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NZ Poetry Shelf 2015

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NZ Poetry Shelf is a bit like a poetry piazza — a meeting point for news, views and readings that welcomes both critical debate and celebration. It is a place I have built to share my love of poetry with the help of others in various ways.

This year I aim to:

+    flag NZ poetry events, competitions, awards and news.
+    flag the release of new NZ poetry books via publishers’ press notes.
+    post interviews with New Zealand poets.
+    continue Poem Friday where I select and discuss a poem I have loved.
+    post book reviews. It is not possible for me to review ALL New Zealand poetry books but I
       want to review as many as time and interest allows.
+    host a series of mini poetry symposiums
+   Last year was such a busy year, I intend reviewing a number of 2014 poetry books that
      caught my eye from a stack of about 60.
+   I am willing to post guest features, musings, interviews and reviews. Please send brief
      proposal to email address below bearing in mind this blog runs on the currency of love.
+   I will  invite you to contribute to the annual list of favourite poetry books we have read in the
      past year.
Please send relevant material to be posted to paulajoygreen@gmail.com
(NOTE I cannot post PDFs)
Please send review copies to PO Box 95078, Swanson, Waitakere 0653

Dazzling new poetry collection from David Eggleton

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The Conch Trumpet-Eggleton

Press release from Otago University Press:

Dazzling new poetry collection from David Eggleton

The Conch Trumpet calls to the scattered tribes of contemporary New Zealand. It sounds the signal to listen close, critically and ‘in alert reverie’. David Eggleton’s reach of references, the marriage of high and low, the grasp of popular and classical allusion, his eye both for cultural trash and epiphanic beauty, make it seem as if here Shakespeare shakes down in the Pacific.

There are dazzling compressions of history; astonishing paens to harbours, mountains, lakes and rivers; wrenchingly dark, satirical critiques of contemporary politics, of solipsism, narcissism, the apolitical, the corporate, with a teeming vocabulary to match. And often too a sense of the imperative, grounding reality of the phenomenal world – the thisness of things:

Cloud whispers brush daylight’s ear;

fern question-marks form a bush encore;

forlorn heat swings cobbed in webs.

– from ‘Nor-wester Flying’

In this latest collection David Eggleton is court jester/philosopher/lyricist, and a kind of male Cassandra, roving warningly from primeval swampland to gritty cityscape to the information and disinformation cybercloud.

David Eggleton lives in Dunedin. He has previously had published six books of poems

and a book of short fiction, as well as a number of works of non-fiction. Well known as a

performance poet, he’s also released several poetry recordings featuring his collaborations

with musicians, and been involved in poetry text collaborations with practitioners of a variety

of other art forms, from sculpture to fashion design. His poetry and short stories appear in a

wide range of recent anthologies.

‘David Eggleton’s word-blasts feel like they come from further left-of-centre than anything else written in New Zealand … It is endlessly imaginative, it’s funny – plus intellectually rewarding.’

Nick Ascroft, Landfall, 2002

‘His poetry is vital and contemporary, steeped in popular and postmodern culture. It offers a vision of New Zealand which is at once resolutely local and yet not quite recognisable or predictable – offers a vision of ourselves which defies expectation to surprise and charm.’ – Louise O’ Brien, Dominion Post, 2001.

Release Date: February 2015

ISBN 978-1-877578-93-9, $25

www.otago.ac.nz/press

http://www.facebook.com/OtagoUniversityPress

The judges for the 2015 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize

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The judges for the 2015 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize are:

2015 GUEST JUDGE

2015 JUDGES
S HuntVona Groarke
Vona is an Irish poet. She has published six collections with Gallery Press, the latest being X, (2014), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Others include Spindrift (2010), Flight (2002) – which won the Michael Hartnett Award, and her translation from Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s eighteenth-century Irish, Lament for Art O’Leary (2008), which is currently being adapted as an opera by Irish composer, Irene Buckley. In the U.S., she publishes with Wake Forest University Press. Her poems have recently appeared in Yale Review, The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, The Guardian, The Times and Poetry Review. She teaches poetry in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester in the UK and is the editor of Poetry Ireland Review.		 S RossSarah Ross, BA (Hons) Canterbury, MSt (Distinction) Oxford, DPhil Oxford
Sarah is a Senior Lecturer in English at Victoria University of Wellington. She specialises in early modern literature, poetry, and women’s writing, and she is the editor of Katherine Austen’s Book M (ACMRS, 2011) and the author of numerous articles on early modern women’s writing, poetry, and manuscript culture.

M GleissnerMichael Gleissner, LLB (Hons), MBA, CPA
Michael met Sarah in 1990 and they married in 1999 before moving to New Zealand. Michael is General Manager Corporate Strategy at the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. Previously he held Chief Financial Officer roles at Pacific Fibre and Sealord Group and various roles at Fonterra. Michael has also worked as a lawyer in London and Auckland. He is an avid supporter of the Arts, and shared a particular strong interest in poetry with Sarah. Michael lives in Auckland with his and Sarah’s three young children.

Nominate your Great Kiwi Classic — Could be poetry! Hmmm

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The hunt for the Great Kiwi Classic returns in 2015 and New Zealand readers nationwide are invited to join our celebration of iconic Kiwi books by nominating their favourites.

Launched in 2014 by the New Zealand Book Council and Auckland Writers Festival, the Great Kiwi Classic initiative is an annual opportunity for readers of all ages and interests to celebrate our most treasured books and writers.

Last year Keri Hulme’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Bone People was selected as the inaugural Great Kiwi Classic after a wealth of public nominations. One year on, we are once again asking enthusiastic readers to help decide which book deserves to be crowned this year’s supreme title.

We want to hear what your most loved classic is and why. Your choice might be decades old or hot off the press, celebrated or obscure, a charming romantic romp or a piece of social commentary so searing it has ended friendships. Any book written by a Kiwi writer is in the running.
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To nominate your Great Kiwi Classic and tell us why it’s the one, visit the Great Kiwi Classic Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/GreatKiwiClassic, or email your suggestions to greatkiwiclassic@bookcouncil.org.nz.

Nominations open Thursday 15 January and close 5pm Friday 13 February.

Throughout the campaign join us on Facebook for fresh debate, book giveaways, competitions and more. Nominate the same book you put forward last year, update your choice or join in the discussion. Follow the vote and read expert literary opinions on the New Zealand Book Council’s online magazine Booknotes Unbound (http://booknotes-unbound.org.nz/).

After nominations close our panel will convene to consider nominations, with the big reveal of this year’s classic announced at the launch of the Auckland Writers Festival programme on Tuesday 17 March.

The Great Kiwi Classic 2015 will then be the subject of a lively event at the Festival in May, featuring top writers and experts in a book club style discussion where all views on the book and its claim to classic status will be entertained.

Spread the word and make your vote count in 2015. The hunt for the next Great Kiwi Classic is on!

Call for Entries to the Kathleen Grattan Award 2015 – Emma Neale to judge

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Call for Entries to the Kathleen Grattan Award 2015

Otago University Press has great pleasure in putting a call out for entries in to the Kathleen Grattan Award 2015 – it’s time to get those manuscripts into shape! Emma Neale – celebrated poet, novelist and prose writer – is this year’s award judge. The closing date for entries is 31 July.

The Kathleen Grattan Award is one of New Zealand’s most substantial awards for poetry: the winner receives $10,000 and Otago University Press considers the winning manuscript for publication. The winner also receives a year’s subscription to Landfall.

See the award web page for details of how to enter.

http://www.otago.ac.nz/press/landfall/grattanaward.html

About the Kathleen Grattan Award

Auckland poet Kathleen Grattan, a journalist and former editor of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, died in 1990. A member of the Titirangi Poets, her work was published in Landfall and other volumes including Premier Poets, a collection from the World Poetry Society. Her daughter Jocelyn Grattan, who also worked for the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, shared her mother’s love of literature. She has generously left Landfall a bequest with which to establish an award in memory of Kathleen Grattan.

The Kathleen Grattan Award, initially established as a yearly award, is now awarded biannually.

Previous Award Winners

2013 Siobhan Harvey (Cloudboy)

2011 Emma Neale (The Truth Garden)

2010 Jennifer Compton (This City)

2009 Leigh Davis (Repairing of a Life)

2008 Joanna Preston (The Summer King)

 

Latest JAAM edited by Sue Wootton

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Jaam+32

JAAM 32: Shorelines was launched simultaneously at the first LitCrawl festival in Wellington and at The Inch Bar in Dunedin on 15 November.  JAAM is a popular national literary journal, published annually with the help of funding from Creative NZ/Toi Aotearoa.

For the 2014 issue of JAAM we shifted south, welcoming Dunedin writer Sue Wootton (pictured) as our guest editor. Sue is probably best known as a poet – she has published three collections of poetry, most recently By Birdlight (Steele Roberts, 2011), and has won awards for her poems. But she’s also an experienced prose writer. Her ebook of three short stories, The Happiest Music on Earth, was published in 2012 and her children’s book, Cloudcatcher, came out in 2010. Sue has twice been a runner up in the BNZ Katherine Mansfield short story awards, has been a finalist in the Sunday Star Times and Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize short story competitions, and has won the Aoraki Literary Festival short story prize.

The theme for JAAM 32 was ‘shorelines’, and Sue welcomed submissions that considered the theme from many angles. Sue says:

“I chose the theme of ‘Shorelines’ partly because I see our islands’ physical shorelines as the great connector for us as a people. I hoped the idea of shorelines would resonate for others, and prove a creative catalyst. It sure did – there were a huge number of submissions, and I’m sad to say I couldn’t select every good piece that I read. I decided to arrange this issue around the idea of korerorero, as expressed in Teoti Jardine’s opening poem, a kind of “never-ending ebb and flow” conversation, taking place from one end of the country to the other.”

There was a good representation of South Island writers in this issue, including Vincent O’Sullivan, Diane Brown, Rachel Bush, David Eggleton, Kerrin P. Sharpe, Joanna Preston, Carolyn McCurdie, Frankie McMillan, Emma Neale, Rhian Gallagher and Karen Zelas. Also among the writers whose work features in JAAM 32 are Tracey Slaughter, Morgan Bach and Tim Jones.

JAAM publishes poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, photography and other artwork.  It supports new and up and coming writers and gives them a chance to appear beside established local and international authors.  Guest editor, Sue Wootton says:

“Opening JAAM is always like lifting the lid on a jack-in-the-box: something energetic jumps out. The buzz is due to the eclectic (electric) mix of voices within the covers, which in turn is a result of JAAM’s commitment to artistic exploration. JAAM has always been not only a forum for New Zealand’s well-known established writers but also a place for new writers to chance their pens.”

For more information about JAAM you can visit: www.jaam.net.nz or contact the editors on jaammagazine@yahoo.co.nz.

Vincent O’Sullivan posts some new poems by Emma Neale on the Laureate website. They are simply breathtaking.

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Current NZ Poet Laureate, Vincent O’Sullivan, has selected some new poems by Emma Neale to mark the shift between one year and the next. They are stunning poems, not only in the aural delights, the archival detail and each poem’s building momentum, but in the way the poet lays anchors in both a real world of sons and husband and an exhilarating world of ideas. These poems have shifted gear.

Emma was shortlisted for the Sarah Broom  Award this year and read with fellow shortlisted poet, Kirsti Whalen, at the Auckland Writers Festival. To hear Emma read was to hear the poetic detail and music come into even richer life. A highlight for me this year.

Vincent O’Sullivan on Emma Neale:

‘There is something so celebratory about Emma Neale’s poetry, about its eager, informed, needle-eyed engagement with the contemporary world, that it seems the very thing for this final Poet Laureate blog of the year, for what we still, with our perverse and saving optimism, call ‘the festive season’. Thanks to Emma for these unpublished poems, for their kitchen-familiar and cosmic-wide attentions, for running the hot thread of such linguistic flare and precision through whatever occasion she takes up. These seem to me the kind of poems that begin with readers but end with partners, in their take on how things are, and how we talk of them. This is poetry in that ancient tradition of ‘speaking for us all’, of making scenes and events that we find are about ourselves all the time, even when they may at first move so confidently in that Rilkean dimension of ‘beauty and terror’. Good poems to end one year, and to begin another.’

For the selected poems see here.