This slim adorably-produced poetry journal is a treat to read and hold (my favourite looking NZ volume – who wouldn’t want a poem in here!). It is rich in voice and edges.

The editor:

Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle has brought min-a-rets to life after a three-year hiatus. She states the original aim was to champion ‘openness & intensity in poetry, with a focus on NZ, but also including a few international writers each time’. She has stuck to the same poetic impulse and she has included some Melbourne poets – she is currently based there.

 

The poets:

Hana Pera Aoake, Eden Bradfield, Owen Connors, Anna Crews, Craig Foltz, Rebecca Nash, Rachel O’Neill, Ursula Robinson Shaw

 

The poems:

I open upon Rachel’s title, ‘The sky is a wide, unmoving chest’, and then fall into a poem that is wide but full of movement, strange and supple. Three poems from Eden catch air in their double spacing, floating talk, the everyday adrift. Ursula’s ‘2 Poems’ also float on the page, but here the talk static intensifies. The fragments startle first as little pieces, and then achieve a stuttering breathfilled momentum.

Voice – the speaking surge and spurt – marks Owen’s ‘4 untitled fragments’. This is not disembodied writing but is flush with sex and disenchantment and living.

 

Highly recommend this. Check out the journal here

Submissions closed for the next issue at the end of January – so look forward to that!