growing aubergine for the first time

Inside the city a house
Inside the house a room
Inside the room a cupboard
Inside the cupboard a drawer
Inside the drawer a box
Inside the box a necklace
Inside the necklace a story
Inside the story a city hope

Some years I invite you to share your favourite reads of the year, especially poetry, especially when poetry doesn’t get much attention in the end-of-year lists and book stacks that we are seeing across all forms of media. This year has sizzled and simmered and shone with local poetry: new collections along with live performances. So many collections document and explore tough stuff: illness, heartbreak, despair, suicidal thoughts, global wars and inhumanity, our government inflicting more and more damage on planet and people. And so many collections deliver love, a multi-stranded love and a deep love of what words can do, whether exuberant or sweetly nuanced.

Every poetry book I have picked up, lingered over and reviewed (see photos below in the side bar and you will discover my reviews), I have utterly loved. Sadly for me, there is still a stack of books on my desk I’m itching to get to (see photos below), books by poets I love, books by poets new to me. This week I made the hard decision to return to reviewing these books after Poetry Shelf and I have rebooted, after we all get through the busy season where it is hard to read more than shopping lists.

I want to share a couple of highlights with you, but first a wee update. I am standing at a fairytale door, a threshold onto my new road. What specialists call my new normal, not the normal I enjoyed when I was travelling all over the country, visiting schools, doing events and author tours, reading and writing all day long. I have had a bone marrow transplant that has gifted me the miracle of life, thanks to an anonymous donor and an incredible medical team, but it comes with scars. Looks like I will always have to use my energy jar carefully, to manage my daily physical challenges with various aids. But I sure in heck find enjoyment and delight in every day.

Poetry Shelf has made such a difference in year that I have tagged both my worst and best. So many poets contributing, so many poetry fans reading and sharing. So many thoughtful caring emails, especially those responding to The Venetian Blind Poems, especially those responding to features and audio that have resonated with you. Poetry Shelf is nothing without you, without readers and writers connecting across generations, cultures, the length and the breadth of the country.

Creating three new series this year has been a special highlight for me. I have included links to one of them, Poetry Cafe Readings, because hearing these poets read has been such a gift. This will be back next year, along with the Speaking Out ( check out the Gaza poems) and Playing Favourites series, plus some new ideas. I have included a link to the fabulous Te Whāriki anthology where some of the contributors selected a favourite poetry book of 2025. And to a handful of special moments on the bogs.

Thank you so much everyone for your incredible support.

Some Special Poetry Shelf Moments

Celebrating the poetry of Brian Turner (1944- 2025)

Celebrating Dinah Hawken, winner of Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry

Poetry Shelf celebrates National Poet Laureate Chris Tse a farewell & thank you

Celebrating Robert Sullivan, our new Poet Laureate

My conversation with Anna Jackson, in which we share our love of poetry

Celebrating Emma Neale winning Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry 2025

Gaza by Bill Manhire

Jillian Sullivan’s poems sent from Te Araroa

Poetry Shelf celebrates a Laureate evening

Jackson McCarthy Playing Favourites

Michelle Elvy’s poem dispatches from USA (there are more)

My love of cookbooks: Take Me to Spain by Melanie Jenkins and Jo Wilcox

My love of cookbooks 2: My Weekend Table by Gretchen Lowe

Poetry Shelf Protest series: ‘Reading Poetry to Rare Lizards’ – Poetry in Defence of the Environment

My love of art: Dick Frizzell show and memoir

Feature on Te Whāriki: Reading Ten New Poets from Aoteatoa, edited by Anna Jackson, Dougal McNeill and Robert Sullivan (Auckland University Press, 2025)

Poetry Shelf Cafe and Summer readings
Poets read and talk poetry for around twenty minutes

Philomena Johnson reading
Jenna Heller reading
Craig Foltz reading
Richard von Sturmer reading
Jo McNeice reading
Ruby Macomber, Molly Laurence and CR Green
Anne Kennedy reading
Poetry Shelf’s cafe reading for NZ Poetry Day plus breaking news
Poetry Shelf review and readings: Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2025 – breath
Aruna Joy Bhakta reading
Harry Ricketts reading
Alexandra Cherian reading
Ethan Christensen reading
Sue Wootton reading

interview and readings: Koe: An Aotearoa ecopoetry anthology
Poets read from Te Moana o Reo: Ocean of Languages

Books I reviewed and loved in 2025

Write name in side bar and check out my review
Many of the books I reviewed included readings

Books on my must-read pile

I often ask poets in interviews what words matter to them as they write – but today I am asking you what words matter as you live each day. I am thinking: kindness, self-care, connections, hope and joy. Over the next month or so I am going to read novels, watch movies, listen to music, tend the vegetable garden, and bake and cook.

Sending aroha to you all along with a huge bouquet of sweet and salty Te Henga ocean air.

Junction Box

sitting here at the junction box
of war and peace and flowing waters
hearing the soundtrack of bush haven
hearing the dawn bugle the flyover the kōrero the silence
searching in the manukā for remedy cables
mourning every raised weapon every sacrifice
every empty stomach displaced refugee every cruel act
the weasel words from weasel politicians
jamming our children in square learning boxes
slamming our hospitals in low voltage budgets
cramming our planet in polluted circuits extinction coils
feeling in this breaking dawn the connecting calls for peace
picturing protest placards holding voices of resistance past and present
picturing aid workers risking life to nurse and feed and shelter
picturing a global jigsaw puzzle of greed and smash and grab
for how long have we imagined peace have we called for peace
for how long have we imagined blue sky transformation
today we are standing here holding our currents of hope
and yes today we are joining in calls for peace calling calling calling

25 April 2025
Paula Green

widening the gap

in the wild night of storm the wind is widening the gap
or is it the roar of a government hellbent on building

a ravine between the rich and the poor Māori and Pakeha
in every choice they make. A school curriculum has lost

sight of the prismatic stories that shape us, sums that include
x-factor joy, and I am stuck on this freight train

in the widening gap because I see no end to damage and despair and
I’m filling an ocean with tears crying over lessons that slam the door

in the face of poverty or another language or the tangata whenua
and this rumble gap is the distance between sick earth and well earth

between building roads and restoring our hospitals and schools
and here I am holding my fragile torch to the widening gap

in my sodden socks no idea where to shine the light next yet
except maybe on all those protestors from the 1960s who are stomping

in the streets even louder now with their dreams our dreams where women
are heard where Māori are heard my bones breaking and I am blowing

all around to resist persist hope dream begging to fill this gap with precious care
to build glorious people-friendly bridges out of knowledge and foresight.

Paula Green
October 2025