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Paula Harris: winner of the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize
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Author Archives: Paula Green
In the hammock: Mary McCallum’s XYZ of Happiness
XYZ of Happiness by Mary McCallum (Mākaro Press, 2018)
She’s an open window with curtains flapping
whatever the season, one eye always on the outside
from ‘Quick’
Mary McCallum is a novelist, poet and songwriter; her novel, The Blue, won the NZ Book Award in 2007 and she won the inaugural Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize. Her children’s book, Dappled Annie and the Tigrish, is an exquisite read and one of my favourite NZ novels for children. In 2013 she established Mākaro Press with its annual Hoopla Poetry series and Submarine imprint. She lives in Wellington.
Mary’s debut collection is like an alphabet of moods that draw upon the weather, love, life, death and family. She writes with an inviting mix of warmth and attentiveness, acute observations of the physical world and an ear tuned to the musicality of the line. I am pulled into feeling her world from the poem that faces the death of Hat (Harriet) and her engagements with life (‘C) to a poem that navigates a drowning with sublime fluidity (‘Vessels’) to the everyday presence of food and domestic gestures, sky and space.
Snapping off the ends of beans is like lips
popping, a pork cookbook is the best place
to find that picture of you and your mum
at Taupō one summer, a turkey too late
in the oven can make a grandmother
cry with hunger (…)
from ‘Things they don’t tell you on Food TV’
There is a steady momentum in the reading, a slow-paced rhythm that grows upon you, yet individual poems are varied in key and style. ‘Sycamore Tree’ is missing vowels as though life becomes hiccupy and fragmented. ‘Returning’ is a lyrical feast with potent physical detail. ‘Quick’ pulsates with love and image. ‘Things they don’t tell you on Food TV’ is a sensual autobiography.
I know you’re watching
from your house by th path
with a desk by th window
today we’ve stopped
right n front f you
but I can’t move th childrn on
not while they’re spnning
like littl propellers like
lttl worlds
from ‘Sycamore Tree’
This slim collection might so easily be missed, with its quietness, its loveliness, its pitch to the way we are, but it is a book that holds you immeasurably with both feeling and fluency.
Here it is that we are,
a breath outwards
returning—the gate
on a slant, paint
pulling from the wood,
closes—let it,
let go of the road,
the run of fences, the tin-cut
tilting hills, the world’s
rim—let the dog out
and drive, windows
wound down, the pink
evening light, lavender,
olive trees, cypress.
from ‘Returning’
Mākaro Press page
Read ‘C’ here
Writers on Mondays: Poetry Quartet
Poetry Shelf highly recommends this!
An event with Therese Lloyd Tayi Tibble Chris Tse Sam Duckor-Jones
Writers on Mondays
6th Aug 2018 12:15pm to 1:15pm
Te Marae, Level 4, Te Papa, Wellington
Therese Lloyd, Tayi Tibble, Chris Tse and Sam Duckor-Jones
These poets write works of boldness with an acute eye on relationships in the modern world. Therese Lloyd’s The Facts, Poūkahangatus by Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou), He’s So MASC by Chris Tse and People from the Pit Stand Up by Sam Duckor-Jones are diverse and exciting books of poetry. Each writer engages with language in innovative ways to explore and reimagine love, trust, intimacy and the politics of being. Come and hear the new wave of New Zealand poets in a reading and discussion chaired by poet and essayist Chris Price.
Writers on Mondays is presented by the International Institute of Modern Letters and The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Free event.
Poetry Shelf audio spot: Manon Revuelta’s ‘Beak/Nest’
‘Beak/Nest’ was published in girl teeth.
Manon is a poet from Auckland, NZ. Her chapbook of poems and essays girl teeth was published by Hard Press in 2017. She has had poetry published in Minarets, Sweet Mammalian, Deluge, Brief, and Turbine.
My interview with Manon
NZ Poetry Day: Exploring Prose Poetry at Hagley Writers’ Institute
The Given Words Poetry Day Competition
‘The Spanish Connection’ for National Poetry Day
What would you write if I gave you five words? The Given Words poetry competition returns for the third year running with a new challenge for New Zealand’s Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day 2018.
This year the New Zealand poet Charles Olsen, who was recently awarded the III Poetry Award SxS Antonio Machado in Spain, has chosen five words from his translation of one of Spanish poet Antonio Machado’s poems, The Hospice. To participate you have to write a poem including all five words and send it in before midnight on 24 August, National Poetry Day.
The Given Words competition is free to enter and is open to all New Zealand citizens. Prizes will be awarded for the Best Poem and Best Poem by Under-16s. The winner of Best Poem will receive a copy of the New Zealand Poetry Yearbook 2018, courtesy of Massey University Press and the winner of the Under-16 category will receive a copy of Slice of Heaven by Des O’Leary (due out in September) courtesy of Mākaro Press. The winning poems will also be translated into Spanish.
You will find the five words and full details of how to participate here where you can also read entries from previous editions. For teachers there is a creative lesson plan available to inspire pupils.
Charles Olsen, who will also judge the entries, says: ‘It is fun to see how the same five words can inspire such a diverse range of poems. Take the words for a walk, mull them over and see what they say to you. I look forward to reading all the entries!’
Further Info:
NZ Given Words blog
Facebook events
NZ Poetry Day
Biggest ever National Poetry Day supported by award-winning Kiwi poets
Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day #NZPoetryDay announces its largest ever celebration of poetry today, with more than 135 events programmed to take place around New Zealand.
Held annually on the fourth Friday in August, National Poetry Day sees award-winning poets join poetry enthusiasts from all over the country in a marathon programme of poetry readings, performances, workshops and competitions.
On August 24, poetry will be making news – and noise – in dozens of cities, towns and rural areas across New Zealand. Expect to encounter poetry in expected and unusual places – on public transport, street posters and footpaths; in cafés, bars, bookshops, and libraries; and at schools, university campuses, retirement villages, marae, theatres and community centres.
The day will include readings with 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards poetry category finalists Briar Wood and Sue Wootton in Auckland and a workshop with winner Elizabeth Smither in Christchurch. All four 2018 Ockham poets, including Tony Beyer, feature in Phantom Billstickers’ countrywide super-size Poetry on Posters campaign and will also be filmed for a social media campaign celebrating poetry.
New Zealand Books Awards past poetry winners Jenny Bornholdt, Kevin Ireland, Anne Kennedy, Bill Manhire, Greg O’Brien and Brian Turner will also take part in events around New Zealand. Alongside established poets, emerging voices and student poets will take part in open mic sessions and spoken-word performances. There will be a host of poetry contests for writers of all ages and many of the programmed events will be open to the public and free admission.
Among the scores of events taking place from the far north to the deep south of Aotearoa are: Rodney District’s live human art/poetry installations and poems written on the sand, to be captured by drone and made into a movie; Auckland’s ‘love letters to Auckland’ event – a multimedia performance by local poets, rappers, storytellers and dancers; Taranaki’s ‘Pop Up Poetry’ exhibition of poems on sticky notes; Wellington’s ‘Where the Wild Words Are’, in the company of local poets who will bewitch, berate, busk and bewilder; Nelson’s ‘Poetry Fridge Door and Poetry Generator’; Christchurch’s ‘Speed Date an Editor’; Dunedin’s gala poetry evening; and Central Otago’s evening of poetry on the theme of rivers with Brian Turner, Michael Harlow, Jenny Bornholdt, Gregory O’Brien and Liz Breslin. There will even be an international poetry event at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!
If you can’t get along to an event, why not enter The 24-Hour Poem Competition? Your challenge is to write a poem of no more than 30 lines, containing ten supplied words. The catch is: you only have the 24 hours of Poetry Day itself to write and submit your poem.
For full details about all the events taking place on Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day, including places, venues, times, tickets and more, go here.
Established in 1997, National Poetry Day is a popular fixture on the nation’s cultural calendar and one that celebrates discovery, diversity and community. For the third year in a row, Phantom Billstickers support National Poetry Day through their naming rights sponsorship. In the lead up to August 24, they will bring poetry to New Zealand communities with a mighty street poster campaign.
Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Sue Wootton’s ‘Rx’
Rx
I am ill because of wounds to the soul. D. H. Lawrence
Iceberg, Peace, American Beauty: the blooms
smack the window in the summer storm, hammered,
blotted, falling early in this discontent. Now
is become the only season. Patients all, we ail.
Our wounds are deep, our fractures dirty, complex,
irreducible. Compound upon compound. O rose,
we are sick! Thinner and thinner our skins
in these plague years. The lesions fester and we scratch.
Small words buzz and swarm, stripping the tongue
of buds. Our mouths are full of boils. An excess of bile
mocks the liver. This contagion of crimson rage,
these wails building. Eros, thou art sore.
Our memories fail, fatally. Too much for
get. Thus, prescribe ourselves a salve
for give. Mix in the blue bowl all our howls
and mutters. Add the lullabies, waiata, sagas,
ballads, odes. Copy and collate
the scrolls; trace the stories written slow
by candlelight and goose quill on illuminated manuscripts.
Resurrect the many, many ways
of saying sister, brother. Compose
our selves. Patience, all. Make open refuge
for the human heart and place the books within.
Read, and repeat. Read, and repeat. Let settle.
©Sue Wootton
Note: The medical shorthand for ‘treatment’ is Rx, which derives from the Latin imperative recipe (‘take’). ‘Rx’ was commended in the 2018 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine (judged by Mark Doty).
Sue is a a PhD candidate in creative practice at the University of Otago, researching how literature articulates what it means to be able or disabled, ill or well. Her most recent publications are her debut novel, Strip (Mākaro Press), longlisted in the 2017 Ockham NZ Book Awards, and the poetry collection, The Yield (Otago University Press), a finalist in the 2018 Ockham NZ Book Awards. Her poem ‘The Swim’ has recently been longlisted in the 2018 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s Poetry Prize.
All Tomorrow’s Poets 2018
NEW VOICES – Emerging Poets Competition 2018
New Judge. Our judges have previously come from the publishing world, or been established poets. This year Elizabeth Morton will be judge and we are delighted to have someone at the helm who has experience of what it means to win the competition and the value of it to the career of emerging authors.
Elizabeth won first prize at NEW VOICES 2013. She has been published in both locally and internationally and had her work included in the Best Small Fictions 2016 anthology published by Queen’s Ferry Press. 2015 she was shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Award and has twice come 2nd place in the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition (2015, 2016).
The competition is open only to writers considered ‘emerging’ i.e. have not published one or more books (fiction, poetry, nonfiction) with a New Zealand or overseas publisher, and is a current or former undergraduate (BA, Hons, BSc, BComm etc) or Masters student. Initially entries were invited from Auckland University then, AUT in 2013 and we are delighted to now have extended the entry to MIT and Massey’s Albany campus students and in 2018 to students of Blue Haven Writer’s Workshop.
Entries close on 1st August 2018.
The winners will be announced at the Divine Muses Evening of Poetry held on National Poetry Day, 24th August 2018.
Unity Books is again generously donating the prizes – $200 worth of book tokens for the winner and $100 worth book tokens for the runner up.
The full details are available on the attached entry form or via this link from which you can also read about previous winners.
NZ Poetry Shelf 