New verse by Wellington writer Hera Lindsay Bird. Keats Is Dead So Fuck Me From Behind Keats is dead so fuck me from behind Slowly and with carnal purpose Some black midwinter afternoon While all the children are walking home from school Peel my stockings down with your teeth Coleridge is dead and Auden … Read more
New verse by Riwaka writer Talia Marshall. My thoughts on the end of love and caravans this Friday At first love is the caravan and you are inside it playing cards and the gas lamp is burning and everyone inside the caravan is happy and unbearable Then you only go … Read more
Two new poems by the amazing David Eggleton, a finalist in next week’s Ockham national book award for his noisy book of visions, The Conch Trumpet (Otago University Press). Floral Clock Dawn’s orange soak rinses the copper lid that floats over Noel Lane’s kava bowl back of the War Museum, the front’s white colonnade, and Ferro-Concrete … Read more
Yesterday we published a furious denunciation of slam poetry which felt like it demanded a counterweight. Comedian and performance poet Penny Ashton – the founder of Poetry Idol – offered her services, and we gladly accepted. Today I happily pulled on my bohemian attire – including a T-Shirt that says “Feminist Buzz Killing It” – and sat down … Read more
Opinion: Andrew Paul Wood wishes a pox upon slam poetry, that “horrid practice” which is currently in vogue and features in the upcoming Auckland Writers Festival. (Read performance poet Penny Ashton disagreeing with him here.) “I can’t bear these accounts I read in The Times and elsewhere of these poetry slams, in which various young men and … Read more
New verse by Bill Nelson of Wellington. Someone needs to take control You should be planting autumn crops! The calendar says every morning from under its flimsy door magnets. Seed your onions! Mound your potatoes! In the real world, wild and disowned, heirloom tomatoes infiltrate silver beet. A patch of rocket, perhaps self-seeded, elbows a … Read more
We cross live to Matahiwi marae in Hawkes Bay, where Charlotte Grimshaw reports from a ceremony to honour the new poet laureate – her father, Karl Stead. The Poet Laureate had been summoned to a weekend at Matahiwi Marae in the Hawkes Bay, for a ceremony to honour his appointment. He was invited to bring … Read more