Invitation to launch of Luminescent by Nina Powles
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Category Archives: NZ poems
The latest Starling: fresh young voices, new poems by Chris Tse and a Bill Manhire interview
The Starling Issue 4
Ok, I am a big fan of this.
This is an excellent issue. Featured writer, Chris Tse’s poems are rich in direction and effect.
Most importantly, the editors are adept at selecting fresh young voices that make you hungry for poetry (and short fiction ) and what words can do. I was going to single a few out – but I love them all! Eclectic, energising, electric, effervescent.
Bill’s interview is a good read:
On rhyme: ‘On the other hand I think sound patterns are at the heart of poetry – they tug words away from meaning and towards music. And one bizarre thing is that the need to find a rhyming word can force you to move in directions you might not have otherwise imagined. Rhyme can make you surprise yourself.’
On needing a dose of humour: ‘The greatest danger for poets is self-importance. Some poets really do believe themselves to be wiser and more perceptive than the rest of the human race.’
On getting students to bring poems by published poets to share in class: ‘The main thing would be that no one in the class would have their minds made up beforehand; or be trying to bypass the poem in order to find out ‘what teacher thinks’. It’s much better for the students to bypass the teacher and get to know the poem directly. Paradoxically, a good teacher can help this happen.’
Poetry Shelf Winter Season: Courtney Sina Meredith off-piste
Uprising
Please be
an uprising
scissor my
black lace
indicate
be light
I’m scared of losing my faith
in people
/
I’m scared of losing my face
/
when I look into silver
your lips kiss all the shit away
I want an electric guitar
with a big circle amp
someone beautiful could sit there
& fuss over me
I like controlling the sea from my bedroom
bleeding & tearing the moon
I like howling at my octopus tits
one in every room
I’m a virgin
framed
a baby grand
next to mops and brooms
please keep calling me
so I can watch
your name flash angry blue
/
a storm
under my pillow
/
electric lines smile in the sky
with my smallest finger
in the smallest hour
I trace the maze
you were good at holding me
when the rain had nobody to fall on
you were good at knowing
souls from bodies
I still wear my organs like 80s leather
I still hear your voice in the corner be light be light
©Courtney Sina Meredith
Author note: I was 22 when I wrote this and in a lot of pain, I had no idea what was ahead of me, ignorance really is bliss. Months later I would undergo my first major operation and my endometriosis would be confirmed. I was channeling ancestors and trashing lovers and asking myself to keep on giving when I really felt like there was nothing left to give.
Courtney Sina Meredith is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and musician based in Auckland. She’s held a number of international writers’ residencies including the prestigious Fall Residency at the University of Iowa. In 2012 Meredith published her first book of poems, Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick, and in 2016 launched a collection of short stories, Tail of the Taniwha, with Beatnik Publishing.
Courtney Sina Meredith, 2017 Arts Queensland Poet in Residence, will talk to Annie Te Whiu of Queensland Poetry Festival about her poetry, and the importance of place and politics in her writing, see here.
From Paula: For Poetry Shelf’s Winter Season, I invited 12 poets to pick one of their own poems that marks a shift in direction, that is outside the usual tracks of their poetry, that moves out of character, that nudges comfort zones of writing. It might be subject matter, style, form, approach, tone, effect, motivation, borrowings, revelation, invention, experimentation, exclusions, inclusions, melody …. anything!
Poetry Shelf Winter Season: Ian Wedde off-piste
From ‘A hymn to beauty: days of a year’
Beauty
you’re the trouble I’m in
because there’s a lot of sweetness in my life
with that rude kind of magnificence
as when they hung Le Bateau upside down,
unusually animated and sparking.
Happy Birthday Montgomery Clift:
Where did I see this guy—in Red River
or in From Here to Eternity?
Accept and you become whole
bend and you straighten.
I hung around a little too long
I was good but now I’m gone,
I may find myself in a tight spot
but forge ahead
where satellite images show Yongbyon
and a mariner in the distance appears cordial.
Happy Birthday Betty Hutton
who is to be found in the lines and gradations
of unsullied snow
for your heart will always be
where your riches are.
They’re Justified and they’re Ancient
and they drive an ice-cream van
so do what will help
and don’t worry what others think
if King Kong premieres in New York.
In his eyes, beauty may be seen.
Happy Birthday Lou Reed,
as fast as a musician scatters sounds
out of an instrument.
One thing only do I want
to marvel there.
©Ian Wedde Three Regrets and a Hymn to Beauty (Auckland University Press, 2005)
Note for poetry shelf
In ‘Enjoyment’, the preface to Selected Poems (2017), I ‘confess to restlessness and the enjoyment of subverting my own practice’, which is one way of saying I got bored with myself and switched tracks regularly over the years. In a selection covering fourteen collections these swerves look more abrupt than they were. One place where they converge is in ‘A hymn to beauty: days of a year’, a sequence of fifty-seven sections that sampled lines from songs, the day’s horoscope advice to Librans, a ‘today in history’ clip from the Evening Post, the birthday of someone famous, a quote from the shambolic literature of the Sublime, and a religious homily. It took up 22 pages in its original covers (Three Regrets and a Hymn to Beauty, AUP 2005) and I only stopped when a sensible little voice told me to—I was having too much fun. It took me out of an autoethnography groove, it allowed me to mess around with a complex word, beauty, without being trapped by aestheticising lyric conventions, and it construed narrative meanings that had nothing to do with my intentions. Fergus Barrowman first published the whole thing in Sport 32 (Summer 2004) for which I thank him. Here are three sections, the opening one and two more picked at random with my eyes shut.
Ian Wedde’s first (very small) book was published by Amphedesma Press in 1971 and in May this year his (fairly chunky) Selected Poems was published by Auckland University Press, with artwork by John Reynolds. A small book about the art of Judy Millar, Refer Judy Millar, is just out from Wunderblock in Berlin. His essay ‘How Not To Be At Home’ is in the anthology Home: New Writing just out from Massey University Press.
From Paula: For Poetry Shelf’s Winter Season, I invited 12 poets to pick one of their own poems that marks a shift in direction, that is outside the usual tracks of their poetry, that moves out of character, that nudges comfort zones of writing. It might be subject matter, style, form, approach, tone, effect, motivation, borrowings, revelation, invention, experimentation, exclusions, inclusions, melody …. anything!
Tim Upperton critiques Manifesto Aotearoa at Pantograph Punch
Full review here. This is terrific writing that raises issues on poetry and the whole business of political poetry. I realise that statement is ambiguous – so take it to mean both the review and the anthology!
Two cheers for democracy: A review of Manifesto Aotearoa
‘One hundred and one political poems, by nearly one hundred and one poets – who knew we had so many? Yet it’s odd, in an anthology as generous and inclusive as this, how you notice who’s missing. It’s a shame that outstanding political poetry from the past is outside the ambit of this book – the broadsides of Whim-Wham, Glover, Baxter, Fairburn and Frame would have provided a rich historical context for this contemporary offering.
Co-editor Philip Temple rightly points out that there’s another anthology-in-waiting here. I particularly missed Bill Manhire’s ‘Hotel Emergencies,’ and among other practising poets, I also missed Helen Lehndorf, Jenny Bornholdt, Ashleigh Young, Hinemoana Baker, Stefanie Lash, Bob Orr, Tim Jones, Sarah Jane Barnett, Sam Hunt, Helen Heath, and Apirana Taylor (there’s an excerpt from Taylor’s ‘Sad joke on a marae’ in Temple’s introduction). But this is an invitation-to-submit volume rather than a survey of what’s already out there in books, magazines and online, so maybe some poets simply missed the memo. (I missed the memo.) And maybe some poets just don’t have a political poem in them. But maybe every poem is political. And if that’s too woolly and undefined, then what is a political poem, exactly?
‘Poetry on the page, in New Zealand at least, seldom raises its voice, so when it does, you prick up your ears and listen.
But the strident, raised voice of many of the poems here also bothered me.’
Kanohi ki te kanohi – Face to face: stellar poetry reading at TimeOut Bookstore
Also a chance to celebrate the arrival of Iain’s new book.
Fabulous Grace Taylor to give taste of new book Full Broken Bloom
The original South Auckland Open Mic is back and we have an amazing feature!
Calling all poets, MCs, spoken word artists and people just looking for a good time! Drop a new piece, an old piece or bring a beat for the DJ to play and drop a verse!
Sign up 15 minutes before.
Koha
Grace Taylor, mother, poet, theatre maker, performer. Writer of poetry theatre show MY OWN DARLING with Auckland Theatre company, author of AFAKASI SPEAKS and upcoming book FULL BROKEN BLOOM with Ala Press, Hawaii.
Louise Wallace & guests to launch her new collection August 10th
Sad to miss this event! Glad I get to read to the book!
Book launch for BAD THINGS: a new book of poems by Louise Wallace. With readings from Lynley Edmeades, Bill Manhire, Tayi Tibble and Chris Tse. All welcome.
Books by all authors available for purchase on the night, along with limited edition cover art prints by Kimberly Andrews.
Drink, nibble, get your books signed and be merry.
VUP page
Elizabeth Morton’s Wolf: ‘Wolf goes to suburbia’
Wolf, Elizabeth Morton, Mākaro Press, 2017
Elizabeth Morton’s debut collection is a mysterious, eye-catching, sound-catching read, with piquant detail and a poetic net that catches all manner of things – the light and the shade. I was particularly drawn to the opening sequence of poems featuring Wolf. Wolf is ‘a critter of humanity’; he is an outsider, an outcast, living on the edge and off scraps. The writing is assured, pungent and rich in atmosphere. I love the way Elizabeth deliberately slows things down, like a raconteur, so the art of the storyteller infuses the poetic line. As a reader, you pay attention to the amassing detail that startles and shines. I also like the way the lower-case letters that precede full stops is like a little hiccup or start on the line. It shifts the fluency and is akin to looking at a view where things pop in the corner of your eye.
Wolf goes to suburbia
rubbish bags hunch in
deathrow orange. yogurt pots
tickle the gutter pit.
newspapers suck asphalt.
like everything else,
Wolf is a shambles –
hide all a-scab with
the nippings of fleas.
skull abuzz with the
echoes of home-
the belchings of elk,
the titterings of muskrats.
today Wolf is a critter
of humanity.
where gophers whistled
trucks now vroom.
where hornets rattled
traffic lights now click
into the emerald of his
mother-world.
Wolf mouths his way
into a rubbish bag.
the yellow night
covers him like a rash.
© Elizabeth Morton 2017
Elizabeth Morton is a poet, fiction writer, and reviewer from Auckland. Her poetry and prose are published in New Zealand, UK, USA, Australia, Canada and online. She is the feature poet in the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017. Her own poetry collection, Wolf, was published by Mākaro Press (2017). In 2013 she was winner of the New Voices Emerging Poets competition. She was shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Award (2015) and was, twice, 2nd place in the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition (2015, 2016). Her flash fiction was selected for the international anthology, The Best Small Fictions 2016.
Side-projects include: collecting obscure words, penning bad rap music, studying the brain, and exploring the coastal rock pools. She likes to write about broken things, and things with teeth.
Mākaro Press page
Emma Shi’s review at The Booksellers
Liz Breslin on poetry in ODT: Alzheimer’s and a Spoon out next week
“They’re not really a way of making sense of the world as such, more of poking at it and mining it … My family tells me that my writing is not therapeutic or meditative because I am not very peaceful in the doing of it or the aftermath, but it is a total necessity for me.”
Breslin is in a celebratory mood, keenly awaiting the publication of her first collection of poetry, Alzheimer’s and a Spoon, which will be launched in Dunedin and Wanaka next week.
The collection’s title, and various works within it, directly references the dementia she witnessed in her Polish grandmother (or “babcia”), as well as delving more widely into the notion of memory, relationships and how events take on different meanings depending on a person’s viewpoint.
Full piece here
NZ Poetry Shelf 