road trip with the feminists

rage at mapgirl for being in Imperial

ignore her directions at the lights

the fastest way out of Christchurch

is/ is not \ is just through / fuck it 

mapgirl’s right 

stop for coffee \ wash out the keepcup

stand in line for a soy flat white

order cheese rolls / a rhubarb muffin

ginger slice \ it’s nearly lunch / it’s

roughly time

the baby blue nail varnish stuck

behind the seat \ the car fills up

with local rags / napkins \ op shop

treasures ticked off the manifestation list

it’s the trick

of attraction / at least one of the feminists

has a hangover that another drink

will fix \ the plains go on as long / long

long as the conversation \ ranging

outside, the rain

the wipers don’t have the right speed set

slow / the screen splotches opaque \quick

sweep / \ / \ / crank the tunes

no rhythm is for keeps but we’ll always

have the road

Liz Breslin

“Her-storical” sequence of poems wins national award

Liz Breslin from Wanaka has been announced as the 2020 winner of the Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems, in a prize-giving ceremony on Auckland’s North Shore.

The competition is organised annually by writing group, International Writers Workshop (also known as IWW.)

Breslin has won the $1,000 prize for her sequence of poems, entitled: “In bed with the feminists.”

The competition was judged by 2019’s award winner, well-known Auckland poet, writer and lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, Siobhan Harvey.

Harvey read two of the poems from Breslin’s sequence at the award ceremony.

On receiving her award Breslin said: “I was so surprised and delighted to get the call to say I’m this year’s winner. I worked on these poems during a period on my own in lockdown, so it’s really affirming to see them recognised outside my head and my house.”

Harvey judged the competition commended Breslin’s winning entry… “for its unapologetic voice, clear vision and assured awareness.”

Harvey continued: “The her-storical narratives and creativity make this a compelling lyrical analysis of feminism both in the contemporary age and in the past.”

The runner-up was announced as Sophia Wilson from Dunedin for her sequence of poems titled “Attempting to Land.” In judging Wilson’s piece, Harvey described the sequence as “a stunningly beautiful ode to migration.”

The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems competition has been run by IWW for twelve years and Breslin joins a list of winners including Siobhan Harvey, Maris O’Rourke and Michael Giacon.

In addition to the prize given to Breslin, IWW presented awards to the winners of its other 2020 writing competitions. The breadth of competitions the writing group organises is very wide as evidenced by awards for Crime Writing, Flash Fiction and Play writing.

At the conclusion of the formal prize giving, the winning play – “Text or Subtext” written by Auckland member John Leyland – was performed by members of the group.

About the Prize

The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems has been made possible by a bequest from the Jocelyn Grattan Charitable Trust. It was a specific request of the late Jocelyn Grattan that her mother be recognised through an annual competition in recognition of her love for poetry and that the competition be for a sequence or cycle of poems with no limit on the length of the poems.

This is the eleventh year IWW has had the honour of organising the Prize.

Previous winners are Siobhan Harvey (2019), Heather Bauchop (2018), Janet Newman (2017), Michael Giacon (2016) Maris O’Rourke (2015), Julie Ryan (2014), Belinda Diepenheim (2013), James Norcliffe (2012), Jillian Sullivan (2011) Janet Charman and Rosetta Allan (joint winners 2010) and Alice Hooton (2009).

The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems is sometimes referred to as the ‘Little Grattan’ as the Jocelyn Grattan Charitable Trust also funds the biennial Kathleen Grattan Award, run by Landfall / Otago University Press.

Winners of the 2020 Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement (L-R) Tessa Duder, Sir Tīmoti Kāretu and Jenny Bornholdt

‘Each poem is different, but there’s always a feeling, a kind of charge, when a poem is making itself known. It’s a matter of trusting yourself and following the direction of the poem.’ Jenny Bornholdt – Poetry Shelf interview

Poetry Shelf congratulates three deserving recipients.

A lifetime of insights on Māori dance arts told in te reo Māori, a comprehensive anthology of New Zealand poetry in English, and an illustrated story of how James Cook charted Aotearoa New Zealand are just some of the many achievements of those being honoured with the 2020 Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement:

• Non-Fiction: Sir Tīmoti Kāretu KNZM QSO (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Kahungunu) – a leading New Zealand academic of Māori language and the performing arts, a translator and author, and a key driver of the revitalisation of te reo.
• Poetry: Jenny Bornholdt MNZM – an award-winning poet, anthologist, Arts Foundation Laureate and former NZ Poet Laureate.
• Fiction: Tessa Duder CNZM, OBE – critically acclaimed children and young adult writer.

The Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister and Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, says, “It’s a real privilege to support these special, annual awards that celebrate the value our writers bring to Aotearoa. It was wonderful to see such a high volume of nominations this year – this just demonstrates New Zealanders’ appreciation and appetite for literature. Congratulations to Tessa Duder, Sir Tīmoti Kāretu and Jenny Bornholdt. Thank you for your significant contribution to New Zealand literature, your storytelling, and the legacy you’ve created.” 

Full details here

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Jenny Bornholdt’s ‘Crossing’

Poetry Shelf review – From the Henderson House: eight poems by Jenny Bornholdt and Gregory O’Brien

Poetry Shelf interviews Jenny Bornholdt: ‘There’s always a feeling, a kind of charge, when a poem is making itself known’

Ottolenghi: FLAVOUR by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfrage, with Tara Wigley, photography by Jonathan Lovekin, Ebury Press, 2020

Hasselback Beetroot with Lime Leaf Butter

Take eight medium beetroot and brush off the warm earth.

Hold in your hand and breathe in spring.

The garden is full of summer promise, Jacinda speaks of connections.

Breathe out a long winter of lockdowns and catastrophe.

Absorb the song of the tūī, Reb Fountain’s honeyed singing as you

Peel and slice the beetroot thinly, almost to the base, then salt and roast.

Smell the pungent aroma, the wind coming in from the coast.

Melt butter with fresh ginger, garlic, lime leaves, olive oil, and then infuse.

As you wait for the election results to come in, add lime juice.

You are on hold, nothing can be taken for granted, the votes are being counted.

You dream of fresh water and global kindness, our children fed.

You crush and slice, blitz and chop.

You mix kaffir lime leaves, fresh ginger, garlic, green chilli, coriander.

Season your salsa, then season with love and spring promises.

In a blue Temuka bowl, upon a smear of yoghurt (you’ve omitted the cream),

You place the beetroot glistening red.

You spoon over the melted butter strained of aromatics.

You sprinkle the salsa and a squeeze of lime, your early morning beach walks.

Take a moment and wait for your family to put down brushes and pens.

Make room for comfort, for the things that matter most.

You are back at Whangamata watching the sun come up on Level 1.

You are serving the flavour of a London kitchen in a Waitākere haven.

You are tasting the flavour of bridges, the salty with the sour.

Jacinda and her team are back in power talking of new ways of leading.

The kitchen is aglow with food and hope,

And you feel like a load has lifted and floated into the Tasman Sea.

Tomorrow you will cook spicy berbere ratatouille with coconut salsa.

The next day a butternut, orange and sage galette.

One day you might eat at Ottolenghi’s in London,

With Aotearoa flavours in your pockets, the chatterbox tūī in your ear.

Paula Green Election Day, Te Henga

Hasselback beetroot with lime leaf butter on my Temuka blue bowl (bought on a fabulous 2019 Storylines Tour)

Pretty much most rooms in our home have at least two shelves of cookbooks. Cooking and writing poems have gone hand in hand since my debut poetry collection Cookhouse in 1997. Reading other poetry books has taken my writing and relations with the world in different directions. The same goes for cookbooks – I cook both inside and outside my comfort zone, because my love of cookbooks has expanded what and how I cook. It is so very satisfying.

I have book clusters of national cuisines, methods, ingredients (seafood), eating choices (vegan, vegetarian) and, of course, much-loved writers. Yotam Ottolenghi is one such favourite. So his new book Flavour, written and developed along with Ixta Belfrage, is a cause for celebration. His previous two books, Plenty and Plenty More celebrate vegetables, with the second book exploring the way process can take a vegetable in any number of flavoursome directions. Yotam suggests Flavour is like a Plenty 3 as it celebrates the transformation of vegetables into flavour bombs. The book is divided into three sections: process, pairing and produce.

‘While making a delicious recipe can be simple, great cooking is never the result of one element in isolation – it is the interplay of different types of processes, pairings and produces.’ Yotam Ottolenghi

Yotam’s cookbooks are an essential part of my kitchen, because his recipes are flavour-rich, the processes are easy, the end results both nutritious and delicious. The same applies to the team effort of Flavour. For me the recipes are to be made and savoured (I tag all the ones I am itching to cook), but also to be used as aides to my own culinary inventions. The 20 essential ingredients listed at the end of the introduction are flavour-bomb conductors. Not your usual crew (say tahini, pomegranate molasses, turmeric, balsamic and cider vinegars, horseradish, harissa, cumin, fresh oregano, lemon and dill etc). Maybe things have a inseasons as I have also been favouring chipotle chillies, miso, ground cardamom and tamarind paste lately (on the list), and I am now dead keen to track down black limes, jarred butter beans (!), hibiscus flowers, red bell pepper flakes, rose harissa for my pantry.

Walking on the beach this morning I was musing on the way food has been so important in Covid. In Aotearoa New Zealand we have been baking sour dough, planting seeds, making sweet treats. I learnt to make kombucha (highly recommended), upped my micro greens, learnt to make yoghurt. Food is a way of nourishing us physically, but also offers the utmost comfort in family settings (and with friends when we can do that). Food connects us to the people who generate crops and products for us, to our forbears who have handed down beloved ways of doing things. Yes, I believe tradition is as important as innovation and vice versa. Along with the pairings, processes and products, Yotam and Ixta’s nurturing food values are the pulsating heart of Flavour. I get goosebumps reading through the pages.

Food was a big part of my doctoral thesis where I explored the ink in the novels of C20 Italian women writers. I wanted to know what drove the writing pen – and food most definitely mattered. I am thinking of Yotam’s pairings and products, and the way each ingredient we pick up to slice or saute or steam, is imbued with our mood, our past experiences, the events of the day, our daydreams. An apple takes me so many places when I cut it into slender batons for a coleslaw. Put this word next to that word and you get sparks and hums; put this ingredient with that ingredient and the same thing happens. Poetry and cooking? A match made in heaven.

Flavour is a sumptuous mouth-watering addition to my cookbook collection – at the moment I am lugging it from kitchen table to the lounge to bedtime reading. I have a long list of things to cook – recipes that will be the starting points to new pairings and products. The book fills me with warmth and connections and hope. Bavissimo Yotam and Ixta. I love this collaboration so much. And I have to say my family and I thought the beetroot dish was sensational (as was the election result!). They said it was like being in a restaurant – and it was all a matter of product, pairings and process. A GLORIOUS recommendation from Poetry Shelf Kitchen.

Yotam Ottolenghi is the restaurateur and chef-patron of the four London-based Ottolenghi delis, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants. He is the author of seven best-selling cookery books. Amongst several prizes, Ottolenghi SIMPLE won the National Book Award and was selected as best book of the year by the New York Times. Yotam has been a weekly columnist for the Saturday Guardian for over thirteen years and is a regular contributor to the New York Times. His commitment to the championing of vegetables, as well as ingredients once seen as ‘exotic’, has led to what some call ‘The Ottolenghi effect’. This is shorthand for the creation of a meal which is full of colour, flavour, bounty and sunshine. Yotam lives in London with his family. Website

Ixta Belfrage spent her youth dipping her fingers into mixing bowls in places as far-flung as Italy, Mexico and Brazil and so became an expert without a title. She began her culinary career proper at Ottolenghi’s NOPI restaurant, before moving to the Test Kitchen, where she has worked for Yotam Ottolenghi for four years, contributing to his columns in The Guardian and The New York Times. She lives in London, where she makes regular guest chef appearances in some of the city’s top restaurants. Flavour is her first book.

Penguin Books page

Detail from photo by Ebony Lamb

This is very good news indeed! Congratulations from Poetry Shelf.

Pip Adam named as University Writer in Residence

Acclaimed novelist Dr Pip Adam has been appointed the Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) and Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence for 2021.

Celebrated for their formal daring and emotional rawness, Dr Adam’s books include a collection of stories Everything We Hoped For, and the novels I’m Working on a Building, The New Animals, and most recently Nothing to See.

Dr Adam gained an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from the University in 2007, and a PhD in 2012, and she received the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. She was also the recipient of a 2012 Art Foundation New Generation award.

She is well-known nationally as a contributor to Jesse Mulligan’s show on Radio New Zealand, and as a creative writing teacher, book reviewer, and literary activist. Her popular podcast ‘Better Off Read’ features conversations with writers and artists.

While holding the residency, Dr Adam will work on a futuristic novel in which sound will be explored as a way of structuring the narrative.

Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters, Professor Damien Wilkins, says, “Pip is already a major novelist. Her planned writing project extends her imaginative reach further still and promises to be an exciting addition to the national literature. It will be terrific to have Pip at the IIML.”

Commenting on the appointment, Dr Adam says, “I feel ridiculously grateful, excited and, unusually for me, a bit lost for words. I am looking forward to spending next year working in a building where so much exciting other work is going on. Communities are really important to my work and I can’t wait to be among the varied folk of the IIML. It is so great to have some space and time to write my new book.”

Dr Adam takes up the residency at the IIML in February 2021.