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 . . .

Gone, Girl

I want to lean in to uncynical joy
eat fruit when my mouth
craves fruit        I will let my body sleep
for as long as it needs      I will
have a cry         in the back room of Café Laz
go out the first warm day
after a cold snap           and remember
what it is to be careless
with my body heat
to not have to clutch at it

peel off the layers one by one    expose
the soft hairs at the nape of my neck
my mind half an orange       every drop of juice
squeezed from it           the good plant shop
down the road closed and another plant shop
moved in          I walk past it
on my way home          give a little wave
to the driver who lets me cross the street           
stuff newspaper in the toes of my boots
and hope they are dry by morning
when I drag myself from sleep         to a little cat
breathing fish breath on my face   
she’s checking that I haven’t
died in the night             if you believe
the videos on the internet

the world is my husband and I am
a good wife       I air out the sheets on
bright days       drink coffee on an empty stomach
until I feel real               or at least
more real than my baseline       think about
gone girling myself        and my main concern is
who will continue to feed the cat            I’ve never
even seen the movie                 I just live
in the world                   and now it’s inside me

Ash Davida Jane

Ash Davida Jane is a poet, editor and reviews from Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Their second book How to Live With Mammals (Te Herenga Waka University Press) won second prize in the 2021 Laurel Prize. They are a publisher at Tender Press and reviews co-editor at takahē.

The Open Book and Starling

201 Ponsonby Road, Auckland, New Zealand 1011

The Open Book is thrilled to welcome back Starling for the Issue 19 Tāmaki launch party at 3pm on Sunday 6 April!

We’ll be celebrating the new issue with readings from several of its authors – come along and join us in hearing new work from young Aotearoa authors, and have a browse of the Open Book shelves while you’re at it.

No ticket or entry fees needed, and we will have drinks and nibbles for you to enjoy. We look forward to seeing you there!

Worth checking out Wordcore Wayfinders site here