Category Archives: NZ author

Poetry Shelf audio spot: Tracey Slaughter’s ‘breather’

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Tracey Slaughter is the author of deleted scenes for lovers an acclaimed collection of short stories (VUP, 2016). Her poetry and prose have received many awards including the international Bridport Prize (2014), two BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards, and the Landfall Essay Prize 2015. Her poetry cycle ‘it was the seventies when me & Karen Carpenter hung out’ was shortlisted in the Manchester Poetry Prize 2014, and her poem ‘breather’ won Second Place in the ABR Peter Porter Poetry Prize 2018. She teaches at Waikato University where she edits the journal Mayhem.

 

 

 

Paula Harris, winner of a US poetry prize, talks poems with Jessie Mulligan

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Listen here at RNZ National. Great interview! Really can’t get my ahead around a journal that says ‘this is not poetry’! We should be long over such restrictive attitudes to what a poem is.

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Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Anahera Gildea’s ‘Ahi kā’

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Ahi kā

 

At the top of the road

there is wind,

railways crossing at the corner,

of an old wooden prefab where

wine gums and popsicles, and

our feet in jandals fill

the one room dairy that is decades gone

 

toward the motorway

past the tree where Uncle hung himself,

is the highway

the marae-way.

Eels peg the line, and

Chip-dog is lazy barking.

Over the split verandah, you cross

the musty lounge, dark with the 70’s

squeeze down the hall past rooms so

clumsy you can smell the cob

 

out the window, into the land

blazing beneath this ancient copper;

we scrub on the washboard

of someone else’s clothes,

the broken down wringer where

this Auntie’s house is on the left,

that Auntie’s house is on the right;

 

the whole damn road is a gauntlet of aunties.

 

Anahera Gildea (Ngāti Raukawa-ki-te-tonga) has worked extensively as a visual and performing artist, a writer, and a teacher. She has had her poems and short stories published in multiple journals and anthologies, and her first book ‘Poroporoaki to the Lord My God: Weaving the Via Dolorosa’ was published by Seraph Press in 2016. She holds a BA in Art Theory, Graduate Diplomas in Psychology, Teaching,

 

 

 

Landfall Review on Wilson, Heath, Ricketts and Bullock

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See reviews here

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Two New Zealanders win Seizure’s Australasian novella prize: Anna Jackson and Avi Duckor-Jones

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Warm congratulations to Anna and Avi. I am thrilled to be launching poet Anna Jackson’s novella in Auckland on September 15th at Time Out Book Shop and to share the delights of both books on my blog soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 reasons to go to the Ladies LiteraTea on Sunday September 3rd

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terrific readings

divine afternoon tea

Anna Jackson reading poetry

I have my ticket

 

Eleven reasons why I am off to this event:

 

1.40pm Pip Desmond – ‘Song for Rosaleen’
A beautiful, compassionate but unflinching account of coping with a mother’s dementia; explores the practical & ethical dilemmas & also celebrates Rosaleen’s life.

2pm Anna Jackson – ‘Pasture and Flock’
New & selected poems from this highly regarded Victoria University Professor of English Literature. Pastoral yet gritty, intellectual & witty, sweet but with stings in their tails.

2.15pm Kate Duignan – ‘The New Ships’
A brilliant new novel set in Wellington, Europe & Asia, examining one man’s attempts to understand his own life – intimate, compassionate & absolutely absorbing.

2.35pm Amber Rose – ‘Wild Delicious’
The influences of growing up in rural NZ & travelling widely overseas, converge in this irresistible cookbook that prepares natural, seasonal ingredients to be eaten with delight.

 

2.55pm Afternoon Tea – With lamingtons, melting moments, asparagus rolls and more!

 

3.35pm Tess Redgrave – ‘Gone to Pegasus’
Beautifully capturing Dunedin in 1892, this wonderful debut novel explores music & the role of women & their friendships, just as Women’s Suffrage in NZ is about to happen.

3.55pm Dr. Jo Cribb – ‘Don’t Worry About the Robots
How to Survive & Thrive in the New World of Work. From former CEO of the Ministry for Women & current CEO of the Book Council, exciting ideas & practical tools for the future.

4.15pm Eileen Merriman – ‘Catch Me When You Fall’ and ‘Pieces of You’
This full-time consultant haematologist at North Shore Hospital has won awards for her short stories & both her brilliant young adult novels are finalists in this year’s NZ Book Awards.

4.35pm Jo Thorpe – ‘This Thin Now’
The story of love lost & the places the poet goes to find it still – from inside the space two hands make, to the numinous blue of sea & sky. Poems of dazzle & quiet – a rare gift.

4.50pm Dame Fiona Kidman – ‘This Mortal Boy’
An utterly compelling recreation of the events leading to one of the last hangings in NZ (1955). This beloved writer brings young Albert (Paddy) back to life – heart-wrenching.

5.10pm Megan Dunn – ‘Tinderbox’
Riffing on Ray Bradbury’s classic novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’, a brilliantly witty exploration of literature & culture, books & bookshops, aspiring authors, & life in the 21st century.

 

 

Monday Poem: Anahera Gildea’s ‘Ahi kā’

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Ahi kā

 

At the top of the road

there is wind,

railways crossing at the corner,

of an old wooden prefab where

wine gums and popsicles, and

our feet in jandals fill

the one room dairy that is decades gone

 

toward the motorway

past the tree where Uncle hung himself,

is the highway

the marae-way.

Eels peg the line, and

Chip-dog is lazy barking.

Over the split verandah, you cross

the musty lounge, dark with the 70’s

squeeze down the hall past rooms so

clumsy you can smell the cob

 

out the window, into the land

blazing beneath this ancient copper;

we scrub on the washboard

of someone else’s clothes,

the broken down wringer where

this Auntie’s house is on the left,

that Auntie’s house is on the right;

 

the whole damn road is a gauntlet of aunties.

 

©Anahera Gildea
Anahera Gildea (Ngāti Raukawa-ki-te-tonga) has worked extensively as a visual and performing artist, a writer, and a teacher. She has had her poems and short stories published in multiple journals and anthologies, and her first book ‘Poroporoaki to the Lord My God: Weaving the Via Dolorosa’ was published by Seraph Press in 2016. She holds a BA in Art Theory, Graduate Diplomas in Psychology, Teaching, and Performing Arts, and a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Victoria University.

 

 

 

 

Bonsai anthology of small fiction launch and tour

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Wellington September 3rd  Readings by Bonsai contributors and a discussion of the small form with Tim Jones, Nick Ascroft, Vivienne Plumb, Harry Ricketts, Annette Edwards-Hill and more.

Auckland September 6th The evening will include a discussion of the small form and readings by Bonsai contributors including Graeme Lay, Jack Ross, Tracey Slaughter, Siobhan Harvey, Allan Drew, Maris O’Rourke and more.

Whangarei September 12th

 

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In the hamock: reading Ila Selwyn’s dancing with dragons

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Ila Selwyn, dancing with dragons, Westridge Publishing, 2018

 

Ila Selwyn has published a previous poetry collection, two sisters, two chapbooks and a number of handmade books. She was an MC at Auckand’s Poetry Live, ran Rhythm & Verse at Titirangi’s Lopdell House and has run National Poetry Day events.

Ila’s new collection is as much a performance piece as it is an aural and visual symphony for the page. The book tips you as reader. It is in landscape format turning on a vertical rather than horizontal axis. The poems hug the right-hand margin. Quirky black and white drawings are scattered throughout. Lines in italics are mashed from songs or dead poets, so as you read, familiar melodies cut into the poems.

The word at the start of a line has a big role to play. It is the bridge between two thoughts (‘you be piggy in the/ Middlemarch‘).  This is the joy of reading a collection that keeps you on your toes; that startles with its jumpcuts, its playful wit and willingness to rove and risk in myriad directions. The poems move through the personal, politics, popular culture, books, people, cities, geography, history, the weather.

dancing with dragons is an exuberant explosion of words on the page, beautifully crafted and a joy to read. It is like catching the radio static of the world.

 

 

walking, poems pop into my mind, but when i get home they vanish from my

HeadworX is a select publishing house in

Wellington won The Battle of Waterloo and gave his name to a pair of gum

Boots was my darling dog that i carried over a mile from primary school to escape the dog

Catcher in the Rye is an American classic i adore, so taught it at sixth

form the clay into balls, pressing out the air, before you

throw me the ball Doug, and Ann, you be piggy in the

Middlemarch is not a novel about a March Hare, nor is it set in the middle of

March in NZ is the beginning of our

autumn leaves float by my window / and how i wish that you were

here, hear and hair are pronounced the same way by many

kiwis are a protected species of

 

from ‘pickled impressions’

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Tracey Slaughter’s ‘it was the seventies when me & Karen Carpenter hung out’

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it was the seventies when me & Karen Carpenter hung out

 

*

(cream)

me & Karen Carpenter

blu-tacked heartthrobs

to the hangout

wall & laid down

under our own gatefold

smiles. The ridges of our mouths

tasted like corduroy & the hangout

door was a polygon of un-hinged

ultra-violet. We stole lines from stones

& rolled them like acid

checkers on each

other’s tongues, testing

the discs of our tucked spines as we

swallowed. We rippled all through

the magazines: there were morsels of cosmetic

Top Tip to live on. We loaded our skin

& rubbed in the limits like cream, microscoped

for layouts of handbag & muscle. We could

not switch off the mirrors: it turned out

since me & Karen C

were kids we’d sucked on dolls cross

legged & shaved their limbs

to size with the

zip of our teeth. Somewhere

our mothers had bleach

dreams. We lay & grinned

on the oblong of leftover

shagpile. The seventies tasted

like orangeade, like groovy wars & honeybrown

explosions in the wallpaper. Karen

Carpenter held my hand & walked me

through the detonating spirals.

She showed me where

we could feast

on tangerine horizons

 

©Tracey Slaughter

 

Tracey Slaughter is the author of deleted scenes for lovers an acclaimed collection of short stories (VUP, 2016). Her poetry and prose have received many awards including the international Bridport Prize (2014), two BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards, and the Landfall Essay Prize 2015. Her poetry cycle ‘it was the seventies when me & Karen Carpenter hung out’ was shortlisted in the Manchester Poetry Prize 2014, and her poem ‘breather’ won Second Place in the ABR Peter Porter Poetry Prize 2018. She teaches at Waikato University where she edits the journal Mayhem.