Departing Friday Poem editor Ashleigh Young talks to incoming Friday Poem editor Chris Tse. The concept was always simple: on Friday, publish a poem. A new poem or an old poem, but always a good poem. It could be by anyone. When Friday Poem founding editor Steve Braunias invited me to take up the post, … Read more
For a few weeks we haven’t been able to escape each other or ourselves or our own terrible cooking. But at least the celery soup is a prison of my own making. Read more from the lockdown letters here. I’m not a good cook. “What’s for lunch?” my workmate Kirsten used to ask, as I emptied … Read more
On writing and not writing about bread. Read more from the lockdown letters here. I’m afraid that soon I’m going to write about bread. I can’t hold it much longer. This is a lockdown diary, I’m running out of thoughts, and the bread is coming – I feel it. Each of the fragments below can … Read more
‘It feels like there is an inner circle of walking that I can no longer break into, some pleasure I have become too stupid to feel. Maybe it’s the internet’s fault.’ Read more from the lockdown letters here. There is a lot of talk about going out for a walk. If you are a writer, … Read more
‘When you reach for the exact same thing day after day, your grasp on everything else in the world loosens.’ Read more Lockdown Letters here At the end of 2001, my brother JP and I picked cherries and thinned apples at an orchard just outside Blenheim. It was hot and tiring work and it took … Read more
The outside is telling us, ‘I could do that again whenever I wanted. You think about that.’ Read more Lockdown letters here. ‘When I’m being a badger I live in a hole and eat earthworms,” the nature writer Charles Foster wrote. “When I’m being an otter I try to catch fish with my teeth.” When … Read more
Today The Spinoff launches a new series, The Lockdown Letters, in which some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. First, poet, essayist and Spinoff Friday Poem editor Ashleigh Young. I want to know how far I can ride my bike, so … Read more
After efforts to persuade the editor of the Friday poem, Ashleigh Young, to run a new work by poet Ashleigh Young in the series proved unsuccessful, The Spinoff Review of Books is launching ‘The Monday poem’. Here we present Turn Out to Be Something by Ashleigh Young from her brand new collection How I Get … Read more
Ashleigh Young reviews More of Us, a collection of poetry written by migrants and refugees. We greet with deep pleasure and confidence, eyes greeting all over the body, shaking the hand with a hug. That’s the first stanza of ‘Greeting’ by Samson Sahele, the first poem in More of Us, a collection of poems written … Read more
Ashleigh Young talks about her feelings as she steps into her new role as poetry editor at The Spinoff Review of Books. Last week I read some poems from Gregory Kan’s poetry collection Under Glass (forthcoming in March with Auckland University Press). I tried to describe them to a friend, and said, “They’re amazing” in about … Read more
Every day this week the Spinoff Review of Books is publishing a new poem in the build-up to the Phantom Billstickers national poetry day on Friday. Today: ‘Words of praise’ by Ashleigh Young Words of praise On most drives I like quiet because my mother had a habit of appraising every passing scene, calling … Read more
New verse by a Wellington writer who has become the world’s most famous New Zealand author, Ashleigh Young. Ghost Bear On flying ant day, Elliot took me to the glowing sign outside Kenneth Williams’ apartment. We stared at it for the necessary long while. Kenneth Williams said he hated everyone and everything, especially, … Read more
Ashleigh Young resolves the burning issue facing all New Zealanders: the correct way to spell our beloved national particle. Hint: it’s not “aye”. On Tuesday this week, I decided to do a tweet about eh. I decided it because at Victoria University Press, where I work, a situation had arisen where an author wanted to … Read more
Kelly Dennett, winner of the 2016 The Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency in Association with The Spinoff Award, wrote 30,000 words during her week at the Grey Lynn hotel. Runner-up Antony Millen wrote 28,000 words. Second runner-up, Wellington poet Ashleigh Young, managed to write approximately 43 words. But she met a nice cat. On my first day … Read more
Your horse No matter the heat, the place was cooler. Its shade wasn’t ordinary. Its strategy was of sharply dragging the day under, of growing into the bodies we’d angled under the tree, filling us as if we’d barely made it up from the dirt. You’d hold on to the tree, for it … Read more
Wellington writer and editor Ashleigh Young chooses books she struggled with and which blowtorched her heart. Some of the best things I have read this year are not books, or not yet books. They are manuscripts, or bits of writing by my creative writing students, or emails from friends. 2015 has been a good year … Read more
Action lines I’d thought we would go up as those bright inflatable men that ripple in car yards jack-knifing from the waist, then up with the flags. I’d thought we’d go up easy, actions lines coming out of us. Now I know leaving will take more effort. We blow up the air dancer by … Read more
Feedback From the way his voice went, it was clear that he loved motorbikes. He sounded happy and excited. He was smiling and the volume was good. It made you feel glad that he’s got a job where he can do what he loves which is riding and also fixing motorbikes. At the … Read more