The latest Starling issue will be launching in three cities featuring readings from the authors. I will post details for each launch as they come to hand.
WELLINGTON: Sunday 22 August at @B00KH0UND
CHRISTCHURCH: Friday 27 August at @WORDChCh Regent St Pop-Up Festival
AUCKLAND: Sunday 29 August at The Open Book
Here is a taste of the Auckland event.
Issue 12 is nearly here, and we’re ready to party – come along to our FIRST EVER issue launch in Auckland, at the wonderful Open Book in Ponsonby!
Come celebrate, hear exciting new writing from young New Zealand authors, browse The Open Book shelves, and help Starling commemorate reaching a whole dozen.
The event will be hosted by new Starling editorial committee member Tate Fountain, and a full list of authors reading at the launch party will be announced once the issue itself launches online on Tuesday 17 August at starlingmag.com!
(image credit: Maisie Chilton, from the forthcoming Issue 12 cover!)
Description: Do you have unfinished poems? Not sure where to submit your work? Just need some feedback or guidance? Win a poetry mentorship with prize-winning poet, editor, writing tutor and mentor, Joanna Preston! The winner will receive useful written feedback on up to five pages of their poems, as well as encouragement and guidance to help take their poetry to the next level.
Entry Details: Free. Ages 18+. Send up to five pages of unpublished, unpolished poems in a Word document to writers@staff.hagley.school.nz. Do not include your name anywhere in the document or file name. Entries are judged anonymously.
Date/Times: Entries open 1st – 26th August 2021, 5pm. Limited to the first 100 entries.
An evening of poetry Laureates David Eggleton, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Ian Wedde, Cilla McQueen, Jenny Bornholdt, Brian Turner, Elizabeth Smither, Bill Manhire, Vincent O’Sullivan with MC Greg O’Brien.
On Friday August 6th, a number of our former Poets Laureate joined our current Laureate, David Eggleton, for a celebration at the National Library in Wellington: Jenny Bornholdt, Elizabeth Smither, Bill Manhire, Vincent O’Sullivan, Brian Turner, Cilla McQueen, Ian Wedde and Selina Tusitala Marsh, with MC Gregory O’Brien. After the launch of David’s new chapbook, Throw Net / Upena Ho’olei (handprinted by Brendan O’Brien), each poet read a couple of poems. I was so sorry to miss an event that honoured our poetry taonga with such joy and warmth and connection. Each Poet Laureate has delivered and is delivering a treasury of poetry. Their work has shaped and sustained me over many years, along with countless other poetry fans.
Mark Beatty took photos that I have kind permission to reproduce here. Peter Ireland, such a generous and careful guardian of our Laureates, has drawn our Poets Laureate together on a number of special occasions. I raise my cup of green tea to Peter, to the poets and to the National Library. Thank you. A galaxy of thank yous.
Peter Ireland sent me an email that took me right to the heart of the event. He has kindly let me share an extract.
‘I reiterated some key thank yous, offered thanks to the poets for allowing everyone to be a poet for an hour, for putting us in touch with the poet as listener, for making this circle complete. When I look at these pictures, I get a strong sense of things that weren’t clear at the time. I can cherish the presence of a group of poets unlikely to meet and read in this configuration again, though I will do my best to prove this wrong. I can hear the reading of Brian, Jenny, Cilla… voices that are us. With all the wonder and transience of a rainbow in the sky.
The group shot in front of Cliff Whiting’s Te Wehenga shows people obeying the photographer’s instruction. To look at each other. Actually, just that, to look at each other, to listen attentively, to join the community of poetry, to pour some good Te Mata wine. About sums it up.’
Peter Ireland
Poet Laureate blog. The blog is currently featuring The Poet Laureate’s Choice, August 2021, a portfolio sequence of new poems from poets chosen by the Poet Laureate.
Party Legend, Sam Duckor-Jones, Victoria University Press, 2021
Dedications
To Anita: complete with scissors and buttons For Donovan: a lesson To Christopher: humming a little tune For Neil: we tried To Jack: a pasture of hens For my grandfather: the standard question For Amy: empty nutshells To Janet: harder than quartz
Sam Duckor-Jones
Some poetry books offer a sweet flowing current, other books twist and spin with connections, disconnections, changing hues. I love both. I love a fluency of voice, and I love it when voice cracks and reforms afresh. Sam Duckor-Jones’s second collection, Party Legend, is utterly inventive as it redirects the current, swaps over form, upholds fluency, surprises you at each turn of the page.
First love: the sequence of fascinating epigraphs that hold the collection together. I am reminded of a leaf skeleton. Look though the weathered mesh and you enter the realm of existence. This is an epigraph fest: Dorian Corey, Ken Bolton, Charles Darwin, Bernadette Bassenger, Karen Kamensek, Sophie Zawistowski, Dr Ruth-Anne Tibbets.
And then the beating heart of the book, a long sequence, ‘The Embryo Repeats’, a sequence to luxuriate in, a God alphabet of making and breaking and coveting, and a what-the-heck God, and God is everywhere, think anecdotes and silence and chuckles. An alphabet of arrivals. Desire dissatisfaction curiosity.
Switch currents, and the ‘Allemande’ poems transpose Bach’s lettered notes in the same order of his Cello Suites. Well yes. The lexicon is lush and elbowed. Expect fêtes and golden fools and dick. Genius.
Take time out for Sam’s refreshment of the found poem. Has to be the best salt-and-pepper cluster of found poems I have encountered in a long time. There is the ha! moment when you discover the poem is found language. The ha! moment at the revelation of source. The way you go back to the poem and it spins like enriched dough in your head and the poem rises and lifts, and is more than our immunity to the language we encounter daily. It is a trapdoor into reverie. Musing on existence. Little thoughts. Big thoughts. Sam borrows from the dedications and final lines in a book he found in a BnB (poem above), from emails about Talmund with his mother, an overheard conversation in a bookshop, RNZ reportage of the Kaikoura earthquake. And!! a complete list of Israeli prime ministers mashed up with Mary Holmes interviews on RNZ National. Genius, again, genius.
The poetry of Sam Duckor-Jones is a refreshing gust in my head. It’s audacious and funny and real. It’s mind-roaming, and heart-attaching, and blisteringly good.
Sam Duckor-Jones is a sculptor and poet. In 2017 he won the Biggs Poetry Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. His first book was People from the Pit Stand Up (VUP, 2018).
An event organised by John Allison, Jenna Heller, and David Gregory
under the auspices of the Canterbury Poets Collective
First session 12.00-12.50pm
Nathan Joe is a Chinese-Kiwi playwright, critic and poet who spends his time between Christchurch and Auckland. He won the Playmarket b425 award twice for Hippolytus Veiled and Like Sex. Recently he wrote and directed I am Rachel Chu, a satire and deconstruction of box-office hit and best-selling novel Crazy Rich Asians.
Kerrin P Sharpe has published four collections of poetry: three days in a wishing well (2012); there’s a medical name for this (2014); rabbit rabbit (2016) and Louder (August 2018). She has appeared in Best New Zealand Poems six times and in Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet Press UK) and Poetry (USA) 2018.
David Gregory David has had three books published in New Zealand, Always Arriving, Frame of Mind, and Push by Black Doris Press. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. He is also an editor for Sudden Valley Press which has produced over 30 editions of poetry. David is a co-MC for these sessions.
Annabel Wilson is a teacher, poet and playwright from Wanaka, living in Lyttelton. Her first poetry collection Aspiring Daybook published in 2018 by Makaro Press. Annabel’s work has been published in journals in NZ and overseas. Annabel regularly performs her poetry at literary festivals and open mic events.
Andy Coyle is a narrative poet who relishes the opportunity to take an audience on a journey. He performs regularly at live venues, with jazz and folk musicians, at street festivals, literary festivals, poetry slam, and solo poetry shows. He twice has represented Christchurch at the National Poetry Slam finals.
Second session 5.00-5.50pm
Gail Ingram‘s first poetry collection Contents Under Pressure was published by Pūkeko Publications in 2019. Her work has been widely published and anthologised locally and internationally. Awards include winner of NZPS poetry competition and third Poets Meet Politics poetry competition. She is also an editor and teacher of creative writing.
Ciaràn Fox is a whisky-chasing enthusiast of words whose writing has appeared in NZ literary journals such as Catalyst, Takahe, Landfall, and JAAM and was recently included in the Hellfire Poets Anthology. He is a co-organiser of the long-running open mic events and literary journal Catalyst.
Catherine Fitchett is a Christchurch poet, published in Poetry NZ, takahe, JAAM, The Press and various anthologies including Big Sky, Leaving the Red Zone, and broken lines / in charcoal. She has worked as a forensic scientist, which might explain the meticulous attention to detail in her poems.
Erik Kennedy is the author of There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (Victoria University Press, 2018), which was shortlisted for best book of poems in the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. He is a noted performer of his poetry, and is widely published here and overseas.
Jenna Heller is an American-New Zealander living and writing near the beach in New Brighton, Christchurch. Her poetry has been published widely throughout NZ and the US, and occasionally appearing in publications based in Australia, Canada, and the UK. Jenna is a co-MC for these sessions.
Jenny Powell is a Dunedin poet and performer. Her work has been part of various journals and collaborations. She has a deep interest in music and used to be a french horn player.
NZ Poetry Shelf 