Please join us for the launch of Slim Volume, the new poetry collection by James Brown. Slim Volume will be launched by Nick Ascroft, and there will be short poetry readings by Morgan Bach, Nick Ascroft, Ashleigh Young – and James Brown.
A slim volume of verse, like a bicycle, offers us fresh and joyful and sometimes troubling ways of seeing the world.
James Brown’s eighth collection of poems begins in childhood and moves through education, jobs and the essential unremarkable activities that occupy our lives – before arriving in a post-apocalyptic future, where the nights run late and down to the wire. The poems are ever-alert to the minutiae of power, the thrill of the unexpected, and the shiny potential of an ending. Always compelling, funny, heartening, Brown speaks volumes even when claiming to have little to say.
Maddie, Lou and Poppy stride ahead waist deep on a Wednesday
Ella Booray
Ella Borrie is is a Te Whanganui-a-Tara based poet from Otago. Her writing appears in Mimicry, Swamp, Starling, Stasis Journal, Landfall and Turbine | Kapohau. She is the winner of the 2023 Biggs Family Prize in Poetry.
This past week I have spent creating my poetry room inside the house so our daughter can live in the outside room for awhile. Not quite there yet as it’s a mammoth job! Such a terrific thing to do – discovering old friends, a few books I have yet to read, getting new ideas, and above all, recognising the incredible range of poetry we are publishing in Aotearoa. The university presses are publishing strong lists and must-have anthologies, and the smaller presses excel at bringing an equally inviting range of voices to our attention. I believe our poetry publishers are all producing books with love and heart and it shows. Thank you.
Matariki is a time of connections – connecting with whanau, ancestors, the land, the food we harvest, the food we share, our wellbeing, the stars in the sky. It is a reminder to be kind, to seek unity rather than division, to heal and to nourish. If we as writers and readers can use our words, stories and poems as a vital form of connection and nourishment, then that is a strengthening agent in this challenging world.
This week in my letterbox:
Based on a True Story, David Gregory, Sudden Valley Press, 2024
Please join us for the launch of Bad Archive, the debut book by Flora Feltham. Bad Archive will be launched by Thomasin Sleigh, author of The Words for Her.
From the winner of the Letteri Family Prize for Nonfiction, Bad Archive is a collection of bold, beautiful and constantly surprising essays about life, loss, joy and the fabric of memory.
In this deftly woven work Flora Feltham explores the corners where her memories are stashed: the archive vault, her mother’s house, a marriage counsellor’s office, the tip and New World. She takes us on a frenzied bender in Croatia, learns tapestry and meets romance novelists, all while wondering how families and relationships absorb the past, given everything we don’t say about grief, mental illness or even love. Most importantly, she asks, how do you write about a life honestly – when there are so many flaws in the way we record history and, more confrontingly, in the way we remember?
Please join us for the launch of The Social Space of the Essay: 2003–2023, by Ian Wedde, at Time Out Bookstore. The Social Space of the Essay will be launched by Peter Simpson.
Friday 12 July From 6pm
Time Out Bookstore (upstairs) 432 Mt Eden Road Mt Eden, Auckland
Celebrated poet, novelist and critic Ian Wedde’s third collection of essays follows How to Be Nowhere: Essays and Texts 1971–1994 and Making Ends Meet: Essays & Talks 1992–2004, and ranges widely through Aotearoa New Zealand, the Pacific ocean, and the libraries and museums of the world. Artists considered in depth and often from multiple perspectives include Bill Culbert, Ralph Hotere, Tony Fomison, Judy Millar, Peter Black, Anne Noble, Yuk King Tan, Elizabeth Thomson and Gordon Walters, while writers including Allen Curnow and Russell Haley are remembered.
The Michael King Writers Centre is pleased to announce that next year’s programme of residencies at the historic Signalman’s House on Takarunga Mt Victoria in Devonport, Auckland, is now open for applications. Writers awarded a residency can look forward to peaceful accommodation, the use of a writing studio, a supporting stipend and the opportunity to focus on a specific writing project.
The 2025 programme offers 16 residencies to emerging and established writers for periods of two to four weeks. Awarded residencies will include up to four specifically for Māori or Pasifika writers.
Applications close on Monday 29 July 2024 and the selections are expected to be announced in September.
Matariki, the brightest born star I see you even from afar The keeper of peace and family I say goodbye to you sadly I see your beautiful woven cloak The stars I know about, everyone has spoke Your loving and caring nature Your brave and daring dedication Matariki, my favourite star and born from Tāwhiremātea The sweet and nourishing mother A star brighter than all the others Matariki, the brightest star Rests in the heavens above.
Thomas E, age 9, Richmond Rd School
Dear Grandad (a poem for Matariki)
Dear Grandad,
The bed creaked as you turned your fragile body
You scratched your sandpaper-like skin your joyful smile enlightened the room
while the soft wind kissed your cheek
you got older day by day while telling your priceless stories you loved to tell
you loved eating thick ice cream that made your teeth sting
your memory was like dust easily swept away
I wish I could’ve said goodbye
I love you, Grandad
by Mushal F, Year 8, Te Parito Kōwhai Russley School
Yesterday morning we got up in the pitch dark to go to my appointment. Mars was hovering, the sky miraculously clear of clouds. We stood on the water’s edge watching the sun lift behind Rangitoto. Breathtaking beauty. Utter peace. Perhaps we all tread the arc between uncertainty and joy, as I currently do, finding ways to nurture and nourish not just ourselves but those near us, taking time to absorb the sky, stars, bush, words on a page, the voice on the airwaves.
Poetry Shelf is my anchor, soaring kite, heart-tingling road trip. I am so grateful for the way you support my ideas, other writers, our books. It feels like our reading and writing communities continue to build and inspire.
This week I relaunched Poetry Box because I love connecting with children, teachers, school librarians, children’s authors. I loved Rachel King’s recent piece on why she writes novels for children rather than adults. I adore doing both but I get this completely. There’s a bit missing when I’m not writing and blogging for children. I believe words have super powers – whether in books or orally, read or written – because they are a vital key to self discovery, self travel, both global and local learning, a way to foster empathy kindness peace. My continued aim is to spark children to fall in love with what words can do, show and create. I want children’s fingers itching to write in myriad ways on myriad subjects and beyond myriad frames. I am so grateful I can once again work online with our precious tamariki across the motu.
This week I invited young poets to celebrate Matariki, and have included a couple for you to read. The Poetry Box festival of Matariki poems is here.
Today, as I sit down to my warm cheese scone and coconut milk coffee, I say thank you; thank you for your kind emails, your incredible support, your sublime poetry and your equally sublime storytelling that lifts and transports us all.
Ngā mihi o Matariki, te tau hou Māori!
Matarikiat Pōhara beach
The skin of the ocean wrinkling the breeze. The eyes of the wind skipping on the sand. I walk into the shallows, Waitā holds me close. Matariki’s breath brings warmth.
Raphe, Y8, age 12, Medbury School
Matariki Riddle
I’m a phantom at day at night I’m shining bright I’m named after a flower blossoming red light. (pōhutukawa)
Liam P, age 10, Richmond Rd School
MatarikiLight
Matariki guides kiwi to their homes in the forest. Matariki guides me to my family. She lights my way I write her this poem.
NZ Poetry Shelf 