Vaughan Rapatahana continues to write and to live across three countries. Several new books in different genre are due out soon in Hong Kong SAR, Aotearoa New Zealand, France, United Kingdom. Thank you also for this opportunity.
Poetry Shelf review of Ternion
Full piece and a few poems here
Bob Orr has been a well-regarded New Zealand poet for several decades, having eight collections of poetry produced to date, with a new collection due out soon. He is also rather different to so many ‘modern’ poets, in that he has always paddled his own poetic waka (or canoe) in and through his own currents. Oaring across his own ocean, if you will.
Bob never completed any tertiary education. He never attended any university ‘creative writing’ classes in an endeavour to craft his poetry ‘better.’ Up until very recently, when he was the 2017 University of Waikato Writer in Residence, he eschewed any applications for literary grants. He rarely, if ever, uses a computer to write with or on — he doesn’t even have an email address. Indeed, he continues to write with an old style ribbon-fed typewriter. Bob Orr is a bit of a Luddite — all of which ensures that his stream of poetry flows deep from his heart and mind and is never obfuscated by the trends, tropes, and trivialities of the latest poetic fad. Like another key New Zealand poet, Sam Hunt, Bob Orr has always remained a people’s poet, by which I mean, a writer who keeps it simple, who never overreaches into pretentiousness and amorphous cleverdickism.
One of My Baxter Poems
(from Moth Hour)
Coming down off the spine of the Botanical Gardens
onto the green flank of the dragon, shadows arch
under my feet. In the dell below, the shell-shaped stage
is strewn with red Camelias. November
and across the valley on the dense dark Tinakori hill
houses begin to light up like Guy Fawkes.
At the top of Patanga Crescent the pared-down villa
trembles with young men thinking,
pens lost in the wide sleeves of their dead uncles.
They are ecstatic and do everything extravagantly
in the last light: read, drink, fuck.
On the windowsill – a stone, leaf, a twig with buds,
and the black cat left behind mewling by the old lady
now in the Home of Compassion. No change.
©Anne Kennedy
Anne Kennedy’s new novel The Ice Shelf is due from VUP in October. She teaches writing at Manukau Institute of Technology.
Wonderful conversation, wonderful book, plus the joys of reading Fleur Adcock.
‘This episode I caught up with poet, essayist and teacher Helen Heath. Helen recently published an astounding collection of poetry which poses the question Are Friends Electric? We got together to talk about Fleur Adcock’s poem ‘Gas’, first published in her 1971 collection High Tide in the Garden and it’s also available in Fleur Adcock Poems 1960-2000, and Helen’s exciting new book.’
Listen here
‘.
Emma Shi was the winner of the National Schools Poetry NZ 2013 and the Poetry NZ Prize 2017. She has also been published in literary journals such as Landfall and Starling. She writes at facebook.com/emmlexx.
You can read the poem at The Starling where it was first published.
We talked to Helen about poetry that has been meaningful to her over the years, and why poetry isn’t just for weddings and funerals.
Is there anything about NZ poetry that sets it apart do you think?
I think our poetry is often very funny. I love the self-awareness and self-deprecating humour in a lot of New Zealand poetry.
Regarding poets who write about the natural world from their lived experience, I think New Zealand poets have a way of enmeshing ‘nature’ and self in their work which speaks to how interconnected many of us (New Zealanders) are with our environment.
I could be biased, but I also think New Zealand poetry is of a consistently high standard.
Full conversation here
Small hook
He iti, ahakoa he pounamu hoki
From the cord’s end, the catch produced
her jawbone hook. A thousand pencils
sharpened to this soft point, time
took a new first breath. The boat
seemed smaller, we noticed more keenly
the breeze, the chop, the nation
hushed. Metaphor cannot hold her,
she is like and unlike all the others,
only the plainest best words
will serve for our prime miniature.
©John Adams 2018
John is an Auckland-based poet.
Yesterday the Herald phoned to see if I would write a welcome poem for the new baby. The wind was moving through the manuka, it was grey and drizzling, my writing wrist was in a cast, and my gladness glass was being tested. But somehow it seemed the very best thing to do. I am full of admiration for our Prime Minister and the way she is changing the role of leadership. To use the word kindness in any talk of governance is a very good thing. To show that mothers can hold significant positions of power is also a very good thing. To show that fathers can care for the child is also a very good thing.
My warmest congratulations to Jacinda and Clark.
You can read the full poem at the Herald here.
Louise Wallace, Bad Things, Victoria University Press, 2017
‘Darling—’ from Bad Things—
Louise Wallace now lives in Dunedin and is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent being Bad Things (Victoria University Press, 2017). In 2015 she was the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago. She is the founder and editor of Starling, an online journal publishing the work of New Zealand writers under 25 years of age.
Pip Adam talks poetry with Jesse Mulligan
at RNZ National
Therese Lloyd’s The Facts Check out my review
Helen Heath Are Friends Electric? Check out Helen reading 2 poems and our interview
Helen Rickerby‘s poem ‘George Eliot: A Life’ Check out Helen reading an extract
Wonderful! and thanks for the Poetry Shelf plug
NZ Poetry Shelf 