Vaughan Rapatahana continues to write and to live across three countries. Several new books in different genre are due out soon in Hong Kong SAR, Aotearoa New Zealand, France, United Kingdom. Thank you also for this opportunity.
Poetry Shelf review of Ternion
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Emma Shi was the winner of the National Schools Poetry NZ 2013 and the Poetry NZ Prize 2017. She has also been published in literary journals such as Landfall and Starling. She writes at facebook.com/emmlexx.
You can read the poem at The Starling where it was first published.
‘Greg and the bird’
and the bird’
‘A rise of starlings’
Helen Heath’s debut collection, Graft, won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book for Poetry Award. It was also shortlisted for the Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize (the first poetry or fiction shortlisted). Helen has a PhD in Creative Writing from Victoria University of Wellington’s IIML. Her new collection, Are Friends Electric, is a poetic smorgasbord that offers diverse and satisfying engagements.
Paula Green and Helen Heath in conversation
Victoria University Press page
‘Man Up’ from Tender Machines, Otago University Press, 2015
Emma Neale received the inaugural NZSA/Janet Frame Memorial Award, the Kathleen Grattan Award for an unpublished poetry manuscript (The Truth Garden), the University of Otago Burns Fellowship and the NZSA/Beatson Fellowship. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Sarah Broom Poetry Award and the Bridport Poetry Prize, and her poetry collection, Tender Machines, was long-listed in the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her novel, Billy Bird, was short-listed for the Acorn Prize in the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award. She is the current editor of Landfall.
Otago University Press page
Photo credit: Hayley Theyer, courtesy of Phantom
Tusiata reads two poems, ‘Ma’i Maliu I’ and ‘Ma’i Maliu II’ that go to the core of her epilepsy. I have heard Tusiata read several times this year, both times in a fragile state on stage, where she explained what has happened and what might happen, before moving into poetry that takes you by the heart, throat, ear and stomach. Nothing has touched me like this. It is as though her poetry breathes new life into me. On Saturday night she opted out of a Christchurch gig in her move to get stronger – when she was due on stage she recorded these poems.
Tusiata lives in Christchurch. She has published three books of poetry, including Wild Dogs Under My Skirt and Bloodclot, and three children’s books. Known for her dynamic performance style she has also written and performed a one-woman show based on Wild Dogs Under My Skirt. In 2016 it began a new life as an award- winning play for six women. Tusiata has held a number of writers’ residencies and awards, including the CNZ Fulbright Pacific Writer’s Fellowship at University of Hawai’i and the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award. She is regularly published in international literary journals and invited to appear at writers’ festivals around the globe. Her most recent collection, Fale Aitu | Spirit House, was shortlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards in 2017.
Victoria University Press page
From Fale Atu|Spirit House: ‘Wairua Road’ poem
The image is by Auckland artist, Peter Gouge, who drew it for Amy’s son Robin.
’13th August 2016′ is the first entry in what I’m calling Neon Daze: a verse journal of the first four months,
Amy Brown grew up in Hawkes Bay and now lives in Melbourne, where she teaches Literature and Philosophy. Her last book, The Odour of Sanctity, was published by VUP in 2013.
Hannah Mettner, ‘Cat Chakra Alignments’, Fully Clothed and So Forgetful, Victoria University Press, 2017
Hannah Mettner is a poet, librarian and mum in Wellington. She co-edits Sweet Mammalian, an online poetry journal, with Morgan Bach and Sugar Magnolia Wilson. Her first collection, Fully Clothed and So Forgetful was published by Victoria University Press in 2017, and won the Jessie Mackay award for the best first book in poetry.
Victoria University Press page
In case you don’t get to hear Airini Beautrais read at the Auckland Writers Festival this weekend – you can hear her reading a new poem.
Listening
Your love’s a country I will never see
again, a horse that will not take the bit,
a dusty dress I am too fat to fit,
(read: passionate – you’d bust too easily),
a box I’ve locked and then misplaced the key,
a post card I will never receive, a hit
I simply missed, a dog that will not sit,
a prize catch on the hook that wriggles free.
But still I am a wide receiving dish,
listening, listening to signals from the sky
until my ears are thrashed. The cries of birds,
the groans of growing trees, movements of fish,
the rumbling earth, crowd out the sounds that I
am searching for: mute thunder of your words.
© Airini Beautrais
Airini Beautrais lives in Whanganui. Her most recent book of poetry is Flow: Whanganui River Poems (Victoria University Press, 2017). ‘Listening’ is from a work in progress, a narrative sonnet sequence.
You can catch Airini at the Auckland Writers Festival:
Friday May 18th 5.30 until 6.30 Homage to the River Upper NZI Room
Friday May 18th 6 until 7.30 Call on O’Connell 90 minutes literary mayhem on O’Connell Street
Sunday May 20 10.30 – 11.30 The Art of the Poem with James Brown, Choman Hardi and Terese Svoboda. Upper NZI Room
Rachel McAlpine’s new collection of poems will be published next year, and may be called Elsie’s Book of Strategies.
James Brown’s latest poetry book is Floods Another Chamber (VUP, 2017). You can find ‘Soft Returns’ in this collection.
Victoria University Press page
NZ Poetry Shelf 