Mimicy 3 is edited by Carolyn DeCarlo and Jackson Nieuwland, is published by Holly Hunter and features a cracking good mix of poetry, prose and images.

Find Mimicry at Unity Auckland, Time Out, University Bookshop Auckland, Unity Wellington, Vic Books, Volume (Nelson), Scorpio Books (Christchurch) and University Bookshop Otago, or order online with dirt-cheap NZ postage.

I love the way you can’t pin the mix of voices, sometimes young, sometimes a tad older, sometimes familiar, sometimes not, sometimes widely published, sometimes just emerging, sometimes lyrical, sometimes not, into a singular style.

As usual I read my way through the poems before slipping elsewhere (bar the arresting red pages ‘Tear sheet – Red’).

 

I am simply going to give you a taste of the poetry static that this suite of poems generates by quoting you the first lines of the poems (you can track the prose and images yourself).

This is the kind of journal that just makes you want to write.

 

A very fine first-line sampler from Mimicry 3

 

Stacy Teague from ‘ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au / i am the river, the river is me’

you could love wide-open / against the natural framework  / of this forever

 

Ruby Mae Hinepunui Solly from ‘Custard’

When I was smaller than the family dog

 

Aimee Smith from  ‘This is where first-year friendships come to die’

Aro Valley is haunted by ghosts,

 

Holly Childs from ‘Closing websites’

She said I said, ‘I can’t store energy inside me, can’t retain it, so it makes sense I’

 

Rachel O’Neill from ‘The good bastard’

I hope Mother and Father buzz around me till Kingdom Come.

 

Chris Stewart from ‘fluff’

I used to lick damp fluff

 

Nina Powles from ‘Dialectal’

this dialect has no written form / only hands feeling for the sound / only wings

 

Nina Powles from ‘Yellow notebook fragments’

#5c85d2 | smoke blue made of melting clouds

 

Annelyse Gelman from ‘Excerpts from Heck Land, a series of centos culled from William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch [note it’s cut and paste]

I can feel the heat closing in And I luuuuuuuuve it !

 

Courtney Sina Meredith from ‘eye’

drove to your house            parked across the road        ‘m n town

 

Courtney Sina Meredith from ‘the night sky is an immigrant coming from somewhere unknown’

half the group went into the past

 

Joan Fleming from ‘The optimism of our generation’

Dear X. Ruin porn

 

Eleanor Rose King Merton from ‘narcissus’

on a beach which is the edge of another planet

 

Eleanor Rose King Merton from ‘this is also how ownership is indicated’

why not just welt me up and vacate the area with a pillar of salt in each of my corners

 

Helen Rickerby from ‘Time and I’

The thing is, I have problems with time. Time and I, we just

 

Maria McMillan from ‘Snow, the reflective properties of’

You grow up, the city you grew up in and left,

 

Briana Jamieson from ‘Light’

Sun seeped into the van

 

Amy Leigh Wicks from ‘Log no. 1’

There is no blanket of fog. I am running through the woods today. Last night,

 

Anna Jackson from ‘Surprising news about your hairstyle’

Is it possible to sail through the air out

 

Anna Jackson from ‘Hurricane lamp’

Erin invites me to supper (thank you) and the heat

 

Caroline Shepherd from ‘fog girl’s diary’

how to tell my mother that yes, I did say that I could that thing and

 

Caroline Shepherd from ‘love lies’

my friends all had grand ambitions of love filling

 

Freya Daly Sadgrove and Hera Lindsay Bird from ‘Big time talk show with Freya and Hera’

Life is like a sad bucket, old men