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
The Ex-Girlfriends Are Back From the Wilderness The ex-girlfriends are back… emerging once again from the tree shadows… into the primordial burlesque of autumn with their low-cut… reminiscences… and soft, double ironies… trembling once again into their opulent… seasonal migration patterns a corsage of wilting apologies tethered to the bust… The ex-girlfriends are back…with their … Read more
Voznesensky Voznesensky meeting his girlfriend in the rain is taking place tonight. There’s the same telephone box, late fifties, Voznesensky & girlfriend rooting like rattlesnakes. The whole world is shaking. Voznesensky himself is shaking. It must be love, he thought. Or a bad night. Or good … Read more
Stephanie Johnson reviews Sir Jonathan Bate’s biography of Ted Hughes, a forensic account of his doomed marriage to poet Sylvia Plath. There are people who still blame Ted Hughes for the suicide of his wife Sylvia Plath, who famously gassed herself soon after he left her. Their two small children, Frieda and Nicholas, were in … Read more
Ruby Porter reviews Murray Edmond’s first book of prose, four wild visions of a surrealist New Zealand featuring everyone from Winston Peters to Franz Kafka – ‘a kind of punk rock Fred Dagg’. Strait Men and Other Tales is Murray Edmond’s first book of prose – four linked short stories, dark and funny, artificial and … 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
Exciting developments in one of New Zealand’s most enduring news categories: people and things getting sued by Colin Craig. The enigmatic former Conservative Party leader has reportedly threatened angry blogster Cameron Slater with legal action over the publication of a poem what he wrote. “In an email to the blogger,” reports the New Zealand Herald, “Craig … 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