Category Archives: Uncategorized
Poetry Shelf Monday poem: Paula Green’s Covid blues
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Covid blues
It’s 4 am and Ella is singing
summertime on National Radio
and I could tell you about a broken
heart and our dead cat and body life
breaking down in pain
or the rain pounding on the roof
in the humid dark
or the way I am counting years
or last night’s birthday paella steeped in saffron and paprika
or the way loneliness can rise in gut-kicking waves
or you feel you have dissolved
in the water tank or an extravagant bath
lemongrass and majoram salted
or the plot of Rajorshi Chakraborti’s novel
or the nostalgic music we picked for the boom
as we birthday ate and sang and danced
but I want to tell you how I went
garden crazy in the first and second lockdowns
and how the garden is a gushing glut
of tomatoes beans zuchinis pumpkins herbs
the vines and tendrils knotting together
like wildfire like verbs nouns semicolons
in a poem because I never went to poetry school
and learnt straight lines and golden rules and
how yesterday I was piling warm earth on tomato roots
snipping off dead leaves feeling for the potatoes
but here I am listening to Eva Radich make her picks
wanting to pile steaming earth
on the exposed roots of this poem
because it’s 4 am and I keep repeating
myself and tying up in garden knots
It’s 4 am and the Cuban trumpet is knotting up
the Cuban piano and the Cuban trumpet is aching
for a world where we are all fed and we
are all warm and much loved and the tyrant is impeached
because crossing the party line is human good
and where we can pack the car and head north
to the booked bach for our first family holiday
in summers, and peace and kindness and wonder
are the words we picked as we passed
the birthday cake and candle glowing in the dark
Paula Green
Poetry Shelf celebrates the Ockham NZ Book Awards poetry longlist: Chris Holdaway’s poem for Jackson Nieuwland
Greetings cards for Jackson Nieuwland
I light a candle and vines of blood
Run down in place of wax as if
The experience of transubstantiation
Were being drawn towards the grave
Centre of the earth by the weight of
Your own iron content. Ever found
Yourself on a throne whose arms
And legs are wired to crosses like
A marionette? You’re no puppet and
It’s all the universe in a pocketwatch
I’m afraid. My heart on fire under
A bell jar and that’s just how it’ll stay.
❤
Getting into keeping fish as a hobby
Hoping to use my own body as a tank
Until so filled with water I gain imm-
Unity to drowning and companionship
All at once. The deeper I go the more I
Feel as though falling from great heights.
My open palm broad enough to form
Plains on which tornadoes arise like
Spring clockwork before the lines turn
To river deltas so blue I can’t imagine
Ever having had veins in my hand.
❤
Amongst the sunflowers the scarecrow
Is king. I have the first successful mono
-culture fields of carnivorous plants
That eat every new seed right as you
Sow it. Knock off and pitch a ladder
Against the clouds to paint them like
A weatherboard house or chip away at
An ice sculpture. Lay down on the Gulf
Stream like Michelangelo on scaffolding
Painting the dogmatic ceiling. As if
The compass woven into paper maps
Could spring to life like a computer.
❤
I woke inside a lightbulb holding
A candle slowly consuming all the air
Like the sweetest dream of being a star
Calculating orbits in the different twists
Of screw and bayonet fittings the kind
Of knowledge that can never survive
A trip to the store. An alley so dark I
Instantly become an orphan and have
The shadow of a wolf in passing head
-lights. Fallen leaves and playing cards
And receipts curl into being on the wind
And take a hike into rolling hills.
Chris Holdayway
Chris Holdaway’s Compound Press was established in 2013. It publishes poetry, other writings along with Minarets, a journal of poetry and poetics. The books are printed and bound in their Auckland workshop. Jackson Niuewland’s I am a human being (2020) is longlisted in the Poetry Category of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Last year they also published A bathful of kawakawa and hot water, a selection of writings by Hana Pera Aoake.
Poetry Shelf Monday poem: Tim Upperton’s ‘Television’
Television
Inside the television the tiny people
are moving and talking. Some of them
are falling in love. Some of them are dying
in exciting ways. The cartoon people
who fall off a cliff or are hit by a train
get up again, scowling but unharmed.
There are also tiny animals.
They live in documentaries.
They hunt and fall in love and die.
They do not get up again.
At night the television is turned off
and all the people and all the animals
lie down and go to sleep.
The people sleep in tiny houses.
The animals sleep in and under tiny trees.
It is crowded inside the television,
but they are all used to it
and they make do, they settle down
under their tiny night sky,
with its tiny stars.
Who would not wish
to join them there?
A young woman with wet hair
climbs out of the television
into a living room,
her long hair and sodden dress
are dripping water on the floor,
and that is a horror movie.
But more and more of us
are going into the television,
and the young woman will soon
be alone in the world.
She wanders from empty house
to empty house, testing the abandoned
appliances. She picks up the remote
and switches the television on,
but then she is bored
and switches it off.
There is nothing to be afraid of
inside the television. It’s quite all right.
Good night, we tiny people
say to each other.
Good night, the tiny animals
growl and squeak and purr.
The television is dark now.
Good night.
Tim Upperton (an earlier version of this poe appeared in takahē 98)
Tim Upperton lives in Palmerston North. His second poetry collection, The Night We Ate The Baby, was an Ockham New Zealand Book Awards finalist in 2016, and he won the Caselberg International Poetry Prize in 2012, 2013 and 2020. His poems have been published in many magazines including Agni, Poetry, Shenandoah, Sport, Landfall and Takahē, and are anthologised in The Best of Best New Zealand Poems (2011), Villanelles (2012), Essential New Zealand Poems (2014), and Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century (2014). His poem “The truth about Palmerston North” was recently recorded by Sam Neill here.
Poetry Shelf celebrates the Ockham NZ Book Awards poetry longlist: Mohamed Hassan reads from National Anthem
Mohamed Hassan, National Anthem, Dead Bird Books, 2020
Mohamed reads a few poems from National Anthem
Mohamed Hassan is an award-winning journalist and writer who has lived in Egypt, Aotearoa and Turkey. He was the winner of the 2015 NZ National Poetry Slam, a TEDx fellow and recipient of the Gold Trophy at the 2017 New York Radio Awards. His poetry has been watched and shared widely online and taught in schools internationally. His collection, National Anthem, is longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, poetry category.
Dead Bird Books page
Ockham NZ Book Award page
Poetry Shelf review
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Robbie Burns Poetry Prize winners
Political protest and Te Reo has featured strongly in this year’s Robert Burns Poetry Competition entries.
The adult and youth competitions attracted 53 entries last year with only one from overseas.
Judged by poet Kay McKenzie Cooke and Burns Fellow John Newton, the adult competition had a theme Freedom, inspired by Burns’ Here’s a health to them that’s awa.
‘‘The interpretations of the theme freedom ranged from referring to the struggle for political freedom while oppressed; whether that be by health problems or by unfair treatment from past and present injustices; to the image of freedom as expressed in nature.’’
You can access the rest of the ODT article with the complete list of winners and their poems – including the Youth and Unpublished Poets winners.
Published Poet winners:
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Brilliant longlist of Ockam New Zealand Book Awards just announced
Poetry Shelf has reviewed
The Savage Coloniser Book Tuisata Avia, Victoria University Press
Far Flung Rhian Gallagher Auckland University Press
National Anthem National Anthem, Dead Bird Books
Wow Bill Manhire, Victoria University Press
Pins Natalie Morrison, Victoria University Press (an interview)
This is Your Real Name, Elizabeth Morton, Otago University Press
I Am a Human Being Jackson Nieuwland, Compound Press
Magnolia, NIna Mingya Powles, Seraph Press
CONGRATULATIONS to all the poets. This is the best longlist I have seen in years. I have loved all these books to a sublime degree. I am also delighted to see a mix of university presses and smaller publishers, and those inbetween. I plan to review Hinemoana and Karlo’s books over the coming weeks (Goddess Muscle, Karlo Mila, Huia Press and Funkhaus, Hinemoana Baker, Victoria University Press).
Ockham New Zealand Book Award page
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Call for submissions for Fresh Ink: A Collection of Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand 2021
Call for submissions for Fresh Ink A Collection of Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand 2021
Cloud Ink is publishing a new edition of the Fresh Ink Anthology in 2021 and is now calling for submissions.
Deadline: 28th February 2021
Word limit: 3,000
Eligibility: open to all New Zealand citizens and permanent residents
This year the anthology will be themed around the Covid 19 experience in New Zealand.
What are we as both individuals and as collective society to make of the wider and deeper effects, beyond the health crisis itself? How can writers and storytellers, across multiple forms, address the human aspects of the Covid-19 crisis, its effects, both personal and societal, and its legacy? Can we make sense of this traumatic experience through the creative use of language, characterization, and images?
We are looking for pieces of new writing – short fiction, novel extracts, poetry and art work – themed in response to the pandemic that has touched us all in some way. The pieces may be personal writing from life, memoir, prose fiction or poetry, an essay or personal reflection, or a mix of media forms including graphic writing and visual arts.
Please send your submissions to info@cloudink.co.nz. Please submit your entry in a Word document (for stories and poetry) using 12 point Times New Roman, 1.5 spacing. Artwork needs to be black and white and sent on a jpg or pdf. Please include your name, email and contact details. You may send more than one submission but we are unlikely to publish more than one work from each writer/artist.
When we receive your submission you will be automatically added to our newsletter mailing list. You will be able to unsubscribe.
We look forward to reading your work.
NZ Poetry Shelf 