hands off | hands on

 

hands are for holding, for heeding, for
    helping | for knitting blankets and weaving
    stories | for signing our voices, for lifting
    and praying | and hands are for caring

a parent’s and child’s, the curve of my
     mother’s fingers hovering | and mine,
     now untangling, my thumb feeling F
     and finding the chord 

news from this land shatters accord
    dread notes dominating | a new disregard
    for human life | people mis-handled, removed
    from homes | greed fixing on friends and

distant places: Greenland and Ukraine
    squeezed by aggressor hands | and even
    Heard Island residents on the list | so
    world markets plunge but penguins 

stand tall while streets fill with people
    with hand-crafted signs | reaching each
    other, in this heady week, this week of
    a record-breaking speech

on the Senate floor, momentum building
     – but will they stretch hands across the
    aisle, find the right chord | protests flare
    while billionaires golf | we are calling

for our world to be in better hands | and
    now, a new week | I am walking in an airport
    gallery with brightly woven panels: the  
   ‘Welcome Blanket – stitching together the

fabric of our nation’, tangible proof of
    shared humanity | and there: ‘staple
    drawings’, intricate and floating | both saying
    what hands can do, both hands on hope

 

Michelle Elvy

after the Hands Off marches across the nation, April 07 2025
artworks: ‘The Welcome Blanket’ project; Chenhung Chen’s series ‘Awake in the Dream’

Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and teacher of creative writing. Her books include the everrumble and the other side of better, she has edited numerous anthologies, including Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages, edited with Vaughan Rapatahana (The Cuba Press), and the forthcoming Poto! Iti te kupu, nui te kōrero| Short! The big book of small stories, edited with Kiri Piahana-Wong (MUP).

My Margaret Mahy Award Lecture (delivered Sunday April 6th, read here and will be a video coming) was a collage on writing poetry with and for children (and adults too really). It was both personal and political, and was inspired by the patchwork quilt I create each morning to get through my daily challenges. Little patches that give me strength and joy. Like writing. Like blogging. Like reading. Like reviewing books. Like gardening and cooking and listening to music and audio books. Like watching UK detective programmes in the afternoons! Or cricket. Or football.

On Poetry Box, I am posting a series of happy review bundles to celebrate some of the terrific children’s books published in 2024, both in Aotearoa and overseas. Children’s books can be such a source of delight. Along with adult books of all genres.

I am also keen to post some comfort spots on Poetry Shelf.

The key aim of Poetry Shelf is to celebrate local poetry – books, events, initiatives, connections. But now and then, I want to share a book that offers comfort diversions. Like a zillion other readers, I am a big fan of Richard Osman’s detective fiction, both The Thursday Murder Club series and the new one, We Solve Murders. Richard writes intriguing who-dunnits that are sweetly crafted, with nuanced characters, humane underthreads, rich detail. I am currently listening and loving Graham Norton read Holding – he aces the range of Irish accents, his characters and the sotry!

I have finally got around to reading The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone by Gareth Ward and Louise Ward (Penguin, 2024). And now I can’t wait to read the second one that has just come out: Tea and Cake and Death (Penguin).

Louise and Gareth own the Wardini bookstores, with branches in Havelock North and Napier. I didn’t know they were both coppers in the UK before moving to Aotraroa. Louise has an English Literature degree and taught Shakespeare to inner city children, while Gareth is the author of a number of books. Perfect background experience to write a detective novel together.

A mysterious parcel arrives at Sherlock Tomes, Garth and Eloise’s bookshop in Havelock North. And yes, there are little similarity dazzles that add to the delight of reading. The ex-copper booksellers are intrigued by a trail of old-case clues and get set to solve the case of a missing school girl.

The novel ticks all my detective novel boxes: nuanced characters, twists and surprises, enriching detail, fluent writing, hooks and ideas, engaging voices, and heart. What lifts the novel to a zone of ultra reading comfort is the way literature is like a semi-protagonist. Loads of delicious literary references! It is almost like I’m in Wardini Books and having books recommended to me . . . and yes the new Catherine Chidgey is on my must-read list.

So it is a big warm toast to Louise and Gareth, to Wardini Books, and to excellent local detective fiction! Bravo! Here’s to comfort reading!

Gareth and Louise Ward are the real-life owners of independent bookshop Wardini Books, with stores in Havelock North and Napier, New Zealand. Louise is known among the staff as Fearless Leader and Gareth as a bit of a dick; he is, however, the author of the Tarquin the Honest and The Rise of the Remarkables book series, as well as being the bestselling and award-winning author of The Traitor and the Thief and The Clockill and the Thief. Gareth and Louise met at police training college in the UK and are both ex-coppers. Louise has one murder arrest to her name, is an English Literature Graduate and as an ex-teacher inflicted Shakespeare on inner-city twelve-year-olds. She regularly reviews books on RNZ. Both are obsessed with their rescue dog Stevie, avoid housework and gardening, and live in the cultural centre of the universe that is Hawke’s Bay, Aotearoa New Zealand. The Bookshop Detectives is Gareth and Louise’s first book together.

Penguin page: Dead Girl Gone

Penguin page: Tea and Cake and Death

DANZ Children’s Book Award 2025 shortlists announced

I am delighted to see Eileen Merriman makes the YA shortlist with her novel To Catch a Falling Star (Penguin, 2023). The book, with both nuance and complexity, navigates tough issues. Aged fifteen, Jamie Orange participates in school musical productions, is secretly in love, but faces persistent and crippling mental health challenges. The story and the characters are utterly moving. The novel is an unforgettable, thought-provoking read, so I am pleased to see it get this recognition.

In my Poetry Shelf review I wrote: “Ah. Triple ah. Quadruple ah. Catch a Falling Star is a sad, contemporary, thought-provoking, must-read story that revives you no matter how little sleep you have had! The word I take with me is hope, the image I hold is two teenagers bonding over books and coffee. Utterly riveting! Utterly humane.”

You can read my review here.

The Shortlist

The DANZ Children’s Book Award, launched for 2024, stands for The Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Children’s Book Award and has been created to recognise, award, and celebrate diverse children’s fiction. This means a children’s book published in Australia or New Zealand which pushes boundaries, challenges stereotypes, and celebrates diverse and marginalised people and communities.

Website here.

The 2025 shortlists for the Australian School Library Association (ASLA) DANZ (Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand) Children’s Book Award have been announced.

Chosen from previously announced longlists, shortlisted titles in each category are:

Graphic novel

• Ghost Book (Remy Lai, A&U Children’s)
• Neverlanders (Tom Taylor & Jon Sommariva, Penguin)
• The Sweetness Between Us (Sarah Winifred Searle, A&U Children’s)

Nonfiction

• Looking After Country with Fire (Victor Steffensen, illus by Sandra Steffensen, HG Explore)
• Our Mob (Taylor Hampton & Jacinta Daniher, illus by Seantelle Walsh, Ford Street)
• The Trees (Victor Steffensen, illus by Sandra Steffensen, HG Explore)

Poetry

• It’s the Sound of the Thing (Maxine Beneba Clarke, HGCP)
• Pasifika Navigators (52 Pasifika student authors, Mila’s Books)

YA

• Catch a Falling Star (Eileen Merriman, Penguin)
• Inkflower (Suzy Zail, Walker)
• Into the Mouth of the Wolf (Erin Gough, HGCP).

The winners will be announced at the ASLA conference in Geelong on 30 May.

Arietta

Niamh lying in the sun on the grass and it’s all
a small-town café in my heart. I idle through
another lukewarm day like a conversation
with a new friend. People are in rooms far from me,
near to me. People are breathing in these rooms.
Their breathing like footsteps. Their footsteps like song.

Cadence Chung

Cadence Chung is a poet, composer, and singer currently in her Honours year at the New Zealand School of Music. Her nationally-bestselling chapbook anomalia was released in 2022 with Tender Press, and her anthology of young artists, Mythos, was released in 2024 with Wai-te-ata Press. Her next book, Mad Diva, will be released in April 2025 with Otago University Press. She also performs as a classical soloist, presents on RNZ Concert, and co-edits Symposia Magazine, a literary magazine for young New Zealanders.

Endurance

Fire

little paper dragon, poised on the shelf in the room painted
green, tucked in its cave below Struwwelpeter and Madeleine,
Janosch and Kipling, scuffed satin ballet shoes and chalk portraits
of boys long dead hanging on the wall

six neat squares of quilt sewn nearly a century ago, pinned above
the cedar chest, keeping leather baby shoes, curled with age, and
knitted bicycle sweaters: momentum  of childhood a thing
you can’t miss in this sunlit room     this dragon

made by small nimble hands, the precise folds shaping its wings,
lifting, spreading, waiting, its yang energy waking from winter, soaring
upwards, inviting change, its heat its power: the fire miraculous,
carried so gently in its little paper heart

Air

the scent        of blooming        things

hyacinth           sweet pea        peony      bursting on a day        we crave

good news,       wafting from gardens                along sunny streets       and the sweet

sweet aroma                 of magnolia      their pink hue              particularly assertive

in the Smithsonian        garden  the yin of them             needed

 

outside     this window         my mother’s creamy camelia         bouncing softly     

in the breeze       fruity fragrance             gliding in          oh how

a thing unseen              hops     a gentle ride       

rises   on            glossy    air

 

 

Water

on the radio, a young harpist, following
in the steps of Alice Coltrane and

    Margaret Bonds and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
    playing muted tones of Troubled Water, sensing a long history

          of rivers and swamps, people moving slowly
          towards a more open world, the harpist growing up

              with African American spirituals, desires for liberty
              hidden behind metaphors, water a symbol of freedom

 

Earth

cherry trees  / spaced  / along wide city streets / announcing spring / in this urban metropolis / these trees, gifted in 1912 /  a token of friendship from Japan // our friendships delicate these days / taking energy and more / perhaps holding  despite / the odds against them // here, look / smaller trees sturdy and familiar / not as showy but fruitful / American holly, redbud, flowering dogwood / native to the eastern seaboard / trees in bloom / roots reaching / sustaining / year after year / softly minding / their own business / flowering and seeding, flowering and seeding  / the quiet understory that might endure

 

 

Michelle Elvy
31 March 2025

Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and teacher of creative writing. Her books include the everrumble and the other side of better, she has edited numerous anthologies, including Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages, edited with Vaughan Rapatahana (The Cuba Press), and the forthcoming Poto! Iti te kupu, nui te kōrero| Short! The big book of small stories, edited with Kiri Piahana-Wong (MUP).

and the events n detail . . .