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Poetry Shelf Theme Season: Ten poems about dreaming
Not many younger poets sent me poems about ice but there were loads of dreaming poems. I have always loved poems that dream because poetry is a close relation with its slants, mists, hallucinations, and deep personal cores. I sometimes think that to dream is to write. To enter the opaque, to reclaim the obvious, to have no idea where you will end up or how you will get there. To astonish yourself.
I am so very grateful to the poets and publishers who have backed my themed poetry season with such loving support.
Ten poems about dreaming
the dream is real
the moon is an open eye
high in the sky or winking
at the world below
the wind is the sea’s breath
rustling the leaves in the trees
night is a dark river
flowing through the day
a bird is a song
the dream is real
clouds are ghosts
flight is a wing
Apirana Taylor
from a canoe in midstream, Canterbury University Press, 2009
Insomnia
it is a black night
I lie perfectly still
mine is the long
awake adult body
two small boys
flickering at either side
night sweats
bad dreams
fluttering in and
out of sheets
I lie black
in between
head
thorax, abdomen
trembling children
my wings
Karlo Mila
from A Well Written Body, Huia Press, 2008
My Father Dreams of His Father
My father dreams of his father
walking in the garden of the old family homestead
on Kawaha Point.
I have not been back since he passed away.
As decrepit dogs wander off under trees
to sniff out their final resting places,
elderly men wait in the wings
rehearsing exit lines.
I’m sure my grandfather never envied his dog more
than during those last days.
I’m sure, given the choice, he would have preferred
to slip away under the magnolias.
The garden is tended by different hands now.
My grandmother still walks by the lake,
her little dog in tow. The current man of the house
is more interested in the chasing of swans
than the cultivating of camellias.
My father dreams of his father
walking in the garden of the old family homestead
on Kawaha Point.
I have not been back since he passed away.
Claudia Jardine
from AUP New Poets 7, ed. Anna Jackson, Auckland University Press, 2020
Sentries
I’m frantically chasing my mother who weaves in and out of the aisles throwing down craft supplies. I trip over scissors and quick unpicks
not seeing her face, only clean ponytail and collar poking out over plum cardigan. We run between shelves of antique vases but lose contact with the linoleum
and float out. In this world we drive couches like cars. I’m picking one up from the junkyard with a blue shag cushion for reference. Bumper stickers are glinting
while the couches lie gridlike. We scramble through the drivers’ seats running fingers through the upholstery. In the winter gardens there are fish tanks
nestled between succulents. One has a tangle of thin eels within it. Boys tap on the home of a solitary neon tetra until it shatters. I hold the fragments together
and try to keep the fish swimming in a handful of glass and water. They put me in the newspaper. I run out to catch you in the ocean, my mother
but you keep dipping under. As I look around I notice, embedded in rock formations are those white plastic fans, not rotating anymore just facing the horizon.
Lily Holloway
originally published at The Spin Off, October, 2020
interventionalist god
in my dream nick cave had a long, thick black mane.
it swung around his hips, kissed
with a bright white streak
snaking its length.
he served noodle soup at the concert
full of moving mushrooms, blooming
into elegant dancing technicolour spores;
tasted like purple.
the show was very red, like the blood
of his falling son. my mother
was falling too,
drunkenly, over crimson seats,
hurting her back and lying down with the room spinning.
pissing off the man in the toupee, and toupee’s wife.
nick drawled, don’t worry,
sung a song sad and it broke us,
spun around inside a steel cage,
spray-painted KINGS on our leather jackets
so we could get into his next stadium show free.
afterwards, we matched up our snails in the foyer.
nick was smoking through tears out back,
about to catch a flight, saying,
i think i’ve met someone with your name,
and it was you already.
Hebe Kearney
Lake Wakatipu
A jade lizard bends in a circle,
chasing its tail;
straightens, and darts for a crevice.
Mist swathes in grey silk the lake:
flat-stomached, calm, slow-pulsed,
a seamless bulk.
Vapours spiral,
pushing up to a cloud-piercer,
where snow has been sprinkled
like powder from a talc can at height.
Grandeur stands muffled.
The Earnslaw headbutts shorewards.
After lying prone for years,
rocks shift downwards
at speed, eager to wheel
through air, crash in a gully,
and not move.
The lake buttons up to dive deep,
leaving a perfectly blank black space,
through which you might fall forever.
David Eggleton
from Edgeland and other poems, Otago University Press, 2018
Daisy
This town is just one great big farm. The main road runs alongside these power poles tilted over green green paddocks, the lines all sagging, the poles on the piss. You hit it at forty k and slug down the main street, past the Strand, the Top Pub, the Nott. Past blue election billboards and wooden fences painted red with Water Gouging and Inheritance Tax. The arterial line is just panel beaters, tractors, pots of pink flowers dripping from shop windows. She says they look like icing. And these cows. There are forty-two of them, all painted up to look cultural. Blue like an old tea cup, pearls and roses dribbling over the rim. One unzipped at the side, with muscle and guts peeking out like baked beans and salmon. One flower power cow, real LSD yellow and orange, like it sorta wandered over from Woodstock and got lost for years and years. Little kids run across the road just to touch them. Name their favourites after their pet cats. Rusty, Mittens, Boots. They’re bolted to the pavement so at night they just haunt the main street, all washed out and hollow. But the worst is that giant one right at the start of town. Two stories high, with black splotches like flames of tar. I have these dreams that the paddocks are on fire and the ground is opening up and all you can hear is mooing. The Mega Cow watching over his herd like some great milky God. The trains rattle past at dawn and wake me up. The cows hardly blink.
Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor
from Ngā Kupu Waikato: an anthology of Waikato Poetry, ed. Vaughan Rapatahana, Self Published, 2019
Tilting
The woman on the bus said
I’ve never been on a bus before
as she lifted her bag
a miniature suitcase
black and shiny as a beetle.
Next time you’ll know what to do
said the driver as he stood on the brakes
pointed to the building on the left and said
The lift’ll take you to The Terrace.
There were no ledges on The Terrace
just buildings tilting and leaning
and the wind to push against.
That night, unpacked and tired
the woman climbed on her black beetle bag
and flew across the harbour
soaring above its flat cool face
staring deep into its mouth
and wondering about earthquakes.
The next morning the bus driver couldn’t shake
the woman from his mind.
As he left the depot
his bus pshishing and grinding through peak hour flow
he checked his mirror
but she wasn’t there
instead he saw the edges of his bus converting
row by row, slice by slice
into a huge loaf of bread.
The aroma filled the aisles
stirring the appetites of even
his sleepiest passengers
and when he neared the end of Lambton Quay
all that was left of the bus, was the crust.
Some like the crust, some don’t, he thought
as he chewed and chomped
until the last crumb fell
into the gutter, into the drain
into the harbour, and out to sea.
What now? he said
peering skywards, catching a glint.
Trish Harris
published under the title ‘Openings’ in New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology 2015/2016
bone / tired
I am tired to my bones
this exhaustion
has wrapped around my ribs
sunk into my jaw
slunk
down
each vertebrae
I take deep slow breaths
each exhale
rattles the cage of ribs
I don’t sleep anymore
I just rattle around the house
the rooms empty of the wakeful
I touch each wall
like a talisman
like an averter of the evil eye
to avert whichever evil
might choose us tonight
I keep vigil
I don’t sleep anymore
rattle the bones
of the sleeping
I am rattled
to my bones
I don’t sleep anymore
the bones of my shoulders
have permanently rolled inward
they hunch
waiting for a fight
for a blow
I have never been in a fight
just in anticipation
of the fight, the flight
there are 27 bones in the human hand
I count them all
in lieu of sleeping
I am tired to my bones
I don’t sleep anymore
Rose Peoples
Pasture and flock
Staring up into the sky my feet
anchor me to the ground so hard
I’m almost drowning, drowning,
in air, my hair falling upwards
around my shoulders, I think I’ll hug
my coat closer. I’m standing
on hundreds of blades of grass, and
still there are so many more
untrodden on. Last night, in bed,
you said, ‘you are the sheet
of linen and I am the threads,’ and
I wanted to know what you meant
but you wouldn’t wake up to tell me
and in the morning you didn’t
remember, and I had forgotten
till now when I think, who is
the blades of grass, who is the pasture?
It is awfully cold, and my coat
smells of something unusual.
It almost seems as if it is the stars
smelling, as if there were
an electrical fault in the sky,
and though it is almost too dark
to see I can see the sheep
moving closer, and the stars
falling. I feel like we are all
going to plunge into the sky
at once, the sheep and I,
and I am the sheep and I am
the flock, and you are the pasture
I fall from, the stars and the sky.
Anna Jackson
from Pasture and Flock: New & Selected Poems, Auckland University Press, 2018
Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor was awarded the 2018 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition, and the 2017 Monash Prize for Emerging Writers. Her work has appeared in Starling, Mayhem, Brief, Poetry New Zealand, Landfall, Turbine, Flash Frontier, Mimicry, Min-a-rets, Sweet Mammalian, Sport and Verge. She is Poetry New Zealand‘s 2021 Featured Poet. She writes thanks to the support of some of the best people on this great watery rock.
David Eggleton is the Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate 2019 – 2022. His most recent book is The Wilder Years: Selected Poems, published by Otago University Press.
Trish Harris has written two books – a poetry collection My wide white bed and a memoir The Walking Stick Tree. She teaches non-fiction on the Whitireia Creative Writing Programme, is co-founder of Crip the Lit and edited their 2019 pocketbook, ‘Here we are, read us: Women, disability and writing’. She says she’s a part-time crane operator…but maybe she’s dreaming?
Lily Holloway has a Teletubby tattoo and is forthcoming in AUP New Poets 8. You can find more of her work here
Anna Jackson lectures at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, lives in Island Bay, edits AUP New Poets and has published seven collections of poetry, most recently Pasture and Flock: New and Selected Poems (AUP 2018). Thoughts on dreaming and on being dreamed about can be found here and here.
Claudia Jardine (she/her) is a poet and musician based in Ōtautahi/Christchurch. In 2020 she published her first chapbook, The Temple of Your Girl, with Auckland University Press in AUP New Poets 7 alongside Rhys Feeney and Ria Masae. Her work has also been published in Starling, Sport, Landfall and Stasis. For the winter of 2021, Jardine will be one of the Arts Four Creative Residents in The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, where she will be working on a collection of poems.
Hebe Kearney is a poet from Christchurch who now calls Auckland her home. Her work has appeared in The Three Lamps, Oscen, Starling, Forest and Bird, a fine line, and the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2021.
Dr Karlo Mila (MNZM) is a mother, writer, award-winning poet and leadership programme director. Of Tongan and Pākehā descent, her creative and professional career has focused upon Pasifika peoples in Aotearoa. Her book Dream Fish Floating won the best first book of poetry in the NZ literary awards in 2005. Karlo lives in Tāmaki Makaurau with her three sons. Her third poetry book Goddess Muscle was published by Huia in 2020.
Rose Peoples is from Te Awakairangi/Lower Hutt. She is a student at Victoria University and, having finished her law degree last year, decided that the logical next step was to embark upon a Masters in Literature. She is a bookseller at Good Books. Her work has previously appeared in Cordite, Mimicry and Starling.
Apirana Taylor, Ngati Porou, Te Whanau a Apanui, Ngati Ruanui, Te Ati Awa, is a nationally and internationally published poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, actor, painter and musician. He has been Writer in Residence at Canterbury and Massey Universities. He frequently tours nationally and internationally visiting schools, tertiary institutions and prisons reading his poetry, storytelling and taking creative writing workshops. He has written six collections of poetry, a book of plays, three collections of short stories, and two novels. His work has been included in many national and international anthologies.
Ten poems about clouds
Twelve poems about ice
Poetry Shelf celebrates new books: Courtney Sina Meredith reads from Burst Kisses on the Actual Wind
Courtney Sina Meredith reads two poems
Courtney Sina Meredith is a distinguished poet, playwright, fiction writer, performer, children’s author and essayist, with her works being translated and published around the world. A leading figure in the New Zealand arts sector, Courtney is the Director of Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust, an organisation committed to championing Oceanic arts and artists. Courtney’s award-winning works include her play Rushing Dolls, poetry Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick, short stories Tail of the Taniwha and children’s book The Adventures of Tupaia. Burst Kisses On The Actual Wind is Courtney’s new collection of poetry, the book was released just this month by Beatnik Books.
Beatnik Books page
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: A Going West video – Grace Iwashita-Taylor and director Ursula Grace’s Edgewalker
Poet for stage and page Grace Iwashita-Taylor and director Ursula Grace combine their rich cultural traditions and disciplines of poetry and film to explore their deep connection to the ocean.
This is a stunning video – the movement between word and image, ocean and body sublime.
Watch here
Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Erik Kennedy’s ‘We’re Nice to Each Other After the Trauma’
We’re Nice to Each Other After the Trauma
Christchurch, after 15 March 2019
We’re nice to each other after the trauma.
It’s emotional labour spent in a good cause,
like signing a birthday card at work or volunteering
to clean a beach. In the geography of care
the grieving city is bright, busy, sensitive
to extraordinary needs, able to flex and soothe.
It’s one of a series of temporary truths,
a glimpse of something not quite representative
that we wish could stay once it’s there.
We wish we couldn’t see it disappearing
into routine, because we were desolately happy because
we were nice to each other after the trauma.
Erik Kennedy
Erik Kennedy is the author of There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (Victoria University Press, 2018), and he is co-editing a book of climate change poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific forthcoming from Auckland University Press later in 2021. His poems, stories, and criticism have recently been published in places like FENCE, Hobart, Maudlin House, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, the TLS, and Western Humanities Review. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Poetry Shelf Theme Season: Twelve poems about ice
Photo credit: Alison Glenny
Some poetry books catch you on the first page and you get goosebumps and your breathing changes and you know this is a book for you. I felt like that when I first read Alison Glenny’s sublime The Farewell Tourist with its luminous connections to Antarctica. There is something about poetry that takes risks, that never loses touch with heart, is unafraid of ideas, and is able to sing on the line. You just want to camp up in the book for days, with a thermos of tea, and all your devices unplugged.
I felt the same way about Bill Manhire’s extraordinary poem ‘Erebus Voices’ (Lifted, Victoria University Press, 2005). You can read the poem at The Spin Off here and listen to Bill read the poem here. Thinking of Alison’s book and Bill’s poem, I knew ice had to be one of my themes.
Ice in poems: it might be a hint, a hurt, an underlying coldness, an icy image, a heart freeze, a trip to the snow-capped mountain, a melting ice-cream, an avalanche.
I am so grateful to all the poets who have supported my extended thematic poetry gatherings. Thank you.
The Poetry Shelf Theme Season runs every Friday until mid August.
In the morning the mountains beckon
Blue and clear like bells; glaciers feed upon
Light pouring from heaven brighter than ice-stone.
Ruth France (1913-1968), from No Traveller Returns: the selected poems of Ruth France, Cold Hub Press, 2020
Twelve poems about ice
Some afternoons a fog rolled down the hallway. On others, the staircase groaned with moisture. A finger laid carelessly on a bannister dislodged a ledge of rime. She lifted the hem of her dress to avoid the damp in the passageway, wore knitted gloves in the kitchen. She was lying in the bath when the glacier pushed through the wall. She sank deeper into the water to escape the chill that settled on her shoulders. Trying to ignore the white haze, to lose herself between the pages of her book.
Alison Glenny
from The Farewell Tourist, Otago University Press, 2018
He Manawa Maunga
We are dwarfed by a snow bank
that reaches beyond our eyes,
a single hole punctuating its white sheet.
Your hand covers my small eyes
and I feel you shielding me in the warmth of your jacket
as we move though.
I open them to a palace of ice and snow
meticulously carved by strangers
long gone down the mountain.
We sit together in silence,
deep in the mountain’s quiet heart.
Watching our breath melt away
the walls around us.
Ruby Solly
from Tōku Pāpa, Victoria University Press, 2021
Pencarrow Lighthouse
Mrs Mary Jane Bennet saw frost on the ground
circling the lighthouse where her children sleep.
At the cliff edge where wildflowers were,
gulls wash seafoam up the shore.
You, gulls, over hoofprints on the track,
over the dunes, over pearl beams ghosting
out from the lighthouse,
in your thousands over clean seashells.
The wind spins dead things in circles.
Collect up the wintertime, won’t you,
crack it on a rock,
drop it from a height.
But, you bird whose wing cuts the tops off waves,
shut your wings for the children
of Mrs Mary Jane Bennett.
Let loose a grey feather.
She will tuck it into the knot
of the blue satin ribbon
ion her eldest daughters hair, the one
who dreams of white things circling.
Nina Mingya Powles
from Girls of the Drift, Seraph Press, 2014
Wabi-sabi
I was thirty-three before I learned
people stuck in snow
can die from dehydration.
I would melt icicles
on my tongue for you, resist
the drinking down, drip it
into you. Then repeat, repeat
until my lips were raw.
Deep snow squeaks. We
stop on the Desert Road
because of the snow. You
throw snowballs at the
‘Warning: Army Training Area’ sign.
I take macro-photographs of
icicles on tussock.
When we drive up the Desert Road
we lost National Radio, we lose
cellphone reception, we lose
all hope. I was thirty-seven before
I considered not trying to always fix
things. I read an article in the New Yorker
about wabi-sabi – the beauty in the
broken and the worn. The integrity
of the much-used utilitarian object.
But then there was another article
about a woman flying to Mexico
to be put into a coma
so she can wake up mended. It is
like rebooting a computer, said the doctor.
Despite wabi-sabi, I want that.
To live in snow and not be thirsty.
I want good reception all the way
up the country. I want a shiny, clean
version of myself. Closedown,
hibernate, restart.
Helen Lehndorf
from The Comforter, Seraph Press, 2011
Girl Reading
She overhears the sound of things in hiding.
She bites an apple and imagines orchard starlight.
Each time she licks her thumb, its tip,
she tastes the icy branches,
she hears a sigh migrate from page to page.
Bill Manhire
from Zoetropes, Victoria University Press, 1981
Opa
They would ice-skate:
he worked the canals
with speed.
My grandparents,
between villages, on ice
above the level of the land.
*
Amsterdam in the fifties:
a row of white stone houses
on a paved street.
*
New Zealand’s blue sea
lapped at sloping shores,
knew its place
at the flank of land.
Wide stars, small shells,
the open span of sand.
*
A wooden villa
changed you.
Housed you.
Those years of good
morning, goodnight,
pudding and bread,
climbing in
and climbing out of bed.
*
Your skates
hang on the wall.
Blond varnished wood.
Braided laces.
Those blades, sweeping,
never shook off the ice.
Angela Andrews
from Echolocation, Victoria University Press, 2007
Island girl Tokoroa
ice-cream puddle licks bare feet
a sky so bright and blue
the sun rimming its yellow stain
make-believe it is summer
yet winter bites frozen fingers
gloves and scarves for some other child
in her hands she holds the key
a coin for lunch one Sally Lunn, miss
creamy pink-smothered bun
there is no word for luxury beyond
this daily walk in winter sun
she can almost taste it
morning flicks by chafing
children
head down she holds out her hand
winter may snow for all she cares
the skies can turn black
one Sally Lunn, miss
is heaven and blue
and forever
Reihana Robinson
from Her Limitless Her, Mākaero Press (Hoopla series), 2018
Ben Lomond
Three people in the snow
two linked by marriage
memorising fault line
by fault line
and every now and again the head of the summit
tails in
and out of sight
three people with backpacks and knees in the snow
threading the mountains with a silence
that once broken
would make you cry
and every now and again the head of the summit
tails in
and out of sight
like the early love of a June morning
first an accent and then the hearing
and the sky is a blanket wishing it gone
late on the summit a sparrow
whittling alone
and away
Modi Deng
from A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, eds Paula Morris & Alison Wong, Auckland University Press, 2021
Avalanche
There was the war on TV,
the snow, the people lying on plastic
in the snow, death arriving
with his suitcase full of tools,
the delivery out of this world
offers such a dazzling
variety, and the snow, forever this
white tableau becomes forged
with the recollections of your last
oncology visit
and the people lying on the plastic
in the snow.
At the doctor’s I sat with
my tiny hands held in my lap the way
I’d been taught, two lovebirds,
but the flesh was as cold as sheet ice
I was up to my elbows
in frostbite and snow.
There were stories in the news
each day and in the morning paper,
death can happen overnight, may
be in your house if you don’t move
fast enough, in a trench, or
the dreadful football-stadium one,
under the trees in a dark
wood, against a hedge, or even lying
on plastic in the wan snow.
Such soft subdued footfalls,
but a goodly advance
over a long stretch of time.
Others shift their seats away from me
leaving a pencil
-thin cavity, a subtle margin,
but you and I are crouched
together in the snow reading the
avalanche instructions;
they are torn and dirty, tacked to
the cobwebbed wall of some
wild and woody alpine mountain hut:
Construct earthen fortifications
Behind your village. In the case
of serious exposure it is
best to wait for rescue dogs.
We must read the instructions
we must read the instructions
but there are no instructions
I believe there are no instructions.
Vivienne Plumb
from Avalanche, Pemmican Press, 2000
The Icicles
Every morning I congratulate
the icicles on their severity.
I think they have courage, backbone,
their hard hearts will never give way.
Then around ten or half past,
hearing the steady falling drops of water
I look up at the eaves. I see
the enactment of the same old winter story
– the icicles weeping away their inborn tears,
and if only they knew it, their identity.
Janet Frame
from The Goose Bath: Poems, eds. Pamela Gordon, Denis Harold, Bill Manhire, Vintage, Random House, 2006, picked Hebe Kearney
You can hear Janet Frame read ‘The Icicles’ here
At Home in Antarctica
In this place, silence has a voice
wide-ranging as the continent.
Some say it’s on the cusp
of madness, the way it hums
and stutters, mutters to itself
in quietest tones.
In this place, the universe brims.
Inside absence, presence.
Inside distance, dust
and our sleeping earth
dreaming beneath her thin blue
mask of ice.
In this place, the necessity
of memory, recollections
of a loved one’s face, shape
of laughter, weight of breath.
In this place, nostalgia
roams patient as slow
hands on skin transparent
as melt-water. Nights are light
and long. Shadows settle
on the shoulders of air.
Time steps out of line
here stops to thaw
the frozen hearts of icebergs.
Sleep isn’t always easy in this place
where the sun stays up all night
and silence has a voice.
Claire Beynon
from Open Book – Poetry & Images (Steele Roberts, 2007).
Suggested by Jenny Powell. The poem has also been a prompt for various musical compositions, including a piece Antarctikos by US composer, Jabez Co (2010) and The Journey Home (2012) for soprano, tenor, baritone, choir and orchestra by NZ composer John Drummond.
Visiting Rita at Sydney Street West
Wellington rains in a cross-hatch tantrum.
Wind blasts batter everyone backwards.
Lost in a volley of ‘after the hill second street right
follow your nose’ I have taken the wrong hill,
veering left with an eye on the clock.
Landmarks stream down my spectacles,
couplets of directions waterfall out of my head.
Lost in a valley of paper map ink-splash,
folds between us disintegrate. In the if-only world
my fingers wrap a hot cup of tea, my coat dries by your heater.
Sticks torn from moorings shoot down white-water gutters.
Wind race of paper packets eddies in high-speed gusts.
I am lost in solitary panic.
An onslaught of sleet freezes my face.
Jenny Powell
from Meeting Rita (forthcoming June, Cold Hub Press)
Angela Andrews lives in Auckland with her family. Her PhD in Creative Writing at Victoria University examined the relationship between medicine and poetry. She has previously worked as a doctor.
Claire Beynon is a Dunedin-based artist, writer and independent researcher. She works collaboratively on a diverse range of on- and off-line projects with fellow artists, writers, scientists and musicians in NZ and abroad. These group activities are buoyed and balanced by the contemplative rhythms of her solo practice. Websites here and here.
Modi Deng is a postgraduate candidate in piano performance at the Royal Academy of Music on scholarship. Currently based in London, Modi received a MMus (First Class Honours, Marsden research scholarship) and a BA from Auckland University. Her first chapbook-length collection of poetry will be part of AUP New Poets 8. Her poems have also appeared in A Clear Dawn (AUP), Starling, the Stay Home Zine (Bitter Melon Press), and on NZ Poetry Shelf for National Poetry Day. She cares deeply about literature (especially poetry, diaspora), music, psychology, and her family.
Janet Frame (1924 – 2004), born in Dunedin, was the author of thirteen novels, five story collections, two volumes of poetry, a children’s book and a three-volume autobiography. She won numerous awards including the New Zealand Book Award for poetry, fiction and non-fiction titles, and the New Zealand Scholarship in Letters. She received New Zealand’s highest civil honour in 1990 when she became a Member of the Order of New Zealand. She was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2003 and was named an Arts Foundation Icon Artist in 2004.
Alison Glenny’s collection of prose poems The Farewell Tourist, was published by Otago University Press in 2018. A chapbook, Bird Collector, is being published by Compound Press in 2021. She lives on the Kāpiti Coast.
Helen Lehndorf’s book, The Comforter, made the New Zealand Listener’s ‘Best 100 Books of 2012′ list. Her second book, Write to the Centre, is a nonfiction book about the practice of keeping a journal. She writes poetry and non-fiction, and has been published in Sport, Landfall, JAAM, and many other publications and anthologies. Recently, she co-created an performance piece The 4410 to the 4412 for the Papaoiea Festival of the Arts with fellow Manawatū writers Maroly Krasner and Charlie Pearson. A conversation between the artists and Pip Adam can be heard on the Better Off Read podcast here
Bill Manhire founded the creative writing programme at Victoria University of Wellington, which a little over 20 years ago became the International Institute of Modern Letters. His new book Wow is published by Victoria University Press in New Zealand and Carcanet in the UK.
Vivienne Plumb writes poetry, short and long fiction, drama, and creative non-fiction. She held the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writing Residency in 2018, and has held several other writing residencies (both in N.Z. and overseas), and has been awarded the Hubert Church Prose Award and the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award, amongst others. Her work has been widely anthologised. A new chapbook of her poems will be released in July, 2021.
Jenny Powell is a Dunedin poet and performer. Her work has been part of various journals and collaborations. Her next collection, Meeting Rita, is inspired by the artist Rita Angus, and is due from Cold Hub Press in June 2021.
Nina Mingya Powles is a poet and zinemaker from Wellington, currently living in London. She is the author of Magnolia 木蘭, (a finalist in the Ockham Book Awards and the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2021), a food memoir, Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai, and several poetry chapbooks and zines. Her debut essay collection, Small Bodies of Water, will be published in September 2021.
Reihana Robinson is a writer, artist and farmer living in the wilderness of the Coromandel. She has written two collections, Aue Rona and Her Limitless Her, has had work published in Aotearoa, Australia, France and USA. She is a contributor to the Dante-themed anthology More Favourable Waters and the just published Ora Nui Māori Literary Journal New Zealand and Taiwan Special Edition.
Ruby Solly (Kāi Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe) is a writer, musician and taonga pūoro practitioner living in Pōneke. She has been published in journals such as Landfall, Starling and Sport, among others. In 2020 she released her debut album, Pōneke, which looks at the soundscapes of Wellington’s past, present and future through the use of taonga pūoro, cello, and environmental sounds. She is currently completing a PhD in public health, focusing on the use of taonga pūoro in hauora Māori. Tōku Pāpā, published in February 2021, is her first book.
Ten poems about clouds
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Sophia Wilson shortlisted for the FPM-Hippocrates Health Professional Poetry Prize
New Zealand poet Sophia Wilson has been shortlisted in one of the categories of the FPM-Hippocrates Poetry Prizes (The Health Professional Prize).
Poets from 37 countries have entered for the 2021 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. With an awards fund of £5500, this is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single unpublished poem.
The judges – from New York, London and Delhi – have agreed a shortlist of 4 poets for the top places in the 2021 FPM-Hippocrates international Open Awards and a shortlist of 6 poets for the top places in the 2020 FPM-Hippocrates Health Professional Awards.
The 2021 Hippocrates Prize is supported by medical charity the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine and healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust.
Winners will be announced by live webcast from 8.30pm UK time on Wednesday 19th May.
Click here to register free for the awards session.
Click here for details of all the shortlisted and commended poets.
The International Hippocrates Prize is awarded in three categories:
– a £1000 first prize, £500 second prize and £250 third prize in the FPM-Hippocrates Open category, which anyone in the world may enter. There are a further ~20 commendations in the Open category
– a £1000 first prize, £500 second prize and £250 third prize in the FPM-Hippocrates Health Professional category, which is open to Health Service employees, health students and those working in professional organisations anywhere in the world involved in education and training of health professional students and staff. There are a further ~20 commendations in the Health Professional category
– a £500 award for the Hippocrates Young Poets Prize for an unpublished poem in English on a medical theme. Entries are open to young poets from anywhere in the world aged 14 to 18 years. There are further commendations in the Young Poets category. There is no entry fee for the Young Poets prize.
More details here
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Claudia Jardine in conversation and playing new songs @rdu985fm
Listen here
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Nina Mingya Powles makes the RSL Ondaatje Prize Shortlist
RSL Ondaatje Prize
RSL Ondaatje Prize Shortlist
The annual award of £10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place.
RSL Ondaatje Prize 2021 – The Shortlist
We are excited to announce the shortlist for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2021.
Ruth Gilligan The Butchers (Atlantic Books)
Louise Hare This Lovely City (HQ)
Adam Mars-Jones Box Hill (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Nina Mingya Powles Magnolia, 木蘭 (Nine Arches Press)
James Rebanks English Pastoral (Allen Lane)
More details here
NZ Poetry Shelf 