published in some order by either Compound Press or Ugly Duckling Presse). In addition, his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He currently lives and works in New Plymouth. For more info and collaborative proposals see here.
Blue Hour, Jo McNeice, Otago University Press, 2024
Tidal
Through a fisheye lens through & through.
The psychiatrist says ‘It’s your life.’
White lights shine out of paper, blue lights in the air.
Yellow lights appear on people’s heads.
Drops of blood on my hands-
ants through desert sand. Angels like carrier pigeons
darken the sky. A postcard came this morning soaking wet:
Resolution in the sea. Cherry tree. Fish eggs, dulse & carrageenan. Silver tongues, catching tiny fish. Messages delivered through serrated teeth. Now just you wait with your mermaid scales desiccating. Buried in the sand. Eyes open, waves washing over the top of you.
All this life blooming in the water. All this life blooming in water.
Jo McNeice
The readings
‘Not out of the woods yet’
‘Aro Valley’
‘Blue Hour’
Jo McNeice completed a MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington in 2013. Her poems have been published in Turbine|Kapohau, Sport, JAAM, Takahe and Mayhem. She lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Slender Volumes, Richard von Sturmer, Spoor Books, 2024
76. No-Mind is the Way
Deep in thought, working on the structure of a new book, I didn’t realize that I’d walked down the hill and across the park. I was brought back to the present by the cries of two children playing on a seesaw. “Seesaw” comes from the French ci-ça, meaning this-that. Left-right. Up-down. Earth-sky. But why, I asked myself, this need for definitions? Better to feel the solid earth under your feet and then your body being jolted into the sky.
Richard von Sturmer
A review
300 elaborations on koans collected by poet-philosopher Eihei Dōgen. Richard von Sturmer’s 300 poems form a mosaic of recognition epiphany memory physical anchors dreamkites with senses on alert with refractions reflections multiple lights.
“When my glasses become dirty, I reach for a cloth to wipe them clean. When my mind becomes dull or distracted, I go outside and study the clouds.”
from 19. ‘Ordinary Mind Is the Way’
Reading this collection is to savour the gift of slowness, a slowing down to absorb the world, the things we hear see smell feel, back in the past, here in the present. And yes, it becomes a form of slow travel, reading these 300 poems, strengthening feet on the ground, hearts and minds set to uplift. Yes. Reading this exquisitely crafted collection is to travel with roadmap still in the pocket, to fall upon egg-whisk clouds in the sky hot water bottle Buddha Plutarch Dante a washing machine coffee with a drop of milk. It is to travel to Bologna Sydney New York Venice Poor Knights Islands Honolulu Auckland Mount Wutai Yumen Gate.
For me it is neither source nor destination but the travel itself. I am falling into the utter joy of writing and reading as travel. As discovery surprise wonder. A world in ruins and a world in repair. Richard is translating the koan within his own time and place, his own narrative, and I find myself doing this I read.
And that is what poetry can do. This book. These poetic vibrations, these wisdoms. Openings. Autobiography. Meditations. Poetry as an intimately and intricately woven cloth of both experience and imagining. Personal. Resonant. Anchored and anchoring.
Publisher Erena Shingade has written an insightful introduction, and has produced a book that feels good in the hand. And as Anne Kennedy says on the book’s blurb, “I do believe Slender Volumes is von Sturmer’s most miraculous work”. Yes!
“Indeed. But best not to get your hopes up. Now that it autumn, go into the back garden and search among the fallen leaves; there are sure to be some gold ones among the brown.”
from 7. ‘Yangshan’s “It Is Not That There Is No Enlightenment”‘
The readings
1. ‘Qingyuang’s Whisk’
15. ‘Xuansha’s “One Bright Pearl”‘
48. ‘Xuansha’s Blank Letter’
Richard von Sturmer is a writer, performer and filmmaker who is well known for having written the lyrics to Blam Blam Blam’s “There is No Depression in New Zealand”. He is a teacher of Zen Buddhism and the co-founder of the Auckland Zen Centre. Slender Volumes is his tenth collection of writings.
Newly formed publishing team, Ngā Pukapuka Peka, launched their first three chapbooks late November 2024. Edited by Isla Huia, Joshia Morgan and Laura Borrowdale, the arrival caught my attention as various people enthused about the two launches on social media. The publishers are keen to showcase emerging voices and to strengthen the relationship between page and performance.
I begin with a quotation from each publisher as it feels so apt when writing, reading and reviewing keeps me on my daily toes. What sparks my interest, what provokes satisfies surprises sets me wondering when word activity is such a vital activity? I love the idea of porous borders, multiple strands, poetry daring, shifting forms, steady forms, the imagined as much as the experienced, beauty as much as challenge, connections alongside cavities. And for me, more than anything in these turbulent times, I crave heart. And as Isla says, I too love it “when poetry is human”.
And that is what these three chapbooks do. They offer heart, wonder, multiple threads and connections. I am reminded of Robert Sullivan’s title, Voice Carried My Family, because this is what poetry can do. It is what these poets do. They offer us prismatic voices, multi-toned, rich in bridges and pathways, prompting us to think and feel at a personal level, and within a more universal realm of ideas and histories and futures.
I toast this sweet set of chapbooks with a mesmerising reading and a poem from each poet.
Thank you.
Isla Huia: “I’m interested in writing that had duality. When it isn’t necessarily just one thing. And when things that shouldn’t go together do. What I love the most is when poetry is human. When it’s real.”
Joshia Morgan: “I am interested in submissions that are free to experiment, focused on the marriage or separation between content and form, and that ride the line between earnest and ironic.”
Laura Borrowdale: “I want to read something done well, or something done surprisingly. Come at me with good stuff: flash, short stories, novellas; give me the shivers.”
There’s a siva in the Honda Civic backseat nan will come back for mandarins in the fruit bowl half-peeled, like there is something more pressing than vitamin C, like Frank Ocean caught on repeat Godspeed
We kneel, knead the earthcry because water is a language we all speak pray nan hears our love from 6ft below
on our way home aunties weep to hydrogen and helium left to collide in Glen Eden streetlights orange halogen halos seem kinder tonight just for us, arriving home to the backdoor bolted
Isa isa Vulagi lasa dina Monu lako au na rarawa kina
Ruby Macomber “What We Sang At Nan’s Funeral” first appeared in Starling Magazine Issue 12
Ruby Rae Lupe Ah-Wai Macomber is uri of the shores of Itu’ti’u, the flowers of Taveuni and the mighty tentacles of Te Pū o Te Wheke. She is a daughter, sister, cousin to many, and aunty to Levi. But usually, she just yaps, tries her best, and wrestles Auckland traffic with Flava on full volume.
In 2024, Ruby was the Guest Curator of the New Zealand Young Writers’ Festival in Ōtepoti and Writer in Residence the year prior. Her poem, ‘Cry Sis’, featured in Mana Moana – Pasifika Voices, was shown at the most recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Her recent work features in Landfall, The Pantograph Punch, The Spinoff, Metro, Awa Wāhine, Starling and Waka Kuaka – The Journal of the Polynesian Society.
Since 2020, Ruby has facilitated and now manages Te Kāhui, a creative kaupapa for incarcerated young people to amplify Indigenous narrative agency. This mahi, alongside her lived experience and studies, informs her commitment as a teina to Indigenous movements for abolition and liberation.
Molly Laurence
Molly reads “Third season (not counting spinoffs)”
Taking stock
start with what / your grandmothers gave you ; bone broth; add knuckles of meat and white fingers of mushrooms grasping at you ; the love you mix wooden / with spoon. it bubbles
when steam reaches / gift it you ; cumin / and myrrh / anoint your children with it. this golden ground.
others come they throw / fruits. fistfuls of
fiery sting. peppery burst.
nobody has come to steal your cheese. hide your sheep. try to fashion a sieve from your history / the grandmothers cry save what you can / what is left to gnaw on / modesty. (try to swallow) a click. (metallic taste)
Molly Laurence A early version of “Taking stock” placed second in the Year 11 section of the Poetry Aotearoa Secondary School Prize.
Molly Laurence would have been born upside down and back to front if not for an interfering and entirely lifesaving C-section. She has expressed a similar preference (and hand/eye coordination) throughout the rest of her life to date.
Molly is a longstanding rangatahi poet, first published in Write On magazine as a wee nipper and sending Google docs to nice writers.
She is also a youth advocate, serving on Selwyn Youth Council and in other roles. Her poetry has appeared in notable publications such as Starling and the NZPS anthology. She has been recognised as a finalist in the National Schools Poetry Award 2022 and has twice secured second place in her age group at the Poetry Aotearoa Secondary School Poetry Prize.
In 2024, she was Head Girl at Lincoln High School; the majority of the poems were written during her time as a student there. In 2025, she will be studying law and global studies at Victoria University.
She is happiest standing on grass.
CR Green
CR Green reads “Riding the 5 into the city”
Hannah knows her alphabet!
–an abecedarian
Algonquin, my first language, my mother tongue burst from my heart, my lips, in this land ofcoastal tribes, forests, swamps, migrating up and down this strip of earth. Each day the sun brings light to everything. Season to season, we watched the mystery–I felt so protected–love and goodness existed here in my first home, the closeness we had in our own small Jerusalem, but now we are taught to keep new ways learn them by rote over and over again, more changes coming from these ones— New Englanders, they say, who seem to only want some other part of us–our mouths, our hearts to turn, to ask quietly to deny ourselves, who we are and return our souls with new names to a Saviour–a Door who will take us into eternity, our un- tamed hearts returned unto the one who visited them first, who were welcomed by Wampanoag’s Massasoit, my grandfather, to live beside us— Xristians who took our land with impunity, now kill us, yet, they say, seeking a new place to worship in their new Zion.
CR Green
What holds transplants of any kind in place? In Introduced Species, American-born CR (Candy) Green presents her life’s journey beginning after WWII in California to life in Aotearoa New Zealand, including a departure and return.
From rebellious youth to Jesus freak/gospel singer, wife, mother and teacher of women in prison, Green weaves her narrative in poetry and prose. She draws inspiration from the work of Richard O. Moore, Robert Frost and Seamus Heaney in tracing her ancestry in Colonial America onwards to Aotearoa–one end of this precious earth filled with introduced species.
Her poetry and prose has most recently been published in Meniscus (AU), Impspired (UK), Silver Birch Press (US) and …a fine line (NZ).
will it show traces of right and wrong how I am flying with my golden ticket over spikes and bumps and joy
the sound of the bush tūī the fires raging the wars waging Marley’s three blackbirds still singing the blanket sky a wonder magnet
will it show wealth and poverty the thirsty earth the dead children the dead grass the hazard buildings rumbling guts and dreams of peace hurtling hurting missiles
or waking in the night to hold the light and hold back the tears shining words on a world to be loved and cared for the white blood cells low the iron carrying the load
will it show a train of thought in the midnight pitch potholes in the tracks of our day the need to feed hearts to speak together with tangata whenua to speak of manaakitanga
will it show I am dying or alive or the album I have on repeat that wild southerly wind bending the bush or the garden lush with tomatoes zucchini strawberries herbs or platelets steady
how it’s one small step after another the water tank summer full home as sweet as pocket notebooks a sky chart of life stains the dark and light patches of knowing unknowing seed sowing
will it show what people say and do the stabbing headlines how we build bridges out of hope and flax and rivers and mother tongues how we bake bread and make our beds and dip toes in water
will it show the doubt and the fragility and the homeless a helterskelter hijacked world a woman humming with blues guitar in the middle of a bombsite a kererū arcing over Waitākere sky
my hair turning symbolic grey at the need to be fierce and face the corrupt and greedy the lullabies that soothe the books that send us into zones of comfort and challenge
will it show traces of this poem a healthy liver a new recipe book my loved ones how we make art and music and teach our children to care and mend and how in the early morning light we can roar and hope and sing
Paula Green
Welcome to Poetry Shelf 2025. Over the summer months I am posting a series of summer readings, both audios and reviews. Later, I aim to post Aotearoa poetry news, interviews, Monday Poems, reviews, features, audios, thematic clusters, poems I have loved over time, books I have loved over time. I might review fiction and nonfiction published in Aotearoa, do the occasional art exhibition review. But I am also finishing a couple of manuscripts and will be devoting time to that.
Do send me poetry news to post and books published in Aotearoa to review. I can’t promise to review and post everything. But Poetry Shelf is born out of love and the imperative of connection.
Poetry. Storytelling. Art. Music. Film. We matter. Let’s dance!
NZ Poetry Shelf 