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
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
‘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
At 5am this morning, like a dawn chorus, the embargo lifted on the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlist. Here are the 40 books that made it, followed by some frank thoughts from our books editor, Catherine Woulfe. ACORN FOUNDATION FICTION PRIZE The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox (Victoria University Press) Lonely Asian Woman by … Read more
A prose poem by Wellington writer Susanna Gendall. Art The number of artists at the art gallery was overwhelming. It seemed there were too many. There were too many. Never would so many poems be assembled in a single building and people expected to walk around and read each one. It seemed an unfair burden … Read more
A new poem by Oamaru-born poet Nick Ascroft. Superman Halfway up the ascent zigzagging from Royal Terrace to upper Stuart Street carrying four too-heavy grocery bags I begin to understand that I will not make it. My huffing personage – from the fingers, white with the strain, to a face the … Read more
A new poem by Waikato poet Loren Thomas. to convince myself we’re dreaming we were walking through suburbia houses kissing front lawns copied one after another you tasted like mint leaves and chlorophyll that’s been pissed on by cats I held your hand and we walked towards the ocean dodging planks from dead train … Read more
A poem by Miramar poet Geoff Cochrane. Channel Hopping Stupa or Stuka? Weet-Bix or Welsh rabbit? Galactic aerodrome or Matchbox truck? * I’m young in my dreams, still young. * Beautiful Keanu’s wearing shades— antique shades with iodine-coloured lenses. * I’m young in my dreams, still young, and I still have some ink … Read more
A new prose poem by Palmerston North poet Tim Upperton. The riderless horses One evening that summer a riderless horse galloped along our road, empty stirrups slapping. We ran up the driveway screaming to our mother. Quick, inside! she said. She shut and locked the door, closed the windows. The horse tried the door handle, … Read more
New poetry by Wellington poet and artist Ana Iti. All the way to Te Rerenga Wairua Does the spirit intrinsically know what direction to travel to get to Hawaiki? Or Heaven? Is there some colonial idea of blood quantum that first has to be observed? Would the saliva of the intangible get processed by … Read more
New verse from Sydney-based poet Catherine Vidler. The weirdness of trees I love the weirdness of trees, but that’s not an opinion. In my opinion, shapes take the shape of things other than my opinion but inseparably from my opinion about the shapes themselves. Does that make sense? What is your opinion on the way … Read more
The only published and available best-selling book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Dead People I Have Known by Shayne Carter (Victoria University Press, $40) Welcome to the charts, Shayne. You’ll stay a while, yeah? … Read more
A poem from Ockham prize-winning poet Helen Heath. Helen Heath’s second collection of poetry, Are Friends Electric?, took out the top poetry prize – now sponsored by Peter and Mary Biggs – last night at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Are Friends Electric? is a work that explores questions of life and death and … 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
New poetry by Piha poet Nikki-Lee Birdsey Objects 6 This time of year I try to think about what is better than beauty. Rose-pink clouds crowd the sky, crowd my page— I think of your face. I can’t fantasise like I did when I was a child, whole worlds snapping into place in an instant … Read more
New poetry by author Erik Kennedy. Out on the Pleasure Pier Out on the pleasure pier on that benign afternoon, the air heavy with the blossom of vinegar and old tyres, you asked what was the closest I had come to death. I thought of when I had applied the bolt-cutters to that … 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
A poem by the great Fleur Adcock from her book Collected Poems, launched this week. Toads Let’s be clear about this: I love toads. So when I found our old one dying, washed into the drain by flood-water in the night and then – if I can bring myself to say it … 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
Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias does his best to remember a drunken weekend in Wellington at 2018 LitCrawl. Crazy to feel the need to rush to a literary event – there’s always plenty of room, it doesn’t matter if you’re a tad late – so I leisurely ironed my shirt in my … Read more
Neil Young, our man in London, reports on Hera Lindsay Bird’s appearance last week at the coolest bookstore belonging to the coolest literary magazine in the English-speaking world. A bowl of cold spaghetti hoops was on the kitchen table. Meghan Markle was on the TV with the sound off. In three days’ time I was … Read more
Gemma Gracewood follows New Zealand essayist and poet Ashleigh Young as she appears at the Brooklyn Book Festival in New York. In February, Ashleigh Young received the phone call of a lifetime telling her she had won a massive cash prize for being a great writer. Now it’s September and she is in America to … 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
Steve Braunias interviews literary sensation Ashleigh Young, who won the award for best book of non-fiction at last night’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Feature image courtesy of Fergus Barrowman. Ashleigh Young was sitting at her Wellington home on the couch last Thursday evening with her cat Jerry (“He’s looking at me a bit disconsolately. Now … Read more
Victoria University Press is nominated for just about everything at tonight’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. How come? Is it a good thing? Or is it a depressing commentary on the sorry little state of New Zealand literature? VUP publisher Fergus Barrowman steps up for the revolutionary live email interview. And the winner is Fergus Barrowman. The … Read more
In which the Spinoff Review of Books reveals the New Zealand writer who has won a Major International Prize. It’s Ashleigh Young, but you might have guessed that because her name is in the headline. Wellington writer Ashleigh Young has won $US165,000 in a major US literary prize. The author of two critically acclaimed books – Magnificent … 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