Category Archives: Poetry Events
The Totally Official Launch of Pen Pal by Sugar Magnolia Wilson
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An invitation from Cats & Spaghetti Press:
where: 19 Tory Street, Wellington when: 7pm Friday 16th May
We’re going to be having a bit of a shindig to say welcome to the world to Pen Pal. There’ll be readings by Sugar Magnolia Wilson and special guests Hannah Mettner, Jackson Nieuwland, Carolyn DeCarlo and Morgan Bach.
Come along to get your copy and have a drink and maybe even a bit of a dance in celebration.
An invitation to the launch of Siobhan Harvey’s Cloudboy
I heard Siobhan read a bit from this at the Pah Readings and witnessed the degree to which the audience was moved. Was rather special.
Join Compound Press to launch poetry chapbooks by Steven Toussaint & Lee Posna
New Zealand seems to be a fertile ground for independent poetry presses and bookshops. Wonderful!
Time Out Bookstore
Saturday April 26th 4.30 pm until 8pm
Join Compound Press to launch poetry chapbooks by Steven Toussaint & Lee Posna.
Fiddlehead by Steven Toussaint : Re-imagines Rangitoto as Dante’s mountain island of purgatory.
Arboretum by Lee Posna : A posthumous reflection on the bounds of the empire of artistic vision.
The poets will be present to read a little – perhaps from these books, perhaps something else entirely.
A few drinks will be provided.
Handmade books available for purchase for $10.
Autobiography of a Marguerite reached its Pledge-Me target– a note from Hue & Cry
This message from Hue & Cry
‘Thank you so much for supporting our campaign for Zarah’s book, Autobiography of a Marguerite. You’ll be happy to know that the manuscript is now with our designers. This means we’re on the home run and on the countdown to launch night.
And for those of you based in or near Wellington, we have a confirmed venue and date for the official launch event. This will take place at the City Gallery Wellington on Thursday 5 June, 5.30PM. So put it in your diary now, as you’re all invited. And you can collect your rewards at the event as well. We’ll also be holding an Auckland reading a little later in June, so stay tuned for information about this.’
Chloe
Happy Birthday (belatedly) to Tuesday Poem
Tuesday Poem recently celebrated their fourth birthday and this is how they did it (follow the link below to find the poems). Michelle Elvy sums the blog up on the birthday entry:
Today marks the fourth birthday of Tuesday Poem.
The series began on April 13 2010 after a casual start with a bunch of poems on Mary McCallum’s blog O Audacious Book. From there, the group migrated to this site and grew in contributors and mission. Each week a different Tuesday Poet takes a turn at editing the main page here — selecting a poem, getting permission to run it, and writing up a response. A personal choice and response each week, and many more opportunities to share poetry at members’ blogs as well (see sidebar, left).
We celebrate poetry every week, but birthdays are special because each year in March/ April we build something collaboratively in one giant poetry celebration. Each of our ‘birthday poems’ has been unique in its blend of voices and rhythms. In 2011, the first birthday saw an ode to Tyr in honour of Tuesdays and the way we celebrate poetry; in 2012 we wrote a collaborative poem line-by-line, each poet building on the previous poet’s cadence and image; last year, we chose a jazzy riff as our theme, with participating poets contributing entire stanzas to a poem that unfolded over weeks in rhythm, repetition and syncopation.
This year, we tried something a little different. We asked contributing poets to send a line that included something about either birthdays or food or both, and to send the line blind — that is, without seeing any other contributions. We gathered the lines one by one and rearranged them into a whole. We tried several different approaches but we finally settled on four small verses, each creating something special. It was much much harder than we imagined when we set out to paste these lines together — how to fit blue cake with a clarinetist’s curls, or fairy bread with the explosion of candles? In the end, these four vignettes fitted together to form what feels like a whole and including a birth and a light, a cake and a secret, a moment and a memory, and anticipation and celebration.
We hope you are as delighted as we are with how this experiment turned out. What fun to have such rich images to work with. What a pleasure to glue pieces together and watch this poetry page take shape — this line moved from there to here; this image matched with this sound.
I should also add the note that only one of the three editors working on this birthday poem knew the identity of the poets submitting, so it’s a special birthday surprise as well to see who has contributed such delicious morsels to this sweet feast. Thank you all!
–Michelle Elvy, TP Hub sub-editor, with Mary McCallum and Claire Beynon
Three plus one: Four poems for a birthday
You are invited to the launch of Heartland, Michele Leggott’s new book
Poetry Shelf aims to celebrate the arrival of Michele Leggott’s new book with a review and an interview but meanwhile here are the details for her launch.
Twitter Poetry Night NZ is a way of happening, a mouth
People read poems and other people listen to them
A way of happening, a mouth.
Poetry Night doesn’t happen that often, but sometimes it does happen. Winter is on the horizon, deadlines are clamouring, the wind wand sculpture on the waterfront keeps gyrating suggestively, the future keeps leering at us from its speeding vehicle. One thing to do under these circumstances is read some poems and listen to other people reading poems. A man with some opinions called Karl du Fresne recently quoted that famous line by Auden: ‘Poetry makes nothing happen’, but du Fresne didn’t quote the next lines, in which poetry:
flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
He forgot to mention that it flows, it survives. That it’s a way of happening. It’s a mouth, Karl, a mouth.
I think also that du Fresne forgot that in the wider context of the poem, ‘nothing’ is a value in itself (Auden wrote those lines in a poem, after all, and to eulogize Yeats). I think he (and everyone) should read this great essay about isolation, communion, and poetry, by A. F. Moritz. I like these lines from the essay very much:
When we turn isolation into solitude by being creative and seeking ways to make this the basis of social life, we are poets.
The next Poetry Night will be on Sunday 20 April at 8pm on Twitter. If you’d like to record a poem or listen in, see here. Please note that the request to join me in an effort to get celebrities to read poems still stands.
Let’s make nothing happen, together.
@PoetryNightNZ (@ashleigh_young)
Helen Rickerby’s Auckland launch of Cinema
Tuesday, April 1 at 8:00pm
Thirsty Dog 469 Karangahape Road Auckland
Music by Callum Gentleman, open mic, Cinema will be launched by Anne Kennedy. Helen Rickerby will read some poems. Cinema, and the other Hoopla books (Bird Murder by Stefanie Lash and Heart Absolutely I Can by Michael Harlow) will be available for $25 (cash or cheque only).
NZ Poetry Shelf 