Poetry Shelf offers a five links for you over the long weekend.
First up Michelle Elvy’s Monday poem: ‘Memory is a feather’
Secondly Manjit Grewal’spoem in Poetry Shelf Speaking Out To For With. Food inequality is ia key thread: ‘Saturday Morning at St Peter’s‘
Thirdly Nina Mingya Piowles Katherine Mansfield poem in The Breathing Room: ‘Katherine Mansfield Park‘
Fourthly, Elizabeth Smither and I in conversation to celebrate her new collection, The Interview Rose (AUP).
Fifthly, and quite wonderfully, Poetry Shelf toasts Te Marama Puoro o Aotearoa | NZ Music Month 2026 with 23 poems. My first ever open invitation to submit a poem. And I loved doing it so much I might very well do another one!
Please note our post shop is closing so I am in the process of getting a new post box at a different venue.
Do send me poetry news.
Your support of poetry this week has been extraordinary. Let’s continue to connect, challenge, console, delight in the uplift and sidetracks and over bridges and fertile clearings of what poetry can do and be.
The Interview Rose, Elizabeth Smither Auckland University Press, 2026
I have been a long fan of the poetry of Elizabeth Smither. Her new collection, The Interview Rose, is a work of beauty and heart nourishment. It is a book of unfoldings, it’s prismatic multilayered poetry offering lily launchpads to moments of awe and surprise. I found myself reading and rereading particular lines. Embracing deeply the music of the everyday alongside the music of the imagined and the witnessed. Family matters. Other writers matter. Reading matters. The domestic matters. The sheer inspirational delight in how words nestle together in a line of poetry matters.
To celebrate Elizabeth’s new book is a vital uplift.
Mark Doty: a footnote
Walking between venues in Aldeburgh to attend the next reading or panel a boy kicks a football in Mark Doty’s path.
Just a poet walking, one of those removed from the world, a floater, but look he has scooped up the ball
on the curve of his foot, cradles it like a bird fallen from a tree, rolls it up to chest height
then over his shoulder, his other foot hooks to kick it back to two astonished boys. A poet
who could play for Chelsea or Real Madrid, earn a fee greater than any poet, but greatest of all the way
he goes on chatting to the other poets, =his head lowered, as modestly he sets the world back in place.
Elizabeth Smither from The Interview Rose
A conversation
Magic in our collaboration. Woman and frog, a distant pond reached by plodding and breathing and by companionableness.
from ‘The frog’
Paula: The opening poem, ‘The frog’, epitomises the experience of reading your beautiful new collection of poems. As the frog hops from steps to pond, on each step he pauses. As I read, I too am propelled by stillness and movement. Pause and contemplation. Slow reading steps and discoveries. I also love the rhythm of the arrangement of poems. Tell me about your rhythms of writing.
Elizabeth: What a dear creature: a very large frog and my big feet treading on each step as he exits. A feeling of privilege; I didn’t think he was frightened of me and I noticed his skin was kept damp by a drizzling rain. Boldness on his side, rhythm and timing on mine, in case I stepped too soon. Eventually the steps ended and he was on the grass and heading towards a pond. The lovely order is the work of Elizabeth Caffin; I can see the internal order while I write; she knows to put the frog first.
Paula: Your observation of the physical world is another delight, an uplift, a snapshot of the beauty of the moment. Is there in your daily movement, as if there in your writing?
Elizabeth: I’ve always taken to heart Colette’s last words as she was turning the pages of a book of butterfly images: ‘Regarde, regarde’ (in a rolling Burgundian accent). To look is everything. The idea of a subject is very unfashionable but I agree with Carol Ann Duffy: ‘the subject of a poem is what the poet sees, hears, thinks about, is moved by’. She also said ‘I regard poetry as a vocation. Any other work – freelance or bank manager – simply supports the person writing it’.
Paula: I also love the sway between the said and the unsaid. How important is silence and the unspoken as you write?
Elizabeth: Recently I’ve been writing a kind of journal based on quotations. One of them comes from May Sarton’s ‘The Single Hound’. Tout lasse, toutcasse, tout passe. Everything passes, everything breaks, everything tires. It’s lovely when you speak it. There is an ending, not quoted so much: et tout seremplace. And everything is replaced. It’s not a defeat but an allowance of decline and fall, the said and the unsaid, rather like an incoming and outgoing tide. Or it could be like a poetry reading: the preparation, the stumbling over a word, or going too fast, and later conducting a critical analysis of the event. And then lasse, casse, passe come in and reason is restored.
Paula: I love that! The incoming and outgoing tide of both reading and writing. Some poetry collections are steeped in pain and darkness but for me your collection is a trove of pleasure. Take ‘De-stringing beans’ for example. This sublime poem carries me from the contentment of peeling beans for her sons to clambering, underrated garden beans to the contentment of art viewing, the woman pouring from a jug in particular. Was writing it a source of pleasure for you?
Elizabeth: I think it was a sense of speed, though contemplation can lie at the heart of it. I’m always trying to get something down. In the case of the beans perhaps I am imagining a formidable Italian nonna whose life skill is making tortellini for her family. Like the nonna my mind wanders as the mountain of beans goes down and I am thinking how shall I allot them and what is the calming image inside the chore?
Paula: I adore the exquisite startle moments, little arrivals of surprise. For example ‘Mark Doty; a footnote’, where the poet deftly hooks a football back to the young boys in the street while he chats to the other poets, “his head lowered, as modestly he sets the world back in place”. Do you surprise yourself as you write and read?
Elizabeth: I feel really proud of Mark Doty. I think the key word is ‘a floater’ which is meant to be contemptuous, a negative view of poets. But here he is playing like Cristiano Ronaldo but doing it with nonchalance, talking and walking and returning the ball but first having a little dialogue, a demonstration with it; it wraps itself around him like a scarf. I imagined the boy saying ‘Shit!’ not realising Mark Doty is a poet and a deservedly famous one. I am the one who is surprised and thrilled. A poet ambassador.
Paula: A number of poems are dedicated to writer friends. Various writers make an appearance. Other companions make appearances. The frog in the opening poem! The cat sitting on Wittgenstein quotes. Jane Austen’s Emma. It got me musing on how writing is for me an act of connection. Does that idea work for you?
Elizabeth: Yes, I love the idea of companionship, for writers dead or alive. I loved in the Emma poem that mentions Robert Gottleib that he hated semi-colons and would squash any he encountered; that he would read mss late into the night, sympathising with authors who would be on tenterhooks. And friends. I have decided to keep all their names in my address book since they still seem alive in my mind.
Paula: Can you pick a handful of words that epitomise how writing poetry matters to you? That are the key in the creation of a poem?
Elizabeth: I think if I were put in a cell I would pretend I hated books in the hope that a jailer would bring armfuls for me to read. And I would write childishly as if I had never been to school. But if I were unsupervised I would write like a speeding angel and hide the pages under a mattress.
The words: quick (the opposite of dead) and bright (Keats’s ‘Bright Star) merry (unless some dreaded seriousness is required). There’s a cardinal called Merry del Val whom I like very much.
Paula: And can you choose a poem that is particularly significant for you?
Elizabeth: I’d choose Wallace Stevens, ‘Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour’ with its lovely last stanza:
‘Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air. In which being together is enough’.
Paula: Writing has been such a vital part of your time, a gift for us as readers. What else offers uplift and nourishment? I do think readers will discover answers to this across this charismatic collection.
Elizabeth: I think work, even of the slogging kind, should not be underestimated. And thinking, turning things over for new angles and insights, being active and sometimes being fallow like one of those marvellous 18th century fallow fields.
Paula: What a pleasure Elizabeth to spend time with your collection, to reflect upon how reading and writing poetry matters so very much. How angles and insights can refresh the contours of our days. I feel poem enriched. Thank you.
Elizabeth Smither has written six novels, six collections of short stories and nineteen poetry collections. She has twice won the major award for New Zealand poetry and was the 2001–2003 Te Mata Poet Laureate. In 2004, she was awarded an honorary LittD from the University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau for her contribution to literature and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. She received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2008. Her book, Night Horse (Auckland University Press, 2017), won the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry.
Paula Green, from Cookhouse, Auckland University Press, 1997
My theme-season introductions seem like miniature self confessions on life and poetry. Crikey! I always have much to say about food and poetry because I love cooking and I love writing. My first book Cookhouse got scathing reviews either for being too domestic or forbeing too experimental. I walked around the supermarket on a Sunday morning reading the first review of my first book saying OMG OMG OMG. It was my first lesson as a writer: leave reviews with the person who wrote them. Just get on with what you love. A few weeks later I opened the Listener and there was a photograph of Cookhouse on the recipe page with a Marcella Hazan cookbook ( I loved her recipes!). Plus one of my poems, sitting on the page like a recipe. That was my second lesson as a writer. Your books and poetry find their way into surprising places and you will never know how your poetry touches people. Although sometimes you get an inkling: a stranger might walk up to you, or send an email or a card, and surprise you (in a good way!).
I can’t keep food out of my poetry and I am equally drawn to writers with similar intent. It is one reason I am such a fan of Nina Mingya Powle’s poetry. Her poems lead in multiple directions but the sensual hooks are often sparked by food. Ian Wedde is the same. I adore The Commonplace Odes. It has always mattered what food I put in my body, and it is a bit the same with with poetry. I want to cook a meal that tastes good and I want poetry that satisfies my reading tastebuds whether I am writing or reviewing. In fact don’t call me a reviewer please. And I am not actually very kind. I simply love reading poetry and sharing my engagements. Just as I love cooking a meal every night for my family.
The poems selected are not so much about food but revel in a presence of food to varying degrees. Grateful thanks to the publishers and poets who continue to support my season of themes.
The Poems
De-stringing beans
A mountain of runner beans
to top and tail and de-string.
She decides to do it for them: her sons
so they will be eaten this evening
sliced into green splinters
with pink seeds showing through.
Easier to sit than stand. Her best profile
towards the door when her son appears.
She wants to disguise how content she is.
The stringy edges, tops and tails, in a dish
the beans growing, like a mountain of shoes
later to be wrapped in tinfoil
roughly divided into two.
No one else in the family will eat them.
In an article it says they are underrated
almost despised as a vegetable
underestimated on two counts
or three: first the vigorous way
they climb, clamber to the sun
second they are rich in iron
and last and best: this contentment
so rarely found, except in
a painting of a woman pouring from a jug
someone bathing someone in a tub
this mountainous-seeming task
calming with each stroke of the knife.
Elizabeth Smither
little walnuts
served from across the seas
in a tin or a jar, fished from suitcases
presented
with grandmotherly dimples
little walnuts – xiao he tao
proudly, good for brain.
except neurons are firing
in staccato, half-
forgotten Mandarin.
they manage xie xie and dutifully
I eat them.
I forget why I ask for these –
the carnage of shells
scraps of brown meat
and a strange invasion staged
on my tongue – slow
and clumsy muscle.
I am quick to rise – you do not get to comment on what’s in my lunch box –
but just as quick to pick
the yolks of my too-dry lotus mooncakes –
discarded suns
of a world in hieroglyphs.
and when I have counted
waves of sleep – yi, er, san –
I don’t dream in the same vowels.
what can I bring back for you?
her smile like furls of steaming jasmine tea
amidst clamouring children
hawking their wants like roadside wares
or suitcase wheels clicking on concrete
destined for smog and skyscrapers.
I always ask for my little walnuts.
*Little walnut or xiao he tao is a particular kind of Chinese walnut with a distinct sweet-salty flavour.
Joy Tong
from A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, eds Paula Morris and Alison Wong, Auckland University Press, 2021
from A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, eds Paula Morris and Alison Wong, Auckland University Press, 2021
With Nectarines
to Claire Beynon
A cob loaf rests on a surface,
perhaps a table, an altar, a jetty,
that reaches over a shoreline toward dark water
and the approaching edge of night.
Out there an indigo quiet where the sky lowers to sea,
clouds shouldering weight of storm to come;
a hint of beach, airborne flicks of white,
where seabirds swoop for fish and scraps.
On this side of a sill,
the bread, and a bowl of tawny nectarines
occupy foreground that’s human with light,
with hearth-glow in the corner,
tended against incoming cold.
The bread is warm from the oven,
the fruit ripe, and the room that extends
from the canvas edge into my lived space
where the painting hangs, included as offering
to the sombre air,
to anyone who comes to this threshold, empty.
Carolyn McCurdie
Super Wine
The news is early or his clock is slow,
so he grabs his mug of tea and pops
a biscuit in his pocket,
the top pocket of a faded old coat.
It’s a wreck of a thing, this coat of his.
a shamefully limp and grubby article,
but he wears it through the news and Campbell Live
and on into the night,
and he wears it when he leaves his little flat
and slips up the lane and out into the park
and lights a cigarette
(his skinny nine-o’clocker
and the last of the day).
And he smells the smells of mown grass and woodsmoke,
and he walks across the park towards the lights,
the lights of the houses on the hill,
secular stars of silver and orange,
and he walks beneath the frosty stars themselves,
this unmarried, unmended man,
this unmarried, not-unhappy Earthling,
A Super Wine forgotten in his pocket.
Geoff Cochrane
from Pocket Edition, Victoria University Press, 2009
If you love me you’ll buy Bluff oysters and cook asparagus. Even though I don’t like either.
for Kirsten Holst, for feeding me many good things
and for Alison and Peter, for their Bluff oysters and asparagus
When I am no longer who I was
I can only hope that I will be loved by someone
so much that every day during Bluff oyster season
they will buy me a dozen Bluff oysters.
Even though they don’t like Bluff oysters
they will buy them for me
and every day I will exclaim
“I can’t even remember the last time I had Bluff oysters!”;
they will nod at the extreme length of time it has been.
When I am no longer who I was
and when Bluff oyster season is over
I can only hope that I will be loved by someone so much
they will cook me freshly picked asparagus every day.
Even though they don’t like asparagus
they will grow it for me and pick it for me
and lightly steam it
so that I can relish it served with hollandaise sauce
(although some days more lazily served with butter and lemon).
I will eat it with my fingers
and let the sauce (or butter) dribble down my chin;
no one will mind or tell me to be less messy
it will just be moments of edible joy.
In reality I don’t like Bluff oysters (or any oysters)
and I can’t stand asparagus (the taste and texture are disturbing);
I can only hope that maybe someone will love me enough
to buy and cook me the things that I love
even though they hate them, even though I won’t remember.
Paula Harris
the great pumpkin war
standing in the kitchen crying
beaten by a vegetable
thought by now it would be easier
people have suggested this (people i trust)
the myth of progress
you do something every day it gets easier
in reality each day the dirt accrues
it multiplies between cupboard doors
i am running out of resources
i am getting further & further into
the ten-year warranty on the fridge compressor
one day soon i will have to pick up the knife
& address the pumpkin in the room
bought so cheaply from the farmers’ market
now growing larger by the day
taking up all the bench space
i fear for the fruit bowl
my mother says to drop it from a height
she throws hers down the stone garden steps
my previous attempt resulted in
20 minutes lost to searching for an unscathed pumpkin
trying to break open a pumpkin at night
is like starting a winter war in russia
i am letting everything get out of control
i sleep knowing it is getting worse
i do not think i can win at this
i do not think i can carry on in any capacity
Rhys Feeney
from AUP New Poets 7, ed Anna Jackson, Auckland University Press, 2020
The Cheese Scone Recipe as Promised
What’s the secret, people ask,
why do your students return
year after year to your class?
Cheese scones, I say, crisp
on the outside, soft inside
like all good characters. First,
turn up the heat, 200 degrees
should do it. Next, sift two cups
of self-rising flour, holding the sieve
high, letting the flour fall like snow
in the air, then add a heaped half
teaspoon each of salt, mustard powder
and a good pinch of cayenne for a lick
of fire. Stir and rub in 30 grams
of butter. If in a hurry, as I usually am,
you can grate the butter or cheat
with the food processor,
but do not go all the way, stop
at the crumbly stage, add 75 grams
of grated cheese, then beat a large egg,
with about 75 mils of buttermilk,
(if you have none, add lemon juice to milk,
rest it for ten minutes). Breaking
the drought pour into the dry ingredients,
mixing first with a knife, then lightly
with your hands to bring the soft dough
together. If it seems too dry
add more buttermilk, but like
it’s a newborn and precious, go easy
with your handling, remembering
scones and poems need a light touch.
Cool hands, my mother said,
though mine have always been hot.
Roll the dough out in a rough circle,
not too thin, about 2.5 cm thick.
With students due any minute,
I usually take the lazy way, divide
it roughly into 8 triangles but you might
be wanting to impress your mother
or daughter-in-law, and have the time
and the aesthetic sense for fluted cutters.
Appearance improves the taste
so brush the tops with milk, sprinkle
on a little grated cheese, and a dusting
of cayenne. Bake on a high shelf
for about 15 minutes till golden
and irresistible. Making scones
is not dissimilar to crafting a poem,
you need to pay attention to detail,
measuring, mixing, letting in air,
but there the recipe ends.
What I haven’t talked of can not
like metaphor, be quantified, the secret is
to bring to the process, a little of you.
Diane Brown
the children open their
lunch boxes to each other
a ham sandwich
for a Fijian fried egg and three cassava sticks
a mini feta quiche
for a South Indian roti parcel stuffed
with cumin and okra
a tub of yogurt
for a Middle Eastern pouch of semolina
sautéed in ghee and cardomens
a celery stick
for a Tongan plantation ladyfinger banana
a juice box for
fresh Kiribati island toddy
the wooden decks approve
their slats on standby to suck evidence
of sharing and spit them into the crawl space
beneath the salivating joists
it’s the allergies
the adults
the food policies
and
the way fear feeds us all
Mere Taito
P r o p e r t i e s
You’ll need oil – For your forehead on Ash Wednesday, for the insides and outsides of your palms. For sore inner ears and lifeless hair. For removing the evil eye – that’s the most important. Though not one in the family knows the ritual, better to be with, than without.
Grapes and leaves – For your rice and pinenuts, for your grape jelly.
And ash – For the grape jelly – vine cinders to be precise. For holy crosses over the front doors of your houses or workplaces. For the bottoms of incense holders – hubris to clear it out.
Rose petals – For gravestones, but mostly for the preserve that fits into a spoon followed by icy water.
Water – From the priest, for drinking in the first month of the year and sprinkling in every room. For keeping in the fridge thereafter. For putting chamomile into – tea or warm compresses.
Garlic – For everything. For mashing up and applying with honey to sores. For rubbing on styes. For wrapping in bread and swallowing whole when feverish. For shooing away evil by saying the word alone – along with a spitting sound.
Vana Mansiadis
from Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima, Seraph Press, 2009
1.2 To the cookbook
Turning east, I drove towards blue grey
Mountains down which cloud crawled
From summits which were already sky. High in it
A glare like grubby porcelain told me that morning
Was advanced. The nibbled winter paddocks were over-
Written in a language no one had ever taught me:
Glottal, almost choking, wet. Lines
Of leafless shelter-belt enwrapped the shorter
Rows of berryfruit trellises in need
Of pruning. My destination: an art gallery.
My mission: to speak about art and poetry.
It was going to be all over before I got there.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, help me
In my hour of need, help me turn my back
on landscape that wants to be art, on poetry with feet
Of clay. The lovely world has everything I need,
It has my kids, my sweetheart, my friends, it has a new book
With mouth-watering risotto recipes in it,
The kind of plump rice you might have relished,
Horace, in the Sabine noon, yellowed with saffron.
‘The zen poet’ is another of you, he wrote a poem
About making stew in the desert which changed my life.
A good cookbook is as good as a book of poems
Any day, because it can’t be more pretentious
Than the produce you savour with friends as night falls.
Ian Wedde
from The Common Place Odes, Auckland University Press, 2001
Custard
When I was smaller than the family dog,
Dad would tell Mum
that he was taking me to kōhanga.
Then we’d go to the bakery
and get as many custard pies
as we could handle.
Park up by the river,
talk,
eat,
listen to the radio a while.
He’d light one up
as fat as the mighty brown trout,
captured and killed
and lull me to sleep
with a puku full of custard
in his red van
with all his windows up.
Now I am grown
and you ask me to explain something you said.
My eyes glaze
and all I can see is that
red van,
pastry flakes resting
in the corners of my sleeping mouth.
Ruby Solly
from Tōku Pāpā, Victoria University Press, 2021
The Poets
Diane Brown is a novelist, memoirist, and poet who runs Creative Writing Dunedin, teaching fiction, memoir and poetry. She is the Poetry Editor for ‘The Mix’ in the Otago Daily Times. Her latest book is a poetic novella, Every Now and Then I Have Another Child, Otago University Press 2020.
Geoff Cochrane is the author of 19 collections of poetry, mostly recently Chosen (2020), two novels, and Astonished Dice: Collected Short Stories (2014). In 2009 he was awarded the Janet Frame Prize for Poetry, in 2010 the inaugural Nigel Cox Unity Books Award, and in 2014 an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award.
Rhys Feeney is a high school teacher in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. You can buy Rhys’ debut collection, “soyboy,” as part of AUP New Poets 7
Paula Harris lives in Palmerston North, where she writes and sleeps in a lot, because that’s what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award. Her writing has been published in various journals, including The Sun, Hobart, Passages North, New Ohio Review and Aotearotica. She is extremely fond of dark chocolate, shoes and hoarding fabric. website: www.paulaharris.co.nz | Twitter: @paulaoffkilter | Instagram: @paulaharris_poet | Facebook: @paulaharrispoet]
Vana Manasiadis is Greek-New Zealand poet and translator born in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and based in Tāmaki Makaurau after many years living in Kirihi Greece. She is 2021 Ursula Bethell Writer-in-Residence at Te Whare Wanaga o Waitaha Canterbury University. Her most recent book was The Grief Almanac: A Sequel.
Carolyn McCurdie is a Dunedin writer, mostly of poetry and fiction. Her poetry collection ‘Bones in the Octagon’ was published by Makaro Press in 2015.
Neema Singh is a poet from Christchurch of Gujarati Indian descent. Her work appears in Ko Aotearoa Tātou: We Are New Zealand(2020) and A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (2021) and she is currently working on her first collection of poetry, a series of poems unfolding the layers of culture, identity and history contained within ordinary moments. Neema is an experienced secondary school English teacher and holds a Master of Creative Writing from The University of Auckland.
Elizabeth Smither ‘s new collection of stories: ‘The Piano Girls’ will be published in May by Quentin Wilson Publishing.
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 Februrary 2021, is her first book.
Mere Taito is a poet living and working in Kirikiriroa.She is interested in the way poetry can be used to revitalise minority Indigenous languages like Fäeag Rotuạm ta.
Joy Tong picks wildflowers from neighbours’ fences, pets strangers’ dogs and chases stories in the streets. She’s a student, musician and writer from Tāmaki Makaurau and her other works can be found in Landfall, Mayhem and Starling, as well as A Clear Dawn, an anthology for NZ-Asian voices.
Ian Wedde was born in Blenheim, New Zealand, in 1946. He lives with his wife Donna Malane in Auckland. ‘To the cookbook’ is from a sequence called The Commonplace Odes, published as a book by Auckland University Press in 2001. He was New Zealand Poet Laureate in 2011.
‘The writing is euphonious, restrained and utterly revealing. Each character is scripted in chiaroscuro, the light and dark flickering as the women come into mesmerising view. Smither is one of my much-admired literary elders; I salute her ability to make narrative humane and to make me feel the world.’
If you’ve ever been aboard Cutty Sark at Greenwich your head will be full of
legends. The figurehead of Nannie, the witch, clutching the tail of a horse in
her fist; The fabulous races with its rival tea clipper, Thermopylae; the romance
of sail before the advent of steam. Kendrick Smithyman has captured all this
and more in his wonderful poem. It begins with the facts: location, doldrums,
number of ships becalmed. Then the manifestation, like an opera star, a
ballerina assoluta. Cutty Sark appears and those lovely nautical terms: ‘carrying
canvas’, ‘hull down, northing’; the other ships might as well be derelict; Cutty
Sark cuts right through them. The last stanza, the longest, turns to the mystery
of poetry, the sighting which not everyone sees, the thing ‘not to be described’
that strikes dumb anyone who is looking or hearing, something that is moving
away as fast as Cutty Sark.
Elizabeth Smither
Elizabeth Smither, an award-wi9nning poet and fiction writer, has published eighteen collections of poetry, six novels and five short-story collections, as well as journals, essays, criticism. She was the Te Mata Poet Laureate (2001–03), was awarded an Hon D Litt from the University of Auckland and made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2004, and was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2008. She was also awarded the 2014 Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature and the 2016 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection of poems, Night Horse (Auckland University Press, 2017), won the Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry in 2018.
A Readers and Writers evnet with the New Zealand Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh, who performed her epic “The Queen’s Sequence”, inspired by her meeting Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 and other queens. After the interval fellow poets Tusiata Avia, Serie Barford and former Laureate Jenny Bornholdt who shared selected readings, with poet Paula Green as chair. Tusiata Avia.
A Readers and Writers evnet with the New Zealand Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh, who performed her epic “The Queen’s Sequence”, inspired by her meeting Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 and other queens. After the interval fellow poets Tusiata Avia, Serie Barford and former Laureate Jenny Bornholdt who shared selected readings, with poet Paula Green as chair.Serie Barford.
A Readers and Writers evnet with the New Zealand Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh, who performed her epic “The Queen’s Sequence”, inspired by her meeting Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 and other queens. After the interval fellow poets Tusiata Avia, Serie Barford and former Laureate Jenny Bornholdt who shared selected readings, with poet Paula Green as chair. Jenny Bornholdt.
A Readers and Writers evnet with the New Zealand Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh, who performed her epic “The Queen’s Sequence”, inspired by her meeting Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 and other queens. After the interval fellow poets Tusiata Avia, Serie Barford and former Laureate Jenny Bornholdt who shared selected readings, with poet Paula Green as chair.
A Readers and Writers evnet with the New Zealand Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh, who performed her epic “The Queen’s Sequence”, inspired by her meeting Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 and other queens. After the interval fellow poets Tusiata Avia, Serie Barford and former Laureate Jenny Bornholdt who shared selected readings, with poet Paula Green as chair.
A Readers and Writers evnet with the New Zealand Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh, who performed her epic “The Queen’s Sequence”, inspired by her meeting Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 and other queens. After the interval fellow poets Tusiata Avia, Serie Barford and former Laureate Jenny Bornholdt who shared selected readings, with poet Paula Green as chair.
Brendan O’Brien and Hannah Mettner in the Turnbull Gallery.
m y h i g h l i g h t s
I have had endless opportunities to transform the days and nights of 2018 with poetry musings. What good is poetry? Why write it? Why read it? Because it energises. Because it connects with the world on the other side of these hills and bush views. Because it gives me goose bumps and it makes me feel and think things.
I am fascinated by the things that stick – the readings I replay in my head – the books I finish and then read again within a week – the breathtaking poem I can’t let go. So much more than I write of here!
I have also invited some of the poets I mention to share their highlights.
2018: my year of poetry highlights
I kicked started an audio spot on my blog with Chris Tse reading a poem and it meant fans all round the country could hear how good he is. Like wow! Will keep this feature going in 2019.
Wellington Readers and Writers week was a definite highlight – and, amidst all the local and international stars, my standout session featured a bunch of Starling poets. The breathtaking performances of Tayi Tibble and essa may ranapiri made me jump off my seat like a fan girl. I got to post esssa’s poem on the blog.
To get to do an email conversation with Tayi after reading Poūkahangatus (VUP) – her stunning debut collection – was an absolute treat. I recently reread our interview and was again invigorated by her poetry engagements, the way she brings her whanau close, her poetry confidence, her fragilities, her song. I love love love her poetry.
My second standout event was the launch of tātai whetū edited by Maraea Rakuraku and Vana Manasiadis and published by Seraph Press. Lots of the women read with their translators. The room overflowed with warmth, aroha and poetry.
At the same festival I got to MC Selina Tusitala Marsh and friends at the National Library and witness her poetry charisma. Our Poet Laureate electrifies a room with poems (and countless other venues!), and I am in awe of the way she sparks poetry in so many people in so many places.
I also went to my double poetry launch of the year. Chris Tse’sHe’s So MASC(AUP) – the book moved and delighted me to bits and I was inspired to do an email conversation with him for Poetry Shelf. He was so genius in his response. Anna Jackson’sPasture and Flock: New and Selected Poems (AUP) delivers the quirkiest, unexpected, physical, cerebral poetry around. The book inspired another email conversation for the blog.
Tusiata Avia exploded my heart at her event with her cousin Victor Rodger; she read her challenging Unity and astonishing epileptic poems. Such contagious strength amidst such fragility my nerve endings were hot-wired (can that be done?). In a session I chaired on capital cities and poets, Bill Manhire read and spoke with such grace and wit the subject lit up. Capital city connections were made.
When Sam Duckor-Jones’s debut collection People from the Pit Stand Up(VUP) arrived, both the title and cover took me to the couch to start reading until I finished. All else was put on hold. I adore this book with its mystery and revelations, its lyricism and sinew; and doing a snail-paced email conversation was an utter pleasure.
I have long been a fan of Sue Wootton’s poetry with its sumptuous treats for the ear. So I was delighted to see The Yield (OUP) shortlisted for the 2018 NZ Book Awards. This is a book that sticks. I was equally delighted to see Elizabeth Smither win with her Night Horses (AUP) because her collection features poems I just can’t get out of my head. I carry her voice with me, having heard her read the poems at a Circle of Laureates event. I also lovedHannah Mettner’sFully Clothed and So Forgetful (VUP), a debut that won best first Book. How this books sings with freshness and daring and originality.
I did a ‘Jane Arthur has won the Sarah Broom Poetry Award and Eileen Meyers picked her’ dance in my kitchen and then did an anxious flop when I found Eileen couldn’t make the festival. But listening to Jane read before I announced the winner I felt she had lifted me off the ground her poems were so good. I was on stage and people were watching.
Alison Glenny won the Kathleen Grattan Award and Otago University Press published The Farewell Tourist, her winning collection. We had a terrific email conversation. This book has taken up permanent residence in my head because I can’t stop thinking about the silent patches, the mystery, the musicality, the luminous lines, the Antarctica, the people, the losses, the love. And the way writing poetry can still be both fresh and vital. How can poetry be so good?!
I went to the HoopLA book launch at the Women’s Bookshop and got to hear three tastes from three fabulous new collections: Jo Thorpe’sThis Thin Now, Elizabeth Welsh’sOver There a Mountain and Reihana Robinson’sHer limitless Her. Before they began, I started reading Reihana’s book and the mother poems at the start fizzed in my heart. I guess it’s a combination of how a good a poem is and what you are feeling on the day and what you experienced at some point in the past. Utter magic. Have now read all three and I adore them.
At Going West I got to chair Helen Heath, Chris Tse and Anna Jackson (oh like a dream team) for the Wellington and poetry session. I had the anxiety flowing (on linking city and poet again) but forgot all that as I became entranced by their poems and responses. Such generosity in sharing themselves in public – it not only opened up poetry writing but also the complicated knottiness of being human. Might sound corny but there you go. Felt special.
Helen Heath’s new collection Are Friends Eectric? (VUP) was another book that blew me apart with its angles and smoothness and provocations. We conversed earlier this year by email.
A new poetry book by former Poet Laureate Cilla McQueen is always an occasion to celebrate. Otago University Press have released Poeta: Selected and new poems this year. It is a beautiful edition curated with love and shows off the joys of Cilla’s poetry perfectly.
Two anthologies to treasure: because I love short poems Jenny Bornholdt’s gorgeous anthology Short Poems of New Zealand. And Steve Braunias’s The Friday Poem because he showcases an eclectic range of local of poets like no other anthology I know. I will miss him making his picks on Fridays (good news though Ashleigh Young is taking over that role).
Highlights from some poets
Sam Duckor-Jones
I spent six weeks reading & writing poems with the students of Eketahuna School. They were divided on the merits of James Brown’s Come On Lance. It sparked a number of discussions & became a sort of touchstone. Students shared the poems they’d written & gave feedback: it’s better than Come On Lance, or, it’s not as good as Come On Lance, or, shades of Come On Lance. Then someone would ask to hear Come On Lance again & half the room would cheer & half the room would groan. Thanks James Brown for Come On Lance.
Hannah Mettner
My fave poetry thing all year has been the beautiful Heartache Festival that Hana Pera Aoake and Ali Burns put on at the start of the year! Spread over an afternoon and evening, across two Wellington homes, with readings and music and so much care and aroha. I wish all ‘literary festivals’ had such an atmosphere of openness and vulnerability!
Jane Arthur
Poetry-related things made up a lot of my highlights this year. I mean, obviously, winning the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize was … pretty up there. I’m still, like, “Me?! Whaaaat!” about it. I discovered two things after the win. First, that it’s possible to oscillate between happy confidence and painful imposter syndrome from one minute to the next. And second, that the constant state of sleep deprivation brought on by having a baby is actually strangely good for writing poetry. It puts me into that semi-dream-brain state that helps me see the extra-weirdness in everything. I wrote almost a whole collection’s worth of poems (VUP, 2020) in the second half of the year, thanks broken sleep!
A recent highlight for me was an event at Wellington’s LitCrawl: a conversation between US-based poet Kaveh Akbar and Kim Hill. I’m still processing all its gems – hopefully a recording will show up soon. Another was commissioning Courtney Sina Meredith to write something (“anything,” I said) for NZ Poetry Day for The Sapling, and getting back a moving reminder of the importance of everyone’s stories
This year I read more poetry than I have in ages, and whenever I enjoyed a book I declared it my favourite (I always do this). However, three local books have especially stayed with me and I will re-read them over summer: the debuts by Tayi Tibble and Sam Duckor-Jones, and the new Alice Miller. Looking ahead, I can’t wait for a couple of 2019 releases: the debut collections by essa may ranapiri and Sugar Magnolia Wilson.
Elizabeth Smither
Having Cilla McQueen roll and light me a cigarette outside the Blyth
Performing Arts Centre in Havelock North after the poets laureate
Poemlines: Coming Home reading (20.10.2018) and then smoking together,
cigarettes in one hand and tokotoko in the other. Then, with the relief that
comes after a reading, throwing the cigarette down into a bed of pebbles, hoping
the building doesn’t catch on fire.
Selina Tusitala Marsh
To perform my ‘Guys Like Gauguin’ sequence (from Fast Talking PI) in Tahiti at the Salon du Livre, between an ancient Banyan Tree and a fruiting Mango tree, while a French translator performs alongside me and Tahitians laugh their guts out!
Thanks Bougainville
For desiring ‘em young
So guys like Gauguin
Could dream and dream
Then take his syphilitic body
Downstream…
Chris Tse
This year I’ve been lucky enough to read my work in some incredible settings, from the stately dining room at Featherston’s Royal Hotel, to a church-turned-designer-clothing-store in Melbourne’s CBD. But the most memorable reading I’ve done this year was with fellow Kiwis Holly Hunter, Morgan Bach and Nina Powles in a nondescript room at The Poetry Cafe in London, which the three of them currently call home. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday that day, but we still managed to coax people into a dark windowless room to listen to some New Zealand poetry for a couple of hours. This is a poetry moment I will treasure for many years to come.
Sue Wootton
I’ve had the pleasure of hearing and reading plenty of poems by plenty of poets this year. But far and away the most rejuvenating poetry experience for me during 2018 was working with the children at Karitane School, a small primary school on the East Otago coast. I’m always blown away by what happens when kids embark on the poetry journey. Not only is the exploration itself loads of fun, but once they discover for themselves the enormous potentiality in language – it’s just go! As they themselves wrote: “Plant the seeds and grow ideas / an idea tree! Sprouting questions … / Bloom the inventions / Fireworks of words …” So I tip my cap to these young poets, in awe of what they’ve already made and intrigued to find out what they’ll make next.
Cilla McQueen
1
25.11.18
Found on the beach – is it a fossil?
jawbone? hunk of coral? No – it’s a wrecked,
fire-blackened fragment of Janola bottle,
its contorted plastic colonised by weeds
and sandy encrustations, printed instructions
still visible here and there, pale blue.
Growing inside the intact neck, poking out
like a pearly beak, a baby oyster.
2
Living in Bluff for twenty-two years now, I’ve sometimes felt out on a limb, in the tree of New Zealand poetry. I appreciate the journey my visitors undertake to reach me. A reluctant traveller myself, a special poetry moment for me was spent with Elizabeth Smither and Bill and Marion Manhire at Malo restaurant, in Havelock North. Old friends from way back – I haven’t seen them often but poetry and art have always connected us
Tayi Tibble
In September, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend The Rosario International Poetry Festival in Argentina. It was poetic and romantic; late night dinners in high rise restaurants, bottles of dark wine served up like water, extremely flowery and elaborate cat-calling (Madam, you are a candy!) and of course sexy spanish poetry and sexy poets.
On our last night, Marcela, Eileen and I broke off and went to have dinner at probably what is the only Queer vegan hipster restaurant/boutique lingerie store/experimental dj venue in the whole of Argentina, if not the world. Literally. We couldn’t find a vegetable anywhere else. We went there, because Eileen had beef with the chef at the last place and also we had too much actual beef generally, but I digress.
So anyway there we are eating a vegan pizza and platter food, chatting. I accidentally say the C word like the dumbass crass kiwi that I am forgetting that it’s like, properly offensive to Americans. Eileen says they need to take a photo of this place because it’s camp af. I suggest that Marcela and I kiss for the photo to gay it up because I’m a Libra and I’m lowkey flirting for my life because it’s very hot and I’ve basically been on a red-wine buzz for five days. Eileen gets a text from Diana, one of the festival organisers telling them they are due to read in 10 minutes. We are shocked because the male latin poets tend to read for up to 2584656 times their allocated time slots, so we thought we had plenty of time to like, chill and eat vegan. Nonetheless poetry calls, so we have to dip real quick, but when we step outside, despite it being like 1546845 degrees the sky opens up and it’s pouring down. Thunder. Lightening. A full on tropical South American storm!
It’s too perfect it’s surreal. Running through the rain in South America. Marcella and I following Eileen like two hot wet groupies. Telling each other, “no you look pretty.” Feeling kind of primal. Throwing our wet dark curls around. The three of us agree that this is lowkey highkey very sexy. Cinematic and climatic. Eventually we hail a taxi because time is pressing. Though later that night, and by night I mean at like 4am, Marcella and I, very drunk and eating the rest of our Vegan pizza, confessed our shared disappointment that we couldn’t stay in the rain in Argentina… just for a little while longer….
We get to the venue and make a scene; just in time and looking like we’ve just been swimming. Eileen, soaking wet and therefore looking cooler than ever, reads her poem An American Poem while Marcella and I admire like fangirls with foggy glasses and starry eyes.
“And I am your president.” Eileen reads.
“You are! You are!” We both agree.
Alison Glenny
A poetry moment/reading. ‘The Body Electric’ session at this year’s Litcrawl was a celebration of queer and/or non-binary poets (Emma Barnes, Harold Coutts, Sam Duckor-Jones, essa may ranapiri, Ray Shipley ). Curated and introduced by poet Chris Tse (looking incredibly dapper in a sparkly jacket) it was an inspiring antidote to bullying, shame, and the pressure to conform.
A book. Not a book of poetry as such, but a book by a poet (and perhaps it’s time to be non-binary about genre as well as gender?). Reading Anne Kennedy’s The Ice Shelf I was struck by how unerringly it highlights the salient characteristics of this strange era we call the anthropocene: crisis and denial, waste and disappearance, exploitation, and the destruction caused by broken relationships and an absence of care.
A publishing event. Seraph Press published the lovely tātai whetū: seven Māori women poets in translation, with English and Te Reo versions of each poem on facing pages (and a sprinkling of additional stars on some pages). An invitation, as Karyn Parangatai writes in her similarly bilingual review of the book in Landfall Review online (another publishing first?) ‘to allow your tongue to tease the Māori words into life’.
Best writing advice received in 2018. ‘Follow the signifier’.
essa may ranapiri
There are so many poetry highlights for me this year, so many good books that have left me buzzing for the verse! First book I want to mention is Cody-Rose Clevidence’s second poetry collection flung Throne. It has pulled me back into a world of geological time and fractured identity.
Other books that have resonated are Sam Ducker-Jone’s People from the Pit Stand Up and Tayi Tibble’s Poūkahangatus, work from two amazingly talented writers and friends who I went through the IIML Masters course with. After pouring over their writing all year in the workshop environment seeing their writing in book form brought me to tears. So proud of them both!
Written out on a type-writer, A Bell Made of Stones by queer Chamorro poet, Lehua M. Taitano, explores space, in the world and on the page. They engage with narratives both indigenous and colonial critiquing the racist rhetoric and systems of the colonial nation state. It’s an incredible achievement, challenging in form and focus.
I’ve been (and continue to be) a part of some great collaborative poetry projects, a poetry collection; How It Colours Your Tongue with Loren Thomas and Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor, a poetry chapbook; Eater Be Eaten with Rebecca Hawkes, and a longform poetry zine; what r u w/ a broken heart? with Hana Pera Aoake. Working with these people has and continues to be a such a blessing!
I put together a zine of queer NZ poetry called Queer the Pitch. Next year I’m going to work to release a booklet of trans and gender diverse poets, I’m looking forward to working with more talented queer voices!
The most important NZ poetry book to be released this year, it would have to be tātai whetū. It was published as part of Seraph Press’s Translation Series. It features work from seven amazing wāhine poets; Anahera Gildea, Michelle Ngamoki, Tru Paraha, Kiri Piahana-Wong, Maraea Rakuraku, Dayle Takitimu and Alice Te Punga Somerville. These poems are all accompanied by te reo Māori translations of the work. I can only imagine that it would be a super humbling experience to have your work taken from English and returned to the language of the manu. By happenstance I was able to attend the launch of tātai whetū; to hear these pieces read in both languages was a truly special experience. It’s so important that we continue to strive to uplift Māori voices, new words brought forth from the whenua should be prized in our literary community, thanks to Seraph for providing such a special place for these poems. Ka rawe!
Anna Jackson
This has been a year of particularly memorable poetry moments for me, from the launch of Seraph Press’s bilingual anthology Tātai Whetū in March and dazzling readings by Mary Rainsford and Tim Overton at a Poetry Fringe Open Mike in April, to Litcrawl’s inspiring installation in November of essa may ranapiri and Rebecca Hawkes hard at work on their collaborative poetry collection in a little glass cage/alcove at the City Art Gallery. They hid behind a table but their creative energy was palpable even through the glass. I would also like to mention a poetry salon hosted by Christine Brooks, at which a dog-and-cheese incident of startling grace brilliantly put into play her theory about the relevance of improv theatre theory to poetry practice. Perhaps my happiest poetry moment of the year took place one evening when I was alone in the house and, having cooked an excellent dinner and drunken rather a few small glasses of shiraz, started leafing through an old anthology of English verse reading poems out loud to myself, the more the metre the better. But the poems I will always return to are poems I have loved on the page, and this year I have been returning especially to Sam Duckor-Jones’s People from the Pit Stand Up, while I look forward to seeing published Helen Rickerby’s breath-taking new collection, How to Live, that has already dazzled me in draft form.
I wrote a new poem. You’ll be amazed at what happened next.
Bill Manhire from ‘Thread’
Steve Braunias kickstarted his Friday poem at the Spinoff four years ago – which prompted me to shift my Friday poems to Mondays! Decided to begin the week with a poem in the ear and have since started an ongoing season of Thursday readings (I really like hearing other poets read, especially those I have never met). More importantly I also like the fact we have more than one online space dedicated to local poems. Steve tends to pick from new books which is great publicity for the poet. I tend to pick poems that have not yet been published in book form and find other ways to feature the new arrivals (interviews, reviews, popup poems on other days).
Steve’s anthology of picks from the Friday-Poem posts underlines our current passion for poetry. I don’t see him belonging to any one club (like a hub around a particular press or city) – unless he is inventing his own: Steve’s poetry club. And there is a big welcome mat out. You will find mainstream presses and boutique presses, established poets and hot-off-the-press brand new poets, a strong showing of Pasifika voices, outsiders, insiders. He is fired up by the charismatic lines of Hera Lindsay Bird and Tayi Tibble but he is equally swayed by the tones of Brian Turner, CK Stead, Elizabeth Smither, Fiona Kidman.
She cried wolf but she was the wolf
so she slit sad’s bellyskin
and stones of want rolled out.
Emma Neale from ‘Big Bad’
Who would he feature at a festival reading? At Unity Books on November 12th in Wellington he has picked: Dame Fiona Kidman, Bill Manhire, James Brown, Joy Holley, Tayi Tibble.
The anthology is worth buying for the introduction alone – expect someone writing over hot coals with an astute eye for what is happening now but also what has happened in the past (especially to women poets). And by hot coals I mean a mix of passionate and polemical. This person loves poetry and that is hot.
Where there’s a gate there’s a gatekeeper, I suppose, but I think of the past few years as an exercise in welcoming rather than turning away. Publishing works of art every week these past four years has been one of the most intoxicating pastimes of my writing life. But I came to a decision while I was writing the Introduction, and commenting on the work of women writers, and adding up the number of women writers: it’s time to step aside. An ageing white male just doesn’t seem the ideal person right now to act as the bouncer at this particular doorway to New Zealand poetry. Women are where the action is: the poetry editor at the Spinoff in 2019 will be Ashleigh Young.
Steve Braunias, from ‘Introduction’
I felt kind of sad reading that. I will miss Steve as our idiosyncratic poetry gate keeper. Of course this book and the posts are unashamedly Steve’s taste, and there are a truckload of other excellent poets out there with new books, but his taste keeps you reading in multiple directions.
That said it’s a warm welcome to the exciting prospect of Ashleigh Young!
On most drives I like quiet because my mother
had a habit of appraising every passing scene, calling ordinary
things, especially any animal standing in a field, lovely
and this instilled in me a strong dislike for the world lovely
and for associated words of praise like wonderful and superb
but on our drive home tonight the sky is categorically lovely
Elizabeth Smither, Night Horse – winner of the Best Poetry Book Award at the Ockham NZ Book Awards 2018
Paula: Your new collection is a delight to read and offers so many poetic treats. I was thinking as I read that your poems are like little jackets that can be worn inside out and outside in. In stillness there is movement and in movement there is stillness; in musicality there is plainness and in plainness there is musicality. In the strange there is the ordinary and in the ordinary there is the strange. What do you like your poems to do?
Elizabeth: I want them to do everything. Everything at once. I want them to feel and think (and feel the thinking in them as you read). I want them to be quick, in the old sense of the word: the opposite of dead. I want them to not know something and try to find it out – I would never write a poem with prior knowledge – I think ignorance can be bliss or at least start the motor. And as I write more I find out more and more about musicality. Isn’t one of the loveliest moments in music when harmony breaks through discord as though it is earned and you know that discord, instead of being a thicket or a dark wood, is part of it?
Paula: I especially love the ongoing friendship and granddaughter poems, but I particularly love the first poem, ‘My mother’s house.’ Kate Camp and I heard you read this at the National Library’s Circle of Laureates and were so moved and uplifted that we asked for copies! Unseen, you are observing your mother move through the house from the street (you gave us this introduction) and see her in shifting lights. The moment is extraordinary; are we are at our truest self when we are not observed? There is the characteristic Smither movement through the poem, slow and attentive, to the point of tilt or surprise. The final lines reverberate and alter the pitch of looking: ‘but she who made it/who would soon walk into the last room/of her life and go to sleep in it.’ Do you have a poem or two in the collection that particularly resonate with you?
Elizabeth: I’m fond of ‘The tablecloth’ after I observed my friend, Clay, scrubbing at a corner of a white damask tablecloth in the laundry after a dinner party. It reminded me of the old-fashioned way of washing linen in a river. It’s both a doll-sized tablecloth and something almost as large as the tablecloth for a royal banquet around which staff walk, measuring the placement of cutlery and the distance between each chair. ‘Ukulele for a dying child’ tumbles all over itself in an incoherent manner because the subject is so serious and no poet can do it justice. The grandmother poems will probably be ongoing because it is such an intense experience: something between a hovering angel and a lioness. Going back to your remark about ‘My mother’s house’ I agree with the truth that is available in our unobserved moments. Perhaps there is a balance between our social and our private moments which might comprise something Keats called ‘soul-making’.
Paula: Have you seen a festival poetry session (anywhere) that has blown you off your seat (or had some other significant impact)?
Elizabeth: Margaret Atwood and Hans Magnus Enzensberger at the Aldeburgh festival. I read first and sat down between them, shivering.
Paula: If you could curate a dream poetry session at The Auckland Writers Festival which poets would be there and who would mc or chair it?
Elizabeth: I think I’d do a Dead Poets session. Keats and Shelley, Robert Lowell, William Empson, John Crowe Ransom, Tomas Tranströmer, Szymborska, of course… the possibilities are endless. It might have something of the bitchy tone of ‘The Real Housewives of Melbourne’. To chair it one of the Paulas: Green or Morris.
from Poetry Shelf ’12 Questions for the Ockham New Zealand Book Award Poetry finalists’
Elizabeth will appear at the Auckland Writers Festival
Sunday May 20 1.30 – 2.20 Disappearances (4 readings) Limelight Room, Aotea Centre
Auckland University Press Night Horse page and author page
Elizabeth Smither’s most recent poetry collection, Night Horse, was published by Auckland University Press in 2017. She also writes novels and short stories.
NZ Poetry Shelf 