Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018

FRONT COVER:

Design by Jo Bailey, Thomas Le Bas and Fay McAlpine /
Typesetting by Kate Barraclough



Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018
Editor: Jack Ross

ISBN 978-0-9941473-3-2. 360 pp.

Auckland: Massey University Press, March 2018


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TITLE PAGE:

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CONTENTS:

Editorial:

1. Jack Ross / A Live Tradition / 14

Featured Poet:

2. Alistair Paterson, ONZM / 20
1. A poem for Thomas Merton & Ernest Hemingway / 23
2. How to write fiction / 24
3. Journey to elsewhere / 26
4. Raison d’être (for Dumont d’Urville) / 28
5. Rick’s place — maybe ... / 30
6. Nobody wants to talk about it / 32
7. Stopping by a cornfield late in the afternoon / 33
8. Te Kooti’s War / 34
9. Therapy / 35
10. The Talisman / 36
11. The Tannery / 37
12. The way things are / 38
13. The valley of the kings / 40
14. Navigator / 42
15. Reading Alan Brunton / 43
16. The Moon and Sixpence / 45
17. Survival / 47
18. The Forest of Tane / 48
19. The Fiddler of Dooney / 49
20. Eine kleine Nachtmusik (a serenade) / 50
21. A traveller’s guide to Venice / 51
3. Alistair Paterson with Jen Webb / Always becoming: A life in poetry / 52


New Poems:

4. John Allison / Baudelaire on L’Île Bourbon 1841 / 70
5. Hamish Ansley / Popular Interpretations of Seven Common Dreams / 71
6. Ruth Arnison / Trisomy 18 / 73
7. Stu Bagby / On Reading August Kleinzahler’s Where Souls Go / 74
8. Tony Beyer / Aftershock / 75
9. Joy Blair / Sarajevo / 76
10. Erick Brenstrum / 15 January 1945 / 78
11. Iain Britton / from Vignettes: Luminous Particles: 9 — paradise seekers / 79
12. Owen Bullock / a 1 not a 2 / 80
13. Nicole Cassidy-Koia / I miss you Grandma / 81
14. Jill Chan / Poetry / 82
15. Alastair Clarke / Wairarapa, Distance / 83
16. Jennifer Compton / a rose, and then another / 84
17. Harold Coutts / there isn’t a manual on when you’re writing someone a love poem and they break up with you / 86
18. Mary Cresswell / Transparency [a political paradelle] / 87
19. Brett Cross / sanctuary / 88
20. Semira Davis / Hiding / 89
21. Tricia Dearborn / The opposite of forgetting / 90
22. Doc Drumheller / Dream of a Sunday Afternoon / 91
23. David Eggleton / Distant Ophir / 92
24. Johanna Emeney / Favoured Exception / Suspicion / 93
25. Jess Fiebig / Dead Man’s Point / 96
26. Catherine Fitchett / Lead / 97
27. Sue Fitchett / The smallness of significant things / 98
28. Alexandra Fraser / The good daughter / 100
29. Maryana Garcia / Umbrellas / 101
30. Callum Gentleman / The Deep / 102
31. Michael Hall / Towards Evening / 103
32. Sophia Hardy / Above / 104
33. Paula Harris / The poet is bearded and wearing his watch around the wrong way / 105
34. Gail Ingram / Confucius says we should not be too familiar with the lower orders or with women / 106
35. Susan Jacobs / Two Women Speak / 107
36. Lincoln Jaques / They Write About Things Like This in Sweden / 108
37. Tim Jones / Untitled / 110
38. Sam Keenan / Gauge / 111
39. Mary Kelly / 3.44 am / 112
40. Raina Kingsley / Where are my Bones / 113
41. Gary Langford / The Lake / 114
42. Katrina Larsen / An Independent Woman / 115
43. Wes Lee / My Tough Little James Cagney Stance / 116
44. Henry Ludbrook / The Bar Girl / 117
45. Olivia Macassey / Late February / 119
46. Caoimhe McKeogh / this breaking apart of things / 120
47. Robert McLean / Le Petit Testament d’Alfred Agostinelli / Goldfinch and Hawk / 121
48. Natalie Modrich / Brown / 124
49. Fardowsa Mohamed / Us / 126
50. Margaret Moores / Dark Shapes Shimmering / 128
51. Shereen Asha Murugayah / Phototropism / 129
52. Heidi North-Bailey / Goodbye, goodbye, this time / 130
53. Keith Nunes / Around town and out again / 131
54. Jessamine O Connor / Sea Swimmer after Heart Surgery / 133
55. Bob Orr / A Woman in Red Slacks / 134
56. Jacqueline Crompton Ottaway / It’s not often we meet a man like you, Bruce ... / 135
57. Lilián Pallares / Desidia / Apathy / 136
58. I. K. Paterson-Harkness / It’s what you get for being a monkey / 137
59. Mark Pirie / 11 Memories of David / 138
60. Joanna Preston / Leaving / 141
61. Lindsay Rabbitt / Flowers / 142
62. Mary Rainsford / Oliver the Ovary / 143
63. Essa Ranapiri / Gingko / 145
64. Vaughan Rapatahana / he kōrero ki taku tipuna – a talk with my ancestor / 146
65. Sahanika Ratnayake / Golden/Privilege / 148
66. Ron Riddell / Prado Centro / 149
67. Gillian Roach / What do you do? / 150
68. Jeremy Roberts / Chatting with the Bums / Pure Gefühle / 153
69. Lisa Samuels / Let me be clear / 156
70. Emma Shi / billions and billions / 157
71. Sarah Shirley / Family history / 159
72. Jane Simpson / Unmarked crib / 160
73. Ruby Solly / Our pearls are fake and nobody likes us / 161
74. Laura Solomon / The Sword Swallower’s Lament / 162
75. Bill Sutton / Billy plays rugby / 164
76. Richard Taylor / the sad song of the toothless whore / 166
77. Loren Thomas / Nailhead / 168
78. Nicola Thorstensen / Spin Doctor / 169
79. Vivienne Ullrich / Losing the Plot / 170
80. Roland Vogt / On my watch / 171
81. Richard von Sturmer / Apostrophia / 172
82. Janet Wainscott / Occupation / 174
83. Devon Webb / I Want to Live / 175
84. Mercedes Webb-Pullman / Island / 177
85. Robyn Yudana Wellwood / Midnight Phonecalls / 178
86. Albert Wendt / ANZAC Day / Preferences / 180
87. Sigred Yamit / University / 182
88. Mark Young / Wittgenstein to Heidegger / 184

Essays:

89. Owen Bullock / All the world is a page: Alistair Paterson’s play for voices / 186
90. Jeanita Cush-Hunter / Dying to matter: In defence of confessional poetry / 199
91. Ted Jenner / i. m. T. E. Hulme, ‘the father of Imagism’ / 216
92. Robert McLean / Arma virumque cano: A reply to Janet Charman / 222
93. Reade Moore / The quiet of boiling oil: The life and poetry of Ellen Conroy / 236

Reviews:

94. Ella Borrie / Brian Turner - Jane Simpson / 244
    
    • Brian Turner. Night Fishing. ISBN 9781776560943. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2016. RRP $25. 96 pp.
    • Jane Simpson. A World Without Maps. ISBN 9781925231373. Carindale, Queensland, Australia: Interactive Press, 2015. RRP $27. viii + 62 pp.
95. Mary Cresswell / Jeffrey Paparoa Holman - Manifesto Aotearoa - MaryJane Thomson / 249
    
    • Jeffrey Paparoa Holman. Blood Ties: New and Selected Poems, 1963-2016. ISBN 978-1-927145-88-3. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2017. RRP $25. 168 pp.
    • Manifesto Aotearoa: 101 Political Poems. Ed. Philip Temple & Emma Neale. ISBN 978-0-947522-46-9. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2017. RRP $35. 192 pp.
    • MaryJane Thomson. Songs of the City. ISBN 978-0-473-36566-0. Wellington: HeadworX, 2016. RRP $30. 86 pp.
96. Hamish Dewe / Charles Olsen - Zero Distance / 262
    
    • Charles Olsen. Antípodas: Edición bilingüe. ISBN 978-84-945021-7-0. Madrid: Huerga & Fierro Editores, 2016. RRP £14.90. 94 pp.
    • Zero Distance: New Poetry from China. Ed. & trans. Liang Yujing. ISBN 978-0-9987438-2-0. Kāne’ohe, Hawai’i: Tinfish Press, 2017. RRP $US 25. 130 pp.
97. Johanna Emeney / Lauris Edmond - Sue Wootton / 268
    
    • Night Burns with a White Fire: The Essential Lauris Edmond. Ed. Frances Edmond & Sue Fitchett. ISBN 978-0-947493-44-8. Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2017. RRP $34.99. 180 pp.
    • Sue Wootton. The Yield. ISBN 978-0-947522-48-3. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2017. RRP $25. 84 pp.
98. Matthew Harris / Owen Bullock / 276
    
    • Owen Bullock. River’s Edge. ISBN 978-0-9944565-2-6. Canberra: Recent Work Press, 2016. RRP $AUD 12.95 / $17.95 (international). 88 pp.
99. Bronwyn Lloyd / Johanna Emeney - Elizabeth Morton / 278
    
    • Johanna Emeney. Family History. ISBN 978-0-9941378-1-4. Hoopla series. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2017. RRP $25. 74 pp.
    • Elizabeth Morton. Wolf. ISBN 978-0-9941378-2-1. Hoopla series. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2017. RRP $25. 90 pp.
100. Robert McLean / Ian Wedde - David Howard / 286
     
     • Ian Wedde. Selected Poems. ISBN 978-1-86940-859-6. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2017. RRP $39.99. 340 pp.
     • David Howard. The Ones Who Keep Quiet. ISBN 978-0-947522-44-5. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2017. RRP $25. 96 pp.
101. Peri Miller / John Gibb - Liz Breslin / 292
     
     • John Gibb. Waking by a River of Light. ISBN 978-0-473-38992-5. Lyttelton: Cold Hub Press, 2017. RRP $29.95. 88 pp.
     • Liz Breslin. Alzheimer’s and a Spoon. ISBN 978-0-947522-98-8. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2017. RRP $25. 76 pp.
102. Elizabeth Morton / Alan Roddick - Michael O’Leary / 297
     
     • Alan Roddick. Getting It Right: Poems 1968-2015. ISBN 978-1-927322-65-9. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2016. RRP $25. 90 pp.
     • Michael O’Leary. Collected Poems 1981-2016. Ed. Mark Pirie. Introduction by Iain Sharp. ISBN 978-0-473-38831-7. Wellington: HeadworX, 2017. RRP $35. 260 pp.
103. Jeremy Roberts / Jeffrey Paparoa Holman - Mark Pirie / 302
     
     • Jeffrey Paparoa Holman. Dylan Junkie. ISBN 978-0-9941378-0-7. Hoopla series. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2017. RRP $25. 54 pp.
     • Mark Pirie. Rock & Roll: Selected Poems in Five Sets. ISBN 978-0-9941861-2-6. Bareknuckle Poets Pocket Series. Brisbane, Australia: Bareknuckle Books, 2016. RRP $30. 156 pp.
104. Jack Ross / Ted Jenner - Jeremy Roberts - Laura Solomon - A TransPacific Poetics / 308
     
     • Ted Jenner. The Arrow That Missed. ISBN 978-0-473-39818-7. Lyttelton: Cold Hub Press, 2017. RRP $19.95. 52 pp.
     • Jeremy Roberts. Cards on the Table. ISBN 978-1-925231-11-3. Carindale, Queensland, Australia: Interactive Press, 2015. RRP $29. 158 pp.
     • Laura Solomon. Frida Kahlo’s Cry and Other Poems. ISBN 978-988-8167-38-8. Hong Kong: Proverse Hong Kong, 2015. $38.59. 48 pp.
     • A TransPacific Poetics. Ed. Lisa Samuels and Sawako Nakayasu. ISBN 978-1933959320. Brooklyn, NY: Litmus Press, 2017. RRP $30.00. vi + 198 pp.
105. Laura Solomon / Victor Billot - Lisa Samuels / 320
     
     • Victor Billot. Ambient Terror. ISBN 978-0-473-37064-0. Dunedin: Limestone Singularity Media, 2017. RRP $19.99. 82 pp.
     • Lisa Samuels. Symphony for Human Transport. ISBN 978-1-84861-547-2. Bristol: Shearsman Books Ltd., 2017. RRP $21.95. 76 pp.
106. Richard Taylor / 5 6 7 8 - Brentley Frazer / 323
     
     • Monica Carroll, Jen Crawford, Owen Bullock & Shane Strange. 5 6 7 8. ISBN 9780994456533. Canberra, Australia: Recent Work Press, 2016. RRP $AU 17.95. 76 pp.
     • Brentley Frazer. Aboriginal to Nowhere: New Poems. ISBN 978-0-473-36567-7. Wellington: HeadworX, 2016. RRP $25. 88 pp.

Books & Magazines in brief:

107. Jack Ross / 332
     
     
     1. Mary Cresswell. Field Notes. ISBN 978-0-9941379-5-1. Submarine. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2017. RRP $25. 68 pp.
     2. Claudio Pasi. Observations: Poems / Osservazione: Poesie. Trans. Tim Smith & Marco Sonzogni. ISBN 978-0-9941345-4-7. Seraph Press Translation Series No. 2. Wellington: Seraph Press, 2016. RRP $25. 40 pp.
     3. Shipwrecks/Shelters: Six Contemporary Greek Poets / Ναυάγια/Καταφύγια: Έξι Σύγχρονοι Έλληνες Ποιητές. With Lena Kallergi, Theodore Chiotis, Phoebe Giannisi, Patricia Kolaiti, Vassilis Amanatidis & Katerina Iliopoulou. Ed. & trans. Vana Manasiadis. ISBN 978-0-9941345-4-7. Seraph Press Translation Series No. 1. Wellington: Seraph Press, 2016. RRP $25. 40 pp.
     4. Signals: A Literary Journal 5. Ed. Ros Ali & Johanna Emeney. ISBN 978-0-473-37760-1. Devonport: Michael King Writers’ Centre, 2016. 110 pp.
     5. Karen Zelas. The Trials of Minnie Dean: A Verse Biography. ISBN 978-0-9941299-9-4. Submarine. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2017. RRP $25. 196 pp.

About the Contributors / 337

About Poetry New Zealand / 355

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Alistair Paterson
[Photograph: Jan Kemp (2002)]

EDITORIAL:

A Live Tradition

To have gathered from the air a live tradition
or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame
This is not vanity.
– Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI

Just as our previous issue focussed on younger poets, this one has as its overarching principle ‘the tradition’ – however you want to define that term. In pursuit of this aim, I’ve chosen to feature the poetry of Alistair Paterson.

Alistair was the managing editor of Poetry New Zealand for twenty years, from 1994 to 2014, and before that he edited Mate / Climate between 1974 and 1981. He is, however, principally a writer. Alistair had a poem in the very first issue of New Zealand Poetry Yearbook, in 1951, and since then he’s published nine books of poetry and three of prose, as well as editing numerous other books and journals.

He represents, then, a very important thing: perseverance in the writing life. Alongside this, though, his tireless work showcasing the talents of others shows a generosity of spirit which is also an essential part of the sense of poetic community I wish to celebrate here.

There’s another aspect of Alistair’s career which is perhaps less well known: a pronounced taste for experimentation and theory. As a result, Alistair’s poetry has never stood still. The free-flowing, associative poems he is writing today seem to me to represent a considerable technical advance on the more formal long poems of his middle years. Whether or not other readers agree with this diagnosis, the one constant factor in his writing is undoubtedly change.

For an author to be creating interesting new work after seventy-odd years of writing is not a phenomenon for which there are many parallels. Thomas Hardy published a book of poems in his 88th year; John Masefield in his 89th; Allen Curnow in his 90th. Alistair Paterson’s poetry now spans a similar period, but neither Hardy nor Masefield could be said to have kept up with new developments in poetics to the extent that Paterson has. Only Curnow provides a real precedent.

There’s a strong focus on mortality in many of the 21 new poems included here. How could there not be? What’s perhaps more noticeable is the delight and curiosity about nature, travel, time, the sea that most of them still display. Paterson’s energy seems inexhaustible. His wide acquaintanceship with so many of our poets, old and new, makes him in many ways the perfect embodiment of the ideal of a local tradition.

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The Pound quote I began with speaks specifically of a live tradition. That’s the real point, I think. Of course it can be interesting and valuable to celebrate the past, but it’s what the past has gifted to the present that really matters. Good poems don’t die, but grow in the memory, inspire us to speak out about our own times, our own problems, our own causes of celebration or despair.

The same can be true of essays and reviews, more strongly in evidence than ever in this issue. As well as a long interview, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to include Owen Bullock’s essay on Alistair Paterson’s long poem The Toledo Room (1978), and thus to provide maximum coverage of his work to date.

Alongside this, you’ll find a passionate defence of confessional poetry against its many, many detractors by poetry student Jeanita Cush-Hunter; an eloquent centenary tribute to T. E. Hulme, the (s0-called) ‘father of Imagism’ – and certainly founder of a certain notion of the Modernist poetic tradition – by poet and classicist Ted Jenner; and an amusing account of a family poetic tradition by Reade Moore.

More controversially, perhaps, Robert McLean has written a reply to Janet Charman’s essay ‘A Piece of Why,’ included in the previous issue of Poetry New Zealand, in which he takes issue with Charman’s avowedly psychoanalytic reading of Allen Curnow’s choices as an anthologist.

Celebration and inclusiveness are one thing, but it must be emphasised that the right to disagree is also part of a ‘live tradition.’ Both Charman and McLean argue passionately in support of their positions, but on the issues, never ad hominem. Both, it seems to me, deserve a hearing. Perhaps it’s my evangelical upbringing, but I must confess that I’ve never been able to feel that there was much to be feared from robust debate.

The review section here, too – larger than ever – is not short of strong opinions, cogently expressed. In her generous and thought-provoking review of our previous issue, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017, poet and literary critic Paula Green announced as her own guiding principle, that: 'A good poetry review opens a book for the reader as opposed to snapping it shut through the critic’s prejudices.'

I would certainly agree with that – in principle, at any rate. A book should always be given the benefit of the doubt, if at all possible. Unfortunately one cannot always leave it at that. George Orwell, in his essay ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer,’ puts the issue very neatly: 'If one says … that King Lear is a good play and The Four Just Men is a good thriller, what meaning is there in the word "good"?'

If we like and admire all books, then it’s much the same as liking and admiring none. Differentiation is the point of criticism, after all, and sometimes one bad review can teach us more than catalogues of praise.

To conclude with another quotation from Pound’s Pisan Cantos:

The wind is part of the process
The rain is part of the process [1]

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Of course there is another important point to make about book reviews. The masthead of the Poetry New Zealand website has always read ‘International Journal of Poetry and Poetics.’ There have certainly been questions in the past about just how many international publications can be mixed with the local product without obscuring the central raison d'être of the magazine.

This issue, for instance, includes reviews of 33 books. 23 of these come from New Zealand publishers. Of the remainder, five come from Australia, one from Hong Kong, one from Spain, one from the UK, one from New York, and one from Hawai’i. However, seven of these ten constitute single-author collections by New Zealand writers. The other three are anthologies. Of these the first, 5 6 7 8, is an Australian-published sampler of work by four poets, two of whom are transplanted New Zealanders; the second, A TransPacific Poetics, has a New Zealand-based co-editor, includes substantial local content, and was in fact launched here in July 2017; in fact only the third, Zero Distance: New Poetry from China, might seem an anomalous inclusion. When I explain that its editor, Yiang Lujing, is studying at Victoria University of Wellington, and has contributed translations to earlier editions of Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, the status of his work as a deliberate attempt to introduce contemporary Chinese writing to a Pacific audience may seem clearer. It is, of course, fortunate that we were able to find a reviewer, poet and critic Hamish Dewe, who is bilingual in Chinese and English.

It might be objected that few of these books are likely to be found on the shelves of local bookshops, but this is an uncomfortable reality for much poetry publishing in New Zealand now. In any case, in the age of online ordering, international books are often easier to obtain than those issued by some of our less tech-savvy local publishers!

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The second round of the Poetry NZ Poetry Prize has been as much of a delight to judge as was the first one. I’ve ended up making the following choices:

First prize ($500):Fardowsa Mohamed,
for ‘Us’ (page 126 in this issue)
Second prize ($300):Semira Davis,
for ‘Hiding’ (page 89)
Third prize ($200):Henry Ludbrook,
for ‘The Bar Girl’ (page 117)

Fardowsa Mohamed’s poem is, quite simply, magnificent. Its breadth of theme, its honesty and directness speak of a whole region of experience which I long to know more about.

It’s always a good sign when a poem scares the life out of you. Semira Davis’s poem is clipped and condensed, but there’s a sea of pain submerged under its surface. And yet, among other things, one would have to admit that it’s also very funny.

Henry Ludbrook’s ‘The Bar Girl’ is lush and romantic – or should that be pervy and voyeuristic? – all at the same time. It expresses perfectly a very real feeling, and that’s probably why I found it irresistible.

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There are 87 poets in this issue (besides Alistair Paterson, our featured poet). There are also 6 essayists and 13 reviewers – though many of these have also contributed poems: 98 authors in all.

If variety is the spice of life, then I think you’ll find it here. I’m particularly happy to be able to present new work by some of the great luminaries of our Antipodean Poetic tradition: Jennifer Compton, David Eggleton, Sue Fitchett, Ted Jenner, Bob Orr, Albert Wendt, Mark Young, and many, many others.

The preponderance of poems here comes from younger writers, though – some still in their teens – which is as it should be. More than 300 separate submissions were sent in for this issue, which made the selection particularly difficult. My long-list of possible inclusions was over 200 pages long, and had to be gradually winnowed down to what you see here.

So please don’t be discouraged if you sent in work and had it rejected. Perseverance, and receptiveness to change: those are the two principles embodied in Alistair Paterson’s long literary career – keeping at it, despite all disappointments and discouragements; above all, always being ready to try something new.

— Jack Ross
September 2017

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Notes:

1. Ezra Pound, ‘Canto LXXIV’, in The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New York: New Directions, [1970] 1996), 455.

Alistair Paterson & Jack Ross
[Channel 81 (Oct 2017): 10]

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS:

• John Allison returned to New Zealand a year ago after 15 years in Melbourne. His poems have been published in numerous journals worldwide. He was the featured poet in Poetry New Zealand 14, and his poem ‘Dead Reckoning’ appeared in Poetry New Zealand 50 in November 2015. John is the author of four books of poetry. His book on perception, imagination and poetry, A Way of Seeing, was published in 2003 by Lindisfarne Press in the United States.
• Hamish Ansley is a writer primarily of fiction and sometimes poetry. His work is inspired by reality but heavily fictionalised. He recently completed a Master’s thesis at the University of Waikato about masculinity in contemporary fiction.
• Ruth Arnison is the afternoon administrator at Knox College, a residential college affiliated to the University of Otago. She is the editor of Poems in the Waiting Room (NZ), the founder of Lilliput Libraries, and when the weather is fine enjoys painting Poems on Steps around Dunedin with her ‘step sister’ Sheryl McCammon.
• Stu Bagby was born and raised in Northland. He now lives on 5 acres of land near Paremoremo. An anthologist and poet, his latest book of poetry, Pockets of Warmth, was published in 2017.
• Tony Beyer’s recent publications include Nine Songs (Puriri Press, Auckland, 2017).
• Joy Blair started life in Central Otago, and eventually moved to Auckland’s North Shore, where she writes variously, mainly poetry. She has appeared previously in Poetry New Zealand.
• Ella Borrie is a poet and mug collector living in Wellington, although her heart is in the Southern Alps. She has an English and a Law degree from the University of Otago, was the co-editor of Antics 2015, and her work appears in Mimicry and Starling.
• Erick Brenstrum is the author of Thalassa, a book of poems, and The New Zealand Weather Book. He writes a column on weather and climate in New Zealand Geographic magazine.
• Iain Britton has had six collections of poems published since 2008, mainly in the United Kingdom: Hauled Head First into a Leviathan (Cinnamon Press), Liquefaction (Interactive Press, 2009), Cravings (Oystercatcher Press, 2009), druidic approaches (Lapwing Publications, 2011), Punctured Experimental (Kilmog Press, 2010) and photosynthesis (Kilmog Press, 2014). Recently, a new collection, The Intaglio Poems, was published by Hesterglock Press (Bristol, 2017).
• Owen Bullock’s publications include semi (Puncher & Wattmann, 2017), River’s Edge (Recent Work Press, 2016) and sometimes the sky isn’t big enough (Steele Roberts, 2010). He has edited a number of journals and anthologies, including Poetry New Zealand. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Canberra, where he teaches. In his research on semiotics and poetry he discusses the work of Alistair Paterson, Alan Loney and Michele Leggott.
• Nicole Cassidy-Koia is a 19-year-old student with a strong passion for literacy and creative writing. She was born and raised in Auckland, and is expected to graduate from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Primary Education in 2019.
• Jill Chan’s sixth collection of poetry is What To Believe (2017). Her work has been published in Poetry New Zealand, takahē, Brief, JAAM, Deep South, Trout, Otoliths, and many other magazines.
• Alastair Clarke is an English teacher, and has recently returned to New Zealand after living for a number of years in Britain and Australia. Seeing his country once more has dictated his most recent writing.
• Jennifer Compton was born in Wellington and now lives in Melbourne. Her verse novella Mr Clean & The Junkie came out in 2015 from Mākaro Press.
• Harold Coutts has recently finished a BA in English Literature and Classical Studies at Victoria University and continues to live in Wellington. He self-published a collection of poetry in late 2016 called Fissure In Flowers, and is working on the first draft of a novel.
• Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and lives on the Kāpiti Coast. Her latest book, Field Notes, contains poems written purely for enjoyment. It was published by Mākaro Press in mid-2017.
• Brett Cross is based on the edge of the Hauraki Plains in North Waikato, where he runs the two small presses of Titus Books and Atuanui Press.
• Jeanita Cush-Hunter is an aspiring writer and poet who lives in Auckland. She has a Diploma of Education (Secondary Drama and English) from the Queensland University of Technology, and a Bachelor of Education from Massey University. She is currently immersed in her Master’s of Creative Writing at Massey University.
• Semira Davis lives north of Wellington. Her writing has appeared in Landfall, takahē, Blackmail Press and the Phantom Billsticker’s Café Reader.
• Tricia Dearborn’s poetry has been widely published in Australian literary journals, including Meanjin, Southerly, Island Magazine and Westerly, as well as in the United Kingdom, the United States and Ireland. Her latest collection is The Ringing World (Puncher & Wattmann, 2012).
• Hamish Dewe edited brief 43 in 2011. He was, back in the day, an editor of Salt (the Auckland one).
• Doc Drumheller was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and has lived in New Zealand for more than half his life. He has worked in award-winning groups for theatre and music, and has published 10 collections of poetry. His poems have been translated into more than 20 languages, and he has performed in Cuba, Lithuania, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Japan, India, the United States and Nicaragua, and widely throughout New Zealand. He lives in Oxford, Canterbury, where he edits and publishes the literary journal Catalyst.
• David Eggleton received the 2015 Janet Frame Literary Trust Poetry Award, and his collection The Conch Trumpet won the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry. His most recent poetry publication, SNAP, is a limited-edition 14-poem collaboration with artist Nigel Brown and printer John Holmes for the University of Otago’s Otakou Press.
• Johanna Emeney is an Auckland teacher and poet who co-facilitates the Michael King Young Writers Programme and teaches Creative Writing at Massey University. Her second collection of poetry, Family History, was published by Mākaro Press in April 2017.
• Jess Fiebig is a born and bred Cantabrian. She is a bibliophile who spends her spare time writing, walking her border terrier and drinking cups of tea.
• Catherine Fitchett is a Christchurch poet who has had work published in various magazines and anthologies, most recently in Leaving the Red Zone: Poems from the Canterbury Earthquakes (Clerestory Press, 2016). She has had various careers, including a number of years as a forensic scientist, and is currently working on a collection of poems based on elements of the periodic table.
• Sue Fitchett is a conservationist and Waiheke Islander. She is the author of Palaver Lava Queen (AUP, 2004) and On the Wing (Steele Roberts, 2014), and the co-author or editor of several poetry books. Her work has appeared in various publications in New Zealand and overseas, and has been performed in art shows.
• Alexandra Fraser is an Auckland poet. Her first collection was Conversation by Owl-light (Steele Roberts, 2014). In 2016, she completed a Master’s of Creative Writing at AUT. She has been published in various New Zealand and overseas magazines (including Poetry New Zealand), and in 2016 was placed second and also highly commended in the Poetry Society of New Zealand competition.
• Maryana Garcia is fascinated by quotidian miracles and all things microcosmic. She has previously been published in Mayhem, and regularly contributes her word experiments to the cloud under the Twitter handle @bosonbrain.
• Callum Gentleman has toured New Zealand extensively as a poet and musician, and recently completed two Australian tours. He is also the wordsmith for Panhandlers, a soundscape/poetry duo with Joel Vinsen. He lives in Auckland, but dreams of escape.
• Michael Hall currently lives in Dunedin. He has had poems published in New Zealand and overseas. Two of his most recent poems have been published in The Spinoff.
• Sophia Hardy published her first full book of poetry, Jupiter’s Perigee, in 2017 (Lasavia Publishing), after numerous contributions to poetry journals and books. Although occasionally narrated in the first person, Hardy’s poems are often character studies, and frequently include historical personages.
• Matthew Harris has a PhD in English from Massey University, and works as a Senior Tutor in the School of English and Media Studies. He is a writer of poems, fictions and short films: 43000 Feet (2012), Snooze Time (2014) and Madam Black (2015), have travelled the international film festival circuit from Rhode Island and Tribeca in the United States to the Clermont-Ferrand festival in France, accruing various awards.
• Paula Harris lives in Palmerston North, where she writes poems, teaches Pilates and contemplates the pleasures of eating dark chocolate. She won the 1995 Whitireia Poetry Award, which was kinda awesome. Her work has been published in various New Zealand and Australian journals, including Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, Snorkel, Landfall and Broadsheet.
• Gail Ingram’s short stories and poetry have appeared in journals and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas. Recent awards include runner-up in the 2017 New Zealand National Flash Fiction Day International Micro Competition, winner of the 2016 New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry competition, selected finalist for 2016 Best Small Fictions, and runner-up in 2015 takahē International Poetry Competition. She holds a first-class Master’s of Creative Writing from Massey University.
• Susan Jacobs lives in Auckland and is a sporadic poet. The mother of four adult daughters, she has a special affinity for Italy, where she lived for 10 years. She is the author of two non-fiction books (Penguin, 2003, 2012) about the Italian–New Zealand connection in World War II. Susan has worked as a lecturer, tutor, teacher, editor and book reviewer, and is currently teaching English to adults in a high school.
• Lincoln Jaques writes: ‘I was born in the UK in 1969 but raised in Beachhaven, Auckland. I gained a MA (Hons) in English at the University of Auckland, and have recently completed a Master’s of Creative Writing at AUT. I have previously published poems in Poetry New Zealand, Spin, Fresh, JAAM and Southern Ocean Review. I was a category winner of the 2015 Auckland Museum ANZAC Centenary Poetry Competition. I have also published online travel articles through the website Way Beyond Borders.’
• Ted Jenner is an Auckland writer who has published three books of poetry, and one book of poems, short fiction and travel anecdotes (Writers in Residence and Other Captive Fauna), and two books of translations from ancient Greek poetry. His most recent book of poems, The arrow that missed, was published in June 2017 by Cold Hub Press.
• Tim Jones was awarded the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010. His books include his second short story collection, Transported (Vintage, 2008), a poetry anthology, The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, co-edited with P. S. Collier (Interactive Press, 2014), and his fourth poetry collection, New Sea Land (Mākaro Press, 2016). He was the guest poet in takahē 89 (April 2017).
• Sam Keenan lives in Wellington. She was the winner of the 2014 Story Inc. Prize for Poetry, and she has a Master’s of Arts with distinction from the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her work has been previously published in Landfall and Cordite.
• Mary Kelly writes: ‘I am a 17-year-old writer living in Wellington. I have been writing for over two years, but only recently have started becoming public with my work. I find myself writing about experiences from life which I struggled talking about with people, which is why I found myself writing it instead.’
• Raina Kingsley writes: ‘Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mamoe, Ngāti Kahugnunu. Born 5 June 1962. Brought up in Hawke’s Bay. Living in Christchurch since 1988. I have had poems published in Leaving the Red Zone and Quakes and Community.’
• Gary Langford is the author of 38 books, including 15 in fiction, 4 textbooks and 15 in poetry such as The Sonnets of Gary Langford (XLIBRIS, 2016). His last dozen books use his paintings as illustrations, including the cover of Memoir of a Teacher Writer, published 2017, and his latest story collection, The Writer Who Becomes a Best Seller, 2017. Gary is an artist writer in Melbourne, Australia, and Christchurch, New Zealand.
• Katrina Larsen is a teacher from Tauranga who has previously been published in Blackmail Press. She enjoys words and travelling to other worlds.
• Wes Lee lives in Paekakariki. Her latest collection Body, Remember was launched in June 2017 by Eyewear Publishing in London as part of the Lorgnette Series of pamphlets. She was the 2010 recipient of the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Literary Award, and has won a number of awards for her writing.
• Bronwyn Lloyd is a writer and senior tutor at the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University (Albany). She has published numerous catalogue essays and articles on New Zealand painting and applied art since 1999, and her first collection of short stories, The Second Location, was published by Titus books in 2011.
• Henry Ludbrook is a Nelson-based poet. This is the second time he has been published in Poetry New Zealand. He is active in the Nelson Live Poets group. He also has a poetry blog called River Deliver Me at hello-hcludbrook.tumblr.com.
• Olivia Macassey’s poems have appeared in takahē, Poetry New Zealand, Landfall and other places. Her second book, The Burnt Hotel, was published in 2015 by Titus Books. She currently edits brief, and lives in Northland. Her website is www.macassey.com.
• Caoimhe McKeogh lives in Wellington, and works in community disability support. She is currently working on a novel with the assistance of a New Zealand Society of Authors Mentorship. She has been previously published in the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017, and Landfall, Headland and brief literary journals.
• Robert McLean is a poet, short-story writer, critic and reviewer. He is editing a selection of Dan Davin’s poetry, which will be published by Cold Hub Press in early 2018. Born in Christchurch, he lives in Featherston and he works in Wellington for the New Zealand government.
• Peri Miller is currently finishing up a Bachelor of Communications through Massey University, and looking to study towards a Master’s as of 2018. She has previously written a book review column for Massey University’s student magazine, and plans to one day have credentials stronger than ‘student’.
• Natalie Modrich is a 20-year-old student, born and raised in Auckland, who is currently studying for a Bachelor of Arts in English at Massey University in Albany. At the moment, she writes poetry mainly as a hobby, but aspires to see more of her work in print in the future.
• Fardowsa Mohamed is a student at the University of Otago, currently in her fifth year of studying medicine. She has been writing poetry since she was a child. Her poetry has been published once before, in Landfall 233.
• Reade Moore is passionate about poetry, genealogy and stories that delve into these subjects. Her story ‘Watercolours’ earned third place in the 2017 Page & Blackmore short story competition, judged by Kevin Ireland.
• Margaret Moores was a bookseller for many years, but now works as a publisher’s sales representative. She lives in Auckland, and has recently completed a Master’s of Creative Writing at Massey University. Her poems and short fiction have been published in journals and anthologies in New Zealand and Australia.
• Elizabeth Morton is published in New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Australia and Ireland. Her first poetry collection, Wolf, was published by Mākaro Press in 2017. She was feature poet in the 2017 Poetry New Zealand Yearbook. www.ekmorton.com.
• Shereen Asha Murugayah was born and bred in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but now lives in Dunedin, pursuing a PhD in science. Her work has appeared in The Poetry Kit, Shot Glass Journal and Rambutan Literary.
• Heidi North-Bailey is a writer from Auckland. Her poetry and short stories have been published in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. Heidi’s first poetry book, Possibility of Flight, was published by Wellington publisher Mākaro Press, in 2015. She joined the Shanghai International Writers Programme along with 10 other writers worldwide as the New Zealand fellow in September–October 2016. She was awarded the Hachette/NZSA mentorship for 2017 to work on her first novel.
• Keith Nunes lives beside Lake Rotoma, where the two of them undertake a great deal of reflecting. He has had works published around the globe, has placed in competitions and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His book of poetry and short fiction, catching a ride on a paradox, is sold by the lunatic fringe.
• Jessamine O Connor lives in the west of Ireland where she facilitates ‘Epic Award’ winners, The Hermit Collective, the Wrong Side of the Tracks Writers, and also coordinates conversational English classes in a local town. Her four self-published chapbooks are available from www.jessamineoconnor.com.
• Charles Olsen is a New Zealand artist and poet, who has been based in Madrid, Spain, since 2003. He has translated both Spanish and New Zealand poets. His website is www.charlesolsen.es.
• Bob Orr has lived most of his adult life in Auckland, but now makes his home on the Thames Coast. He was the recipient of the 2017 Writer in Residence award at Waikato University. His most recent book is Odysseus in Woolloomooloo, published by Steele Roberts in 2014. He is currently working on poems inspired by a Waikato childhood.
• Jacqueline Crompton Ottaway is an Auckland poet who has published extensively in local journals and anthologies. Her books include Travels in the Antipodes: A Collection of Poems (Piper’s Ash, 1999), Phosphorescence On the Oars (BF Publishing, 2006) and The Lion Roars: Piha Poems, with paintings by Barbara Pflaum (Glen Esk Publishing, 2009).
• Lilián Pallares is from Barranquilla, Colombia. In 2017 she received the XIV distinction Poetas de Otros Mundos (Poets from Other Worlds) for the high quality of her poetic oeuvre from the Fondo Poético Internacional (International Poetry Fund), Spain. She has published a collection of short stories, Ciudad Sonámbula, which has been translated as the ebook Sleepwalking City, and her latest poetry collection is Pájaro, Vértigo (Huerga & Fierro, 2014). She was selected among the 10 best young Latin-American writers by About.com, New York, 2011. Her website is www.lilianpallares.com.
• I. K. Paterson-Harkness is a Dunedin-born writer and musician who now lives in Auckland. Her poetry has previously been published in Landfall, JAAM, Poetry New Zealand and takahē.
• Mark Pirie is a Wellington poet, publisher, literary critic and archivist for PANZA (Poetry Archive of NZ Aotearoa). His latest collections are Rock and Roll: Selected Poems in Five Sets (Bareknuckle Books, 2016) and Ride the Tempest: Uncollected Early Poems 1993-1995 (Earl of Seacli Art Workshop, 2016). In 2017, he edited the football poetry anthology Boots: A Selection of Football Poetry 1890–2017 (HeadworX), and is preparing a new edition of his rugby poems Sidelights.
• Joanna Preston is a Tasmanaut poet, editor and freelance creative writing tutor. Her first collection, The Summer King (OUP, 2009), won both the 2008 Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry and the 2010 Mary Gilmore Prize. Her poems have been published widely, most recently in JAAM, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook and Landfall. She is the poetry editor for takahē magazine.
• Lindsay Rabbitt published the poetry books Upagainstit, On The Line and Thewayofit (the latter two illustrated with line drawings by Jane Pountney) in the 1980s; his essay These Lives I Have Buried was published as part of the Montana Estates Essay series in 2004. He is currently completing two manuscripts: ‘My Mother Was Mrs Central Otago’ (a family memoir) and ‘Prayers for the Living and the Dead’ (a collection of poetry) from which ‘Flowers’ comes.
• Mary Rainsford is a poet living in Wellington. She is currently studying English Literature and Criminology at Victoria University. In 2014, she won the New Zealand Poetry Society Competition. She was a regional finalist in the 2016 Slam Poetry Competition.
• Essa Ranapiri (f.k.a. Joshua Morris) is a trans non-binary individual. They have previously been published in Mayhem, brief, Poetry New Zealand, Them, and Starling. They will write until they’re dead.
• Vaughan Rapatahana is a New Zealand writer and reviewer. Although perhaps best known for his poetry, his bibliography also includes prose fiction, educational material, academic articles, philosophy and language critiques. Rapatahana is of Māori ancestry, and many of his works deal with the subjects of colonial repression and cultural encounter. His writing has been published in New Zealand and internationally. He was the winner of the inaugural Proverse Poetry Prize (2016). His latest poetry collection is ternian (erbacce-press, Liverpool, 2017).
• Sahanika Ratnayake is a vaguely nomadic person: her parents moved to New Zealand from Sri Lanka when she was five, and since then she has lived intermittently in New Zealand, Melbourne, and the United Kingdom. Aside from writing poetry, she studies philosophy, an activity she fears is an obscene decadence and a scam.
• Ron Riddell has worked and performed in many countries. A painter, musician and the author of a number of plays and novels, he has published 21 collections of verse. His latest book of poems is called Dance of Blue Dragonflies (Printable Reality, 2016). His work has been translated into German, Japanese, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi and Spanish. He is the current chairperson of the Titirangi Poets.
• Gillian Roach is an Auckland poet and novelist. She has a BA in English literature and language from Victoria University, and a diploma in journalism. Gillian recently graduated with a Master’s of Creative Writing from AUT. For her Master’s in Creative Writing, she worked on a poetry collection, ‘Bread Winner’, exploring the question, ‘What do you do?’ (available in AUT creative commons).
• Jeremy Roberts is a resident of Napier, where he MCs at Napier Live Poets. He has appeared at poetry events in many locations, and has had work published in a wide range of journals. He has performed and recorded poems with musicians in New Zealand, Texas, Saigon and Jakarta. His collected works, Cards on the Table, was published by IP in 2015.
• Jack Ross is the managing editor of Poetry New Zealand. He works as a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University’s Auckland campus. His latest collection A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981–2014 was published by HeadworX in 2014. See further his blog, The Imaginary Museum: http://mairangibay.blogspot.com/.
• Lisa Samuels is a transnational poet whose recent works include the novel Tender Girl (Dusie, 2015), the anthology A TransPacific Poetics (Litmus Press, 2017, with co-editor Sawako Nakayasu), and the poetry books Symphony for Human Transport (Shearsman, 2017) and Foreign Native (forthcoming 2018). She teaches writing and theory at the University of Auckland.
• Emma Shi was the winner of the National Schools Poetry Award 2013, and her work has been published in literary journals such as Landfall. She is currently studying Classics at Victoria University of Wellington. She writes at facebook.com/emmlexx.
• Sarah Shirley lives with her husband, her two young children, and a big brown dog. She is a junior doctor working in Hamilton. Her poems have appeared in takahē, Poetry New Zealand, Star*Line, Intima, Pedestal and elsewhere.
• Jane Simpson is a Christchurch-based historian, poet and tutor. Her poems have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, takahē, Meniscus and Social Alternatives, and in a number of anthologies in New Zealand and Australia. Her first full-length collection, A world without maps, was published in 2016 by Interactive Publications (Brisbane). She has recently completed work on a second collection.
• Ruby Mae Hinepunui Solly is a Ngāi Tahu writer and musician. Her writing has been published in Minarets, brief and Redraft. She often writes about themes of cultural identity, and lives in Wellington with her partner and pet chicken.
• Laura Solomon is the author of several novels, three short story collections and two poetry collections.
• Bill Sutton lives in Napier. He has worked as a scientist, politician and policy analyst, and his poems have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, takahē, JAAM, Blackmail Press, Catalyst, and Broadsheet. His second poetry collection, Billy Button — A Life, was published in 2016 (HB Poetry Press).
• Richard Taylor is an Aucklander who has been published in various journals, including some previous Poetry New Zealands. His two main books are RED (Dead Poets, 1996) and Conversation With a Stone (Titus, 2007). It is said of Taylor that his mind is like an enormous ice-cream.
• Loren Thomas is a writer from the Waikato region. She has previously been published in Poetry New Zealand, Mayhem and brief.
• Nicola Thorstensen lives and writes in Dunedin. Her poetry has appeared in takahē, The Otago Daily Times, Poetry New Zealand and the political anthology Manifesto. She is a member of the Octagon Poetry Collective, which organises local poetry readings.
• Vivienne Ullrich has had a lifelong affair with words as a reader, teacher, lawyer and poet. Last year she completed a Master’s in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University.
• Roland Vogt is an ‘ex creative writing tutor at Hawke’s Bay Polytech and overseas English teacher, now in hometown Wellington. Actually near the Waiwhetu taniwha and my first paper round.’
• Richard von Sturmer was born in Devonport in 1957. His latest book, This Explains Everything, was published by Atuanui Press in November 2016. He also works with musician and filmmaker Gabriel White as The Floral Clocks. Their second CD, A Beautiful Shade of Blue, was released in May 2017.
• Janet Wainscott lives near Christchurch. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction, and her writing has been published in takahē, Bravado and Shot Glass Journal (US).
• Devon Webb is a 19-year-old full-time writer residing in Auckland. She writes: ‘Poetry is one of my greatest passions and I use it as a tool to express my emotions, communicate with others and spread positive messages in a political era of excess hatred and negativity. I am currently building up my body of poetic work at a rapid pace as I work on my debut novel, the first draft of which currently sits at over 100,000 words.’
• Jen Webb is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Canberra. Her work includes the poetry collection, Proverbs from Sierra Leone (Five Islands Press, 2004) and the short story collection, Ways of Getting By (Ginninderra Press, 2006) as well as, more recently, the chapbook Stolen Stories, Borrowed Lines (Mark Time Press, 2015).
• Mercedes Webb-Pullman completed a Master’s in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington in 2011. Her work has appeared online and in print in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain and Palestine, in Turbine, 4th Floor, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, Pure Slush, Swamp, Scum, Reconfigurations, The Electronic Bridge, Otoliths, Connotations, Main Street Rag and Caesura, among others, and in her books. She lives in Paekakariki, New Zealand.
• Robyn Yudana Wellwood writes: ‘I have written and published articles for newspaper publications such as Jakarta Post in between being a mother, teacher, gallery owner and traveller. For the past two decades I have been living between New Zealand and Bali with my two children and husband. This is part of my first collection of poems on the themes of personal responses to bicultural passages of everyday rites. It’s deeply personal and I simply could not have written this material when I was younger.’
• Maualaivao Albert Wendt is recognised internationally as one of Samoa’s, the Pacific’s, and New Zealand’s most significant novelists and poets. He has published numerous novels, collections of poetry and stories, and edited notable anthologies. His work has been translated into many languages and taught around the world.
• Sigred Yamit studies Psychology at the University of Canterbury. She has been published in two of Printable Reality’s anthologies: We Society (2015) and Plate in the Mirror (2016). In her spare time she reads about famous dead people, writes poetry, and watches movies of a specific genre (lately it has been gangster movies).
• Mark Young’s most recent books are Ley Lines (2016) and bricolage (2017), both from gradient books of Finland, The Chorus of the Sphinxes (2016), from Moria Books in Chicago, and some more strange meteorites (2017), from Meritage & i.e. Press, California/New York.

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ABOUT POETRY NEW ZEALAND:

Poetry New Zealand is New Zealand’s longest-running poetry magazine, showcasing new writing from this country and overseas. It presents the work of talented newcomers and developing writers as well as that of established leaders in the field.

Founded by Wellington poet Louis Johnson, who edited it from 1951 to 1964 as the New Zealand Poetry Yearbook, it was revived as a biennial volume by Frank McKay in 1971, a series which lasted until 1984. David Drummond (in collaboration with Oz Kraus’s Brick Row Publishing) began to publish it again biannually in 1990. The journal reached its 48th issue in 2014, the year its present managing editor, Jack Ross of Massey University’s School of English and Media Studies, took it back to its roots by renaming it the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook.

Poetry New Zealand has been edited by some of New Zealand’s most distinguished poets and academics, including Elizabeth Caffin, Grant Duncan, Riemke Ensing, Bernard Gadd, Leonard Lambert, Harry Ricketts, Elizabeth Smither and Brian Turner. The journal was overseen from 1993 to 2014 by celebrated poet, novelist, anthologist, editor and literary critic Alistair Paterson ONZM, with help from master printer John Denny of Puriri Press, and guest editors Owen Bullock, Siobhan Harvey and Nicholas Reid.

The magazine’s policy is to support poetry and poets both in New Zealand and overseas. Each issue since 1994 has contained a substantial feature showcasing the work of a developing or established poet. It also includes a selection of poetry from New Zealand and abroad, as well as essays, reviews and critical commentary.

The editor is grateful to Associate Professor Jenny Lawn, Head of the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University, for her financial support of this edition.

Managing editor
Jack Ross
editor@poetrynz.net

Advisory board

• Thom Conroy
• Jen Crawford
• John Denny
• Matthew Harris
• Ingrid Horrocks
• David Howard
• Bronwyn Lloyd
• Alistair Paterson
• Tracey Slaughter
• Bryan Walpert

Website: www.poetrynz.net
Webmaster: Warren Olds
Blog: poetrynzblog.blogspot.co.nz
Index: poetrynz.blogspot.co.nz

Submissions: The submission dates for each issue are between 1 May and 31 July of each year. Submit either (preferably) by email, with your poems pasted in the body of the message or included as a MSWord file attachment; or by post, to the address below, with a stamped self-addressed envelope, and contact details in your covering letter.

Dr Jack Ross
School of English and Media Studies
Massey University, Albany Campus
Private Bag 102904
North Shore Mail Centre
Auckland 0745

Please remember to include a short biography and current postal address with your submission. Contributors to each issue will receive a free copy.

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BACK COVER:

Poetry NZ Yearbook 2017

FRONT COVER:

Design by Jo Bailey, Thomas Le Bas and Fay McAlpine /
Typeset by Kate Barraclough



Poetry NZ Yearbook 2017
Editor: Jack Ross

ISBN 978-0-9941363-5-0. 352 pp.

Auckland: Massey University Press, March 2017


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TITLE PAGE:

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CONTENTS:

Editorial:

1. Jack Ross / Hands across the Tasman / 14

Featured Poet:

2. Elizabeth Morton / 22
1. Invoking the muse, in the garden / 23
2. Words / 24
3. Where we go / 25
4. Searching all creatures / 26
5. Filling in the forms / 28
6. Googling refugees / 29
7. Distance / 30
8. The bridge / 31
9. fever / 32
10. Taxing the ghost / 33
11. The eating of sorrow / 34
12. Husk / 35
13. Yellow fruit / 36
14. Sometimes I dream America / 38
15. Black Jasmine / 39
16. SPOILER: in the end everybody disappears / 40
17. St Francis drunk dials his creatures / 42
18. Losing you / 43
19. An archeologist was here / 44
20. Somebody else’s shoes / 45
21. Reincarnation / 46
3. Jack Ross / An Interview with Elizabeth Morton / 48

New Poems:
4. Raewyn Alexander / celebrating blank / 54
5. Gary Allen / London buses / 55
6. Emily Andersen / Wellington, 2014 / 56
7. Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor / Tangihia Ngā Tamariki ā Papatūānuku (Angelwing) / 57
8. Shelley Arlidge / My Vicious Eel / 58
9. Nick Ascroft / Heraclitus’s Riddle / 59
10. Stu Bagby / Two pheasants in the snow / Joined in / 60
11. Helen Bascand / Holding Hands / 62
12. Rebecca Beardsall / Molasses / 63
13. Robert James Berry / Asylum / Commemorate Me / 64
14. Harriet Beth / Word Forplay / 66
15. Tony Beyer / after Hesiod / Plage / 67
16. Tyler Bigney / Insomnia / Siam Reap / 69
17. Iain Britton / from Enclosed in Parentheses (Love Songs by Numbers) / 72
18. Victoria Broome / How We Talk to Each Other / 73
19. Owen Bullock / Five hard cover books / 74
20. Saskia Bunce-Rath / Small Hopes / 75
21. Stephanie Christie / A Season in Healthcare / 76
22. Mary Cresswell / Where the Sandstone Came from / 78
23. Adam Day / White Clouds in Dark Valleys / 79
24. Doc Drumheller / Ode to a Turkey Buzzard / 80
25. Johanna Emeney / Fight / Trashed / 82
26. Riemke Ensing / Light / Not any old playground / 85
27. Sue Fitchett / Journeys with books / 87
28. Callum Gentleman / Dunedin / 89
29. Rata Gordon / Celestial Bodies / 91
30. Susan Green / Love Poem / 94
31. Vaughan Gunson / Michelangelo’s Poems / 95
32. Emma Harris / Frank / 96
33. Paula Harris / there is a scratch on the inside of my right knee / 98
34. René Harrison / Jazz Singer: For Caitlin Smith / 100
35. Mohamed Hassan / the cyst / 101
36. Trevor Hayes / Checkout / 103
37. Helen Heath / The girl with the mouse-like eyes / 104
38. Elsbeth Hill / Hoarder / 105
39. Alice Hooton / Memoriam / 107
40. Gail Ingram / The parameters / 108
41. Rata Ingram / Science Fair, Age 10 / 109
42. Anna Jackson / Whale and barnacles / 110
43. Ross Jackson / When they ask him / 112
44. Abriana Jetté / Breaking Fast / 113
45. Richard Jordan / Paper Sailboat / 114
46. Robert Kempen / Beehive Precinct / 115
47. Sid Khanzode / My Struggle / 116
48. Raina Kingsley / Initiates / 117
49. Leonard Lambert / Gotten Island / 118
50. Wes Lee / The Players Are Dead / 119
51. Michele Leggott / Emily and Her Sisters / 122
52. Louise Lever / Skin tags / 127
53. Liang Yujing / Raindrops / 128
54. Olivia Macassey / The reason why I didn’t call this poem Ariadne on Naxos / 129
55. Andrew McIntyre / Dinosaurs / Sonnet 8 / 130
56. Caoimhe McKeogh / to touch / 132
57. Mary Macpherson / The Friend / 133
58. Owen Marshall / Monk Sherborne / In Defiance of Poverty / 134
59. Carol Millner / Renting / 136
60. Margi Mitcalfe / neglected gifts / 137
61. Margaret Moores / Foresight / 138
62. Joshua Morris / La Petite Mort / 139
63. Idoya Munn / I wish I could live in the sky / 140
64. Janet Newman / Sparrows / Suddenly Rabbit / 141
65. Dot Nicholson / Waiting in Hospital / 143
66. Heidi North-Bailey / Five years later / 144
67. Keith Nunes / scatterlings over Golden Bay / 146
68. Jessamine O Connor / Original Sin / 147
69. Charles Olsen / When you least expect / 148
70. Chris Parsons / A Song for Ian Paisley / 149
71. I. K. Paterson-Harkness / Crows only laugh in Tokyo / 150
72. Kiri Piahana-Wong / Lithium / 151
73. Joanna Preston / Spelunking / 152
74. Hayden Pyke / You Say You Got to Leave Someone / 154
75. Vaughan Rapatahana / tō tero i te haki o ingarangi – screw the flag of England / 155
76. Sahanika Ratnayake / Murmur / 157
77. Nicholas Reid / After Fog / 159
78. Edward Reilly / Letters from Kraków / 160
79. Ron Riddell / Ezra Pound at St Elizabeths Hospital / 162
80. David Romanda / Dear Jesus / 163
81. Jo-Ella Sarich / Introverts’ party / 164
82. L. E. Scott / Dust to Dust / 165
83. Kerrin P. Sharpe / the projector ruled / 166
84. Emma Shi / it’s okay to lie if you mean it / it wasn’t her, it was you / 168
85. Sarah Shirley / Cognitive Assessment / 170
86. Antonia Smith / Miracles / 171
87. Elizabeth Smither / The name in the freezer / 172
88. Courtney Speedy / Untitled / 173
89. Michael Steven / Tower ’96 / 177
90. Bill Sutton / The Khaki and Black Tour / 178
91. Richard Taylor / Considerations / 179
92. Loren Thomas / Endo / 180
93. Nicola Thorstensen / Dunedin Selfies / 182
94. Iva Vemić / The Savage Truth / 183
95. Suzanne Verrall / A poem is not a tree … / 184
96. Devon Webb / Note to Self / 185
97. Mercedes Webb-Pullman / Housework / 189
98. Anna Woods / Makings / 190
99. Mark Young / A Line from Bashar al-Assad / 191
100. Karen Zelas / Paraparaumu / 192

Essays:
101. Janet Charman / A piece of why / 196
102. Lisa Samuels / Affective mind and blood language and Stephanie Christie / 214
103. Bryan Walpert / ‘The zodiac of his own wit’: Poetry and History (or, how to write a good lyric poem about history) / 230

Reviews:
104. Mary Cresswell / Ron Riddell - Barry Southam - MaryJane Thomson - Jessica Wilkinson / 248
     
     • Ron Riddell. Dance of Blue Dragonflies. ISBN 978-0-473-33974-6. Auckland: Printable Reality, 2016. RRP $25. 76 pp.
     • Barry Southam. Exits and Entrances: Stories and Poems. ISBN 978-0-9941295-9-8. Nelson: Copy Press Books, 2016. RRP $19.95. 136 pp.
     • MaryJane Thomson. Lonely Earth. ISBN 978-0-473-33973-9. Wellington: HeadworX, 2015. RRP $30. 90 pp.
     • Jessica L. Wilkinson. Suite for Percy Grainger: A Biography. ISBN 978-1-922181-20-6. Sydney: Vagabond Press, 2014. RRP AU$25. 136 pp.
105. Hamish Dewe / Helen Jacobs - Heidi North-Bailey - Keith Westwater / 258
     
     • Helen Jacobs. Withstanding. ISBN 978-0-9941172-8-1. Hoopla Series. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2016. RRP $25. 58 pp.
     • Heidi North-Bailey. Possibility of Flight. ISBN 978-0-9941299-2-5. Submarine Poetry. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2015. RRP $25. 76 pp.
     • Keith Westwater. Felt Intensity. ISBN 978-0-9941299-1-8. Submarine Poetry. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2015. RRP $25. 76 pp.
106. Rachael Elliott / Ken Canning / Burraga Gutya - Sudesh Mishra - Raewyn Alexander / 266
     
     • Ken Canning — Burraga Gutya. Yimbama. ISBN 978-1-922181-43-5. Sydney: Vagabond Press, 2015. RRP AU$25. 97 pp.
     • Sudesh Mishra. The Lives of Coat Hangers. ISBN 978-1-927322-37-6. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2016. RRP $25. 100 pp.
     • Raewyn Alexander. Our Mother Flew Unassisted. ISBN 978-0-473-26666-0. Auckland: Brightspark Books, 2016. RRP $22. 64 pp.
107. Johanna Emeney / Chris Price - Gregory Kan / 272
     
     • Chris Price. Beside Herself. ISBN 978-1-86940-846-6. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2016. RRP $24.99. 120 pp.
     • Gregory Kan. This Paper Boat. ISBN 978-1-86940-845-9. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2016. RRP $24.99. 84 pp.
108. Matthew Harris / Life is Not a Journey: Michael O’Leary / 279
     
     • Michael O’Leary. Main Trunk Lines: Collected Railway Poems. ISBN 978-0-473-32917-4. Wellington: HeadworX, 2015. RRP $25. 80 pp.
109. Joshua Morris / Vaughan Gunson - Nicholas Reid / 284
     
     • Vaughan Gunson. Big Love Songs. ISBN 978-0-473334-49-9. Whangarei: Vaughan Gunson, 2016. RRP $30. 50 pp.
     • Nicholas Reid. Mirror World. ISBN 978-0-947493-10-3. Wellington: Steele Roberts Aotearoa, 2016. RRP $19.99. 83 pp.
110. Janet Newman / Pam Brown / 288
     
     • Pam Brown. Missing Up. ISBN 978-1-922181-50-3. Sydney: Vagabond Press, 2015. RRP AU$25. 160 pp.
111. Jessica Pawley / Harvey Molloy / 291
     
     • Harvey Molloy. Udon by the Remarkables. ISBN 978-0-9941172-9-8. Hoopla Series. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2016. RRP $25. 78 pp.
112. Jack Ross / Nicholas Williamson - Antonios Papaspiropoulos - Cilla McQueen - Jen Crawford / 293
     
     • Nicholas Williamson. The Blue Outboard: New and Selected Poems. ISBN 978-0-473-32059-1. Port Chalmers: Black Doris Press, 2016. RRP $15. 93 pp.
     • Antonios Papaspiropoulos. Poems from the George Wilder Cottage: A Poetry Cycle. Southbank, VIC: St Antoni Publishing, 2015. RRP AU$35. 72 pp.
     • Cilla McQueen. In a Slant Light: A Poet’s Memoir. ISBN 978-1-877578-71-7. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2016. RRP $35. 135 pp.
     • Jen Crawford. Koel. Introduction by Divya Victor. ISBN 978-0-9942596-8-4. Melbourne: Cordite Books, 2016. xiv + 81 pp. RRP AU$20.00.
113. Ila Selwyn / Ken Bolton - Pete Carter / 303
     
     • Ken Bolton. London Journal London Poem, or ‘Pendant’. ISBN 978-1-922181-61-9. Sydney: Vagabond Press, 2015. RRP AU$20. 68 pp.
     • Pete Carter. Buddy’s Brother. ISBN 978-0-9941299-0-1. Submarine Poetry. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2015. RRP $30. 62 pp.
114. Richard Taylor / Ish Doney - Lynley Edmeades / 306
     
     • Ish Doney. Where the fish grow. ISBN 978-0-9941237-1-8. Hoopla Series. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2016. RRP $25. 50 pp.
     • Lynley Edmeades. As the Verb Tenses. ISBN 978-1-927322-25-3. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2016. RRP $25. 64 pp.
115. Steven Toussaint / Tomaž Šalamun / 312
     
     • Tomaž Šalamun. Justice. 2012. Translated from the Slovenian by Michael Thomas Taren and Tomaž Šalamun. European Poetry. ISBN 978-1-922181-10-7. Sydney: Vagabond Press, 2013. RRP $AUS 25. 78 pp.

Books & Magazines in brief:

116. Jack Ross / 318
     1. brief 54: Love. Ed. Olivia Macassey. ISSN 1175-9313. Pokeno, Auckland: The Writers Group, 2016. RRP $20. 136 pp.
     2. John Dickson. Mister Hamilton. ISBN 978-1-86940-855-8. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2016. RRP $24.99. 84 pp.
     3. Michael Harlow. Nothing for it but to sing. ISBN 978-1-927322-62-8. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2016. RRP $25. 64 pp.
     4. IKA 4: Journal of Literature and Art. Ed. Anne Kennedy. ISSN 2253-5993. Manukau: MIT, 2016. RRP $27.99. vi + 146 pp.
     5. JAAM 33: Small Departures. Ed. Kiri Piahana-Wong and Rosetta Allan. ISSN 1173-633X. Wellington: JAAM Collective, 2015. RRP $25. 147 pp.
     6. Polina Kouzminova. An echo where you lie. ISBN 978-0-9941299-4-9. Submarine Poetry. Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2016. RRP $25. 47 pp.
     7. Frankie McMillan. My Mother and the Hungarians and Other Small Fictions. ISBN 978-1-927145-87-6. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2016. RRP $25. 114 pp.

About the Contributors / 326

About Poetry New Zealand / 348

•

Elizabeth Morton
[self-portrait]

EDITORIAL:

Hands Across the Tasman

An interesting package arrived in my Massey University pigeonhole late last year. It was a large cardboard box packed full of books. They’d all come from the same publisher, Vagabond Press of Sydney (and Tokyo). Among others, there were ten small chapbooks from the decibel series (selected and edited by senior Australian poet Pam Brown), as well as six volumes of the Asia-Pacific Poetry series, a set of anthologies covering different poetries (in translation), each showcasing the work of three representative poets from a particular region.

There was also a bookmark at the bottom of the box. It read:

Please review our books. Shouting from the rooftops wasn’t as effective as we hoped.

I’ve done my best to respond to this heartfelt plea. I can’t promise to have included a review of every single title, but certainly the lion’s share are discussed here, along with the usual bumper crop of local books and journals.

More than a third of this issue is, in fact, devoted to reviews and essays, and that’s a trend I hope will continue. We can’t review everything, but the fact that we’ve been able to include discussions of poets from places as diverse as Australia, China and Slovenia — as well as New Zealand, of course — gives some indication of the kind of scope we aspire to.

The box of books was sent, I suspect, as a direct result of the contacts and friendships which have been growing up over the past few years between Australian and New Zealand poets. The work (among many others) of Michele Leggott at the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre and Anna Jackson at Victoria University in arranging symposia in Auckland, Wellington, Sydney and Melbourne has certainly made helped to make some of us more familiar with one another’s work.

I have to say I was blown away by the scope and self-confidence of the poets published by Vagabond Press (including, I should add, our own Stephanie Christie, whose work is discussed in greater detail in this issue in Lisa Samuels’ essay). No doubt it was Pam Brown herself who arranged to have them sent to me. It was great to see one of her own books in there as well.

It did get me thinking about the nature of the links between the two places, however. I myself am half-Australian (or so I like to claim). My mother was born and brought up in Chatswood, Sydney, and came over to New Zealand in her mid-twenties to get a job as a hospital house surgeon. She met my father in Hamilton, and the rest is history.

History of a kind, at any rate. While my father’s father, a Scot, was serving in minesweepers during World War I, my other grandfather fought as an Australian infantryman on the Western Front. I was lucky enough to meet him a few times on our trips across the Tasman, but not, alas, my Scottish grandfather, who died during World War II.

Australia is so different from New Zealand, in so many ways: so incomparably more ancient, so culturally distinct. True, growing up, Norman Lindsay’s Magic Pudding became as familiar to us as Alice in Wonderland (I continue to see it as just as great a work). I do find it interesting, though, that my mother still considers herself a proud Australian, despite having lived in New Zealand for sixty-odd years: more than twice as long as she lived in the country of her birth. Mind you, she cheers for the All Blacks over the Wallabies.

But there remains a deep Australianness in her: little things like the flat ‘a’s’ in branch and can’t, but also a stubborn frankness and refusal to mince words — none of the face-saving, mealy-mouthed timidity of so much New Zealand speech.

I was fortunate enough to be able to study in Scotland for four years in the late 1980s. Edinburgh remains (with Prague) one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. Perhaps the most important thing I learnt there was, however (as I put it in a poem at the time): ‘I am not / A Scot.’

My heritage is Scottish, my father’s parents were Scottish, but he was born in Rawene, in the Far North, and, as a result, I am a New Zealander in every way that counts.

Similarly, my mother’s Australian background has gifted me with various relatives and a number of fine memories from over there: the Blue Mountains from a distance, the grandeur of Sydney Harbour. But I’m not Australian.

I’ve been shocked by many acts of the Australian government over the past few years: the razor-wire fences holding in refugees, the prison camps at Nauru and elsewhere. It’s hard not to want to speak out about such things. But I take it for granted that that’s precisely what Australian writers and dissidents do all the time. We may not hear much of that on the TV here, but those voices are audible on some of the more adventurous news outlets available to us now in the digital age.

If they need any help with that, they have only to ask. But I don’t feel my sentimental Australianness gives me any right to butt in as some kind of self-appointed judge. It’s not as if we don’t have our own fair share of horrors to apologise for and attempt to atone for on this side of the sea that divides (and/or unifies?) us.

•

All of which brings me to my choice of a poet to feature in this issue. I first encountered Liz Morton when she sent me some poems out of the blue. This was before I’d started to edit Poetry New Zealand, but I think she’d been advised to by one of my Creative Writing students here at Massey.

There’s always a certain trepidation in looking at other people’s poetry for the first time. What if you don’t like it? What if you can’t think of anything to say? But I did like it. Somewhat to my surprise, I found that it really spoke to me.

That must have been some time in 2013, because shortly after that, and after meeting her in person, I asked her to read at our Open Day here at the Auckland campus. She read almost as beautifully as she wrote, and it came as little surprise when she won the New Voices Emerging Poet Competition later that year.

There’s an important balance we try to uphold in Poetry New Zealand between (as we say in our blurb): ‘the work of talented newcomers and developing writers as well as that of established leaders in the field’. This has been the case since the magazine’s inception, and it’s a principle which was observed faithfully by Alistair Paterson, my predecessor as editor.

The poet I encountered in 2013 could certainly have been called a ‘talented newcomer’: her work was powerful and raw and close to the bone, but not (perhaps) as nuanced as it has now become. While I suppose one should still refer to her as a ‘developing writer’, I see the poems she’s writing now as a solid contribution to the New Zealand poetic archipelago.

I guess it’s her blend of the personal and political that I find particularly relevant at present. It’s risky to comment on developing news stories, as she does in such poems as ‘Googling refugees’. ‘Who am I to talk?’ is the question that undercuts such pieces. But waiting until one has a bit of tranquillity to contemplate the experience (to paraphrase Wordsworth’s description of the lyric) unfortunately also often entails leaving it too late:

the children were flotsam.
... they were silty smiles
and ponytailed heads and cleft palates
and birth marks. they were real deal
children and, yes, we saved them

on the hard-drives of our smartphones
and uploaded them to YouTube.

it really was the least we could do.

I think that makes the point perfectly. We need to speak out, but we also need to be very, very careful just how we speak out. If that sounds somewhat less than stirring, not altogether resonant, well, hey, that’s poetry for you: always second-guessing itself.

Elizabeth Morton second-guesses herself with elegance and wit on the lip of an abyss of real, thoroughly lived-through experience. I hope it’s obvious by now that I go to her poems to learn, not to judge — and if I’d ever thought there was anything I could teach her, the illusion was a short-lived one: it lasted about as long as it took to open that first file of poems.

•

Speaking of judging, I think it’s now time to move on to the announcement you’ve all been waiting for (though no doubt most of you have already seen it online): the Poetry NZ Poetry Prize. It was a very hard job, with so many stellar entries, but I’ve ended up with the following choices:

First prize ($500):Emma Shi,
for ‘it’s okay to lie if you mean it’ (page 168 in this issue)
Second prize ($300):Devon Webb,
for ‘Note to Self’ (page 185)
Third prize ($200):Hayden Pyke,
for ‘You Say You Got to Leave Someone’ (p.154)

There’s a delicacy and beauty in Emma Shi’s work which leaves me in awe. I think I understand enough of what she’s driving at in this poem for it to terrify me, too. Pity and awe — isn’t that close to Burke’s definition of the sublime?

Devon Webb’s poem is more infectious and anthemic, but it conceals a certain subtlety beneath its apparent self-assurance: a very impressive debut in Poetry New Zealand for this young writer.

Hayden Pyke’s lyric is one of three interesting short poems he sent in. It seems to me to hit a lot of marks simultaneously, a considerable feat of legerdemain.

•

As part of the changes necessitated by the shift to our new publisher, Massey University Press, we will be selling each annual issue separately in future, and no longer as part of a one- or two-year subscription. Our existing obligations under the old subscriptions policy will, of course, be fulfilled, but Poetry New Zealand Yearbook will henceforth be sold through the MUP website, as well (of course) as in good bookshops everywhere.

Our thanks go out to all of those valiant subscribers who have kept the magazine afloat for so many years. It goes without saying that we’re still going to need your support to continue, but it now seems more practical to market each issue as a discrete item, rather than as part of a package.

You can find fuller details of all this on both our Poetry New Zealand website and the MUP website: www.masseypress.ac.nz.

•

And so, in conclusion, I’m very glad Pam sent me that box of books. I can’t promise to manage quite so many reviews in the future for any similarly enterprising small publishers, but I’ll certainly continue to do my best.

Shouting from the rooftops really doesn’t work very well long-term. All writers depend on getting sound, well-considered reviews from their peers, and I feel that’s at least as important a part of Poetry New Zealand’s remit as providing a showcase for so many poets, young and old (97 — by my count — in this issue alone).

— Jack Ross
December 2016

My mother feeding a wallaby (c. 1939)


•

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES:

• Raewyn Alexander lives in Grey Lynn, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, where she writes, teaches and works occasionally as an actor. Our Mother Flew Unassisted (Brightspark Books), a poetry collection ranging across nine years of work, was launched in 2016. Glam Rock Boyfriends, an imaginary memoir, was published in 2015; some stories have also published elsewhere or broadcast on RNZ National.
• Gary Allen has published fourteen collections, most recently Jackson’s Corner (Greenwich Exchange, 2016). A new collection, Mapland, will be published soon by Clemson University Press, South Carolina. Allen's poetry has been published widely in international literary magazines, including Australian Book Review, Meanjin, Westerly and Poetry New Zealand.
• Emily Andersen is a Melbourne poet who sometimes lives in Wellington, and has recently completed her MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Emily was mentored by the late Australian poet Dorothy Porter between 2004 and 2005, and made her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut in 2012 with her one-woman spoken-word show Love in the Key of Britpop. She has performed her poetry on BBC 6 Music, as well as at festivals and spoken-word events in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
• Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor is in her final year of a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Waikato. Her work has appeared in Starling, Mayhem and Tearaway thanks to the tireless support and encouragement of some of the best people on this great watery rock.
• Shelley Arlidge works as a gardener at Pompallier Mission in Russell. She won Massey University’s R. G. Frean Prize in 2006, and has been published in Landfall.
• Nick Ascroft is practically the Poet Laureate of Oamaru, a new Janet Frame if you will — or would like to be, if Fiona Farrell could gracefully make way. His latest collection, Back With the Human Condition, was published in 2016 by Victoria University Press.
• Stu Bagby was born in Te Kopuru in 1947. His first solo collection, As It Was in the Beginning, was nominated by the Sunday Star-Times as one of the best books of 2005. He has since published two more collections through Steele Roberts. He recently finished his first play, Ricochet.
• Helen Bascand was a stalwart of the Canterbury poetry scene, and the author of three poetry collections: windows on the morning side (Sudden Valley Press, 2001), into the vanishing point (Steele Roberts, 2007) and Nautilus (Pegasus Poets, 2013). An award-winning writer of poetry and haiku, Helen died in 2015. Her posthumous fourth collection will be published in 2017.
• Rebecca Beardsall is currently in her second year of the MFA program at Western Washington University. She has more than fifteen years’ experience in freelance writing in the United States and abroad. Her poetry has been published in various literary journals, including Common Ground Review, Amaranth and Origyns. She has written and co-edited three books: Philadelphia Reflections: Stories from the Delaware to the Schuylkill; Western Pennsylvania Reflections: Stories from the Alleghenies to Lake Erie; and Western Washington Reflections: Stories from the Puget Sound to Vancouver.
• Robert James Berry lives and writes in Dunedin. His work has been published widely. His latest collection, Gorgeous, appeared recently from Sylph Editions, London.
• Harriet Beth is a twenty-three-year-old from Wales who begun travelling at the start of 2016, with New Zealand as her first destination. She has fallen in love with the country, and the experiences and opportunities travel has provided her have inspired much of her recent writing. She’s not quite sure what’s next, but is excited to continue exploring the world, pen in hand.
• Tony Beyer is a writer in Taranaki whose recent work has appeared in Kokako, Otoliths, Poetry New Zealand and takahē.
• Tyler Bigney lives in Nova Scotia, Canada. His fiction and poetry has appeared in various journals and magazines in both North America and internationally, including Pearl, Nashwaak Review and Iodine.
• Iain Britton writes: ‘Since 2008, I’ve had five collections of poems published, mainly in the UK, Australia and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Most of my poetry is published in those countries, too.’
• Victoria Broome is a Christchurch writer who works in primary-care mental health. She has been published in the Chook book, Big sky, my garden, my paradise and land very fertile anthologies, and in Sport, Landfall, The Press, takahē, JAAM, Blackmail Press and The Quick Brown Dog.
• Owen Bullock’s publications include urban haiku (Recent Work Press, 2015) and sometimes the sky isn’t big enough (Steele Roberts, 2010). He won the Canberra Critics’ Circle Award for Poetry in 2015. He is a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Canberra.
• Saskia Bunce-Rath is very secretive with her poems and rarely shows them to people. She has a BFA from Elam, and likes it when things are quiet.
• Janet Charman, a prizewinning poet, has contributed an essay to this issue of Poetry New Zealand on the critical legacy of Allen Curnow, as informed by her reading of the Matrixial theories of Bracha Ettinger. Charman’s most recent collection, At the White Coast (AUP, 2012), was a memoir of a year working in London during the Thatcher era.
• Stephanie Christie writes: ‘My work can be heard on NZEPC’s Six-Pack Sound, and my books can be found through my website (www.stephaniechristie.xyz). My interest in form continues to mutate. At the moment I’m playing with hand-drawn words in poetic slices, and sharing them on Instagram (@stephaniejoychristie).’
• Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and lives on the Kāpiti Coast. She is a retired science editor/ tech writer. Canterbury University Press published her most recent book, Fish Stories, in 2015. Her work has appeared in Snorkel, Blackbird, The Ghazal Page, Poetry New Zealand and takahē.
• Adam Day is the author of the collection of poetry Model of a City in Civil War (Sarabande Books, 2015), and the recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and of a PEN Emerging Writers Award. His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Poetry London, American Poetry Review, Cordite, Iowa Review, Sweet Mammalian, Boston Review, Turbine and elsewhere. He also directs the Baltic Writing Residency in Sweden, Scotland and Blackacre State Nature Preserve.
• Hamish Dewe edited brief 43 in 2011. He was, back in the day, an editor of Salt (the Auckland one).
• Doc Drumheller was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and has lived in New Zealand for more than half his life. He has worked in award-winning groups for theatre and music, and has published ten collections of poetry. His poems have been translated into more than twenty languages, and he has performed in Cuba, Lithuania, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Japan, India, the United States, Nicaragua, and widely throughout New Zealand. He lives in Oxford, in Canterbury, where he edits and publishes the literary journal Catalyst.
• Rachael Elliott has an MA in creative writing from the University of Waikato. In 2015 she was editor of Nexus Magazine (which received three Aotearoa Student Press Association awards), and she won the 2degrees Poetry Slam. Her work has appeared in previous issues of Poetry New Zealand, Mayhem, 4th Floor and JAAM. Rachael is also a weekly columnist for Nexus and is on Mayhem’s editorial board. She lives in Raglan.
• Johanna Emeney is an Aucklander. She co-facilitates the Michael King Young Writers Programme with Rosalind Ali and teaches creative writing at Massey University. Her second collection of poetry, Family History, will be published in 2017 by Mākaro Press.
• Riemke Ensing was born in Groningen, The Netherlands, in 1939. With her parents, she immigrated to New Zealand at the age of twelve in 1951. At this stage of her life she spoke no English. In 1967 she was appointed as a tutor in the Department of English at the University of Auckland, where she taught until 1999. She has since been appointed an Honorary Research Fellow (Faculty of Arts), and in 2002 was a Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow. Her poetry is represented extensively in anthologies, and her work has appeared in many publications both in New Zealand and overseas. In 2012 Ensing won the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for Poetry.
• Sue Fitchett is a conservationist and a Waiheke Islander. Sue is the co-author or editor of several poetry books, and authored Palaver Lava Queen (AUP, 2004) and On the Wing (Steele Roberts, 2014). Her work has appeared in various publications in New Zealand and Australia, and has been performed at art shows.
• Callum Gentleman is a musician and poet. He is also one half of Panhandlers, a spoken-word/prepared guitar duo with Joel Vinsen. He has featured at many events around the country, including Escape! Festival Tauranga, Wellington LitCrawl, Poetry in Motion, Poetry Live, Inside Out, Printable Realities’ Pop Up Poets, Poetry Brothel and The Kerouac Effect. His writing has been published in Blackmail Press and Side Stream. He was once co-winner of The Metonomy Project’s ‘cutest couple’ award.
• Rata Gordon lives on Waiheke Island and coordinates an arts and youth development programme. Rata’s poems have found homes in a number of literary journals, including Landfall, JAAM, Sport, Blackmail Press and Sweet Mammalian.
• Susan Green is a psychotherapist, gardener and writer. She lives in West Auckland and works in Auckland city. She has previously had work published in Poetry New Zealand, and is grateful for the time when she was mentored by Owen Bullock.
• Vaughan Gunson is a writer living in Hikurangi, north of Whāngārei. His poems have been published widely, including in the New Zealand Listener, JAAM, takahē, Poetry New Zealand and Cordite. A recent collection, Big Love Songs (reviewed in this issue), is available by emailing vgunson@vodafone.co.nz.
• Emma Harris has been on a writing hiatus since 2008 when her last poems appeared as text art in the exhibition Mixed Metaphors at Corban’s Estate Gallery in association with the Going West Literature Festival.
• Matthew Harris has a PhD in English from Massey University, and works as a senior tutor in Massey University’s School of English and Media Studies. He is a writer of poems, fiction and short films: 43000 Feet (2012), Snooze Time (2014) and Madam Black (2015) have travelled the international film festival circuit from Rhode Island and Tribeca in the United States to Clermont-Ferrand festival in France, accruing various awards.
• Paula Harris is a poet who dances Argentine tango, or a tango dancer who teaches Pilates, or a Pilates instructor who writes poetry. It depends on the time of day. Her work has previously appeared in Broadsheet, takahē, New Zealand Listener, Poetry New Zealand, Snorkel and other journals.
• René Harrison writes: ‘Modest humanitarian, philanthropist and glamorous adventurer, René began writing poetry at the age of five, when he mistook a fog-covered magnolia tree outside his bedroom window for the three Graeae sisters of Medusa. Notorious for his challenging work on the Auckland performance scene, René’s poems appear in brief, takahē, Wordgatherings and Shot Glass Journal. He has taught literature and rhetoric and composition at the University of Auckland and at Purdue University, Indiana. Blind epistemology and disability studies inform his work on the poetics of visual impairment and “complex embodiment”.’
• Mohamed Hassan is a poet and radio journalist, who was born in Cairo and has been a resident of Auckland since 1997. He is a TEDx speaker, and the 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion. He is a co-founder of the Waxed Poetic Revival.
• Trevor Hayes lives and works in Punakaiki. He has had poems published in JAAM, Sport, Landfall, Poetry New Zealand and takahē.
• Helen Heath’s debut collection of poetry, Graft, was published in May 2012 by VUP. It won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry in 2013, and was the first book of fiction or poetry to be shortlisted for the Royal Society of NZ Science Book Prize, also in 2013. Her poems, essays, articles and reviews have appeared in journals and magazines here and overseas. She is currently working toward her PhD in Creative Writing at Victoria University. Her PhD research project explores how science is represented in the work of post-war, contemporary UK poets writing at the turn of the millennium.
• Elsbeth Hill is a printmaker and proprietor of Redemption Arts and Education Services. She facilitates visual arts, performing arts and living skills. She also mentors prison artists at Northland Region Corrections Facility who are unlocking creativity as a vehicle for rehabilitation and reintegration. Her work has appeared previously in Poetry New Zealand.
• Alice Hooton’s first book of poetry, Shamfeign, was published by Brightspark Books in 2011. She lives in Auckland’s Mairangi Bay, and is involved in the eternal struggle between family and finding time to write.
• Gail Ingram’s poetry and short stories have appeared in journals and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas. In 2016 she won the New Zealand Poetry Society poetry competition, was a finalist for Best Small Fictions, and was shortlisted in the Fish Short Story Prize. In 2015 she was nominated for the Pushcart short fiction prize and was runner-up in the takahē poetry competition. She recently completed her MA in Creative Writing at Massey University.
• Rata Ingram’s first poem was published in the School Journal when she was seven. Recently, she has joined South Island Writers’ Association as the youngest member, and is enjoying extending the range of genres she writes. As a student of physics, much of her writing reflects this theme. She was shortlisted for the 2016 New Zealand Heritage Poetry Prize, and read at the 2016 National Flash Fiction Day.
• Anna Jackson has published six collections of poetry, most recently I, Clodia (Auckland University Press, 2014). She lives in Island Bay, Wellington, and lectures in English at Victoria University of Wellington.
• Ross Jackson is a retired teacher who lives in Perth, Western Australia. He has had poetry published in many literary journals and on the web. Aloneness, aging and life in the suburbs are recurring themes in his work.
• Abriana Jetté is a poet, essayist and educator from Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Seneca Review, Plume Poetry Journal, Hermeneutic Chaos, Barrelhouse, and many other places.
• Richard Jordan writes: ‘I dedicate the poem “Paper Sailboat” published herein entirely to my mother. I wrote this poem for her before she passed away, and I’ll always love and miss her.’
• Robert Kempen lives in Auckland. His work has appeared in Poetry New Zealand and brief. Currently, he is working on an eighty-page piece, ‘The sun as eyes’, which is nearly completed.
• Sid Khanzode writes: ‘If the world would let me: I would rather be a nameless poet, seeking aimlessly. That is where it comes from. But for this world, whose two lands I shuttle — Indian and New Zealand — with rather glee, I take a name. Given, I guess. Yet still. Thirty-one and I think I conquer loneliness — writing, which I have been doing since five on twenty! My writing has appeared in pages of brief 54 and 53, very recently.’
• Raina Kingsley: ‘Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu. Born 5 June 1962. Brought up in Hawke’s Bay. Living in Christchurch since 1988. I have had poems published in Leaving the Red Zone and Quakes and Community.’
• Leonard Lambert’s latest collection is Somewhere in August: Selected poems 1969–2016 (Steele Roberts, 2016).
• Wes Lee, a long-time Wellingtonian, now lives in Auckland. Her debut poetry collection Shooting gallery (Steele Roberts) was launched in Wellington in August 2016. Her chapbook of short fiction Cowboy Genes was published by Grist Books at The University of Huddersfield in 2014. She was the recipient of the 2010 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Literary Award, and has won a number of awards for her writing both internationally and in New Zealand. Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications, including The London Magazine, Poetry London, Cordite, Westerly, The Stony Thursday Book and Landfall.
• Michele Leggott was the inaugural NZ Poet Laureate under the National Library scheme (2007–8), was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2009 for her services to poetry, and in 2013 received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry. She is an award-winning poet, a founding director of the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/, and a professor in the University of Auckland’s Department of English.
• Louise Lever is an artist and writer based in Melbourne. She holds an MFA (Hons) from Elam School of Fine Arts. Her work was selected as a finalist in the 24th Annual Wallace Art Awards and the 2015 National Contemporary Art Awards. Recent exhibitions include New Perspectives, Artspace, 2016. She has an upcoming show at Enjoy Public Art Gallery in May 2017.
• Liang Yujing grew up in China and came to New Zealand in 2014 as a PhD candidate at Victoria University of Wellington. His poems and translations have appeared in a number of magazines across the world, recently in Poetry New Zealand, JAAM, Sport and takahē. His collaborator, Julian Farmer, is a British poet and translator from several languages, especially French, Classical Greek, Latin, Russian and now a little Chinese. Publications featuring Yujing’s work include Staple, The London Magazine, Acumen, The Shop, Agenda, Stand Magazine and Modern Poetry in Translation.
• Olivia Macassey’s poetry has appeared in various publications in New Zealand, and her second book of poems, The Burnt Hotel, was published in 2015 by Titus. She currently edits brief, and lives in Northland. Her website is www.macassey.com.
• Andrew McIntyre lives in Havelock North with his partner and two sons. He has had writing previously published in takahē and Poetry New Zealand.
• Caoimhe McKeogh is twenty-two years old. She studies English literature at Wellington’s Victoria University, and works in disability community support. Her previous work has appeared in, among others, Headland and Landfall, and she was the recipient of Headland’s 2015 Frontier Prize.
• Mary Macpherson is a Wellington poet and photographer. Her work has appeared in many print and online journals. She blogs at http://marymacphoto.wordpress.com.
• Owen Marshall has published or edited thirty books, including three volumes of his poetry. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Canterbury, which awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in 2002. In 2013 he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction.
• Carol Millner (née Stevenson) moved to Western Australia from New Zealand in 2005. Her poetry and short stories have been published in a range of West Australian anthologies and journals. A sample of Carol’s work was shortlisted for the Whitmore Poetry Manuscript Prize (Victoria, 2013) and her full-length poetry manuscript ‘Settling’ was shortlisted for the inaugural Dorothy Hewett Award (WA, 2015). Carol is currently a PhD candidate in writing at Curtin University, Perth.
• Margi Mitcalfe’s poetry has been published in the New Zealand Listener, in the anthologies Kaupapa: New Zealand Poets, World Issues, Sunset at the Estuary and ‘catch and release’, and in Landfall, Poetry New Zealand, takahē and Spin. She is a senior tutor of ‘Tū Kupu: Writing and Inquiry’ and ‘Tūrangawaewae: Identity and Belonging’ at Massey University.
• Margaret Moores was a bookseller for many years, but now works as a publisher’s sales representative. She is studying towards an MA in Creative Writing at Massey University. Her poems have been published in Shot Glass Journal, Blackmail Press, Meniscus and in Poetry New Zealand.
• Joshua Morris is a genderqueer writer who can’t help but spit up a poem every day. Joshua’s work has been published in Mayhem Literary Journal, and they are currently working on their first book of words, tentatively titled Deusection.
• Idoya Munn is a writer and teacher living in Dunedin. She has been published in New Zealand Short Short Stories (ed. Graeme Lay) and Nearly Seventeen (ed. Tessa Duder).
• Janet Newman lives in Koputaroa in Horowhenua and has completed an MA in Creative Writing at Massey University. Her poems have appeared in a fine line, Blackmail Press, brief, bravado, Poetry New Zealand, takahē and Snorkel, and in Printable Reality and New Zealand Poetry Society anthologies. Her essays about poetry have been published in the Journal of New Zealand Literature and Poetry New Zealand.
• Dot Nicholson of Te Awamutu is a mother, grandmother and widow. She has dabbled in writing over the past decade. She writes about what every mother dreads — a life-threatening illness for her child, an illness which claimed the life of her late husband. She comes from a background in farming and the retail industry.
• Heidi North-Bailey lives in Auckland. Her poetry and short stories have been published in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. She won an international Irish award for her poetry in 2007, and has won New Zealand awards for her short fiction. Her debut poetry book, Possibility of Flight, was published by Mākaro Press in 2015. In 2016 she was the New Zealand fellow in the Shanghai Writing Programme, joining nine other writers worldwide.
• Keith Nunes is from Lake Rotoma near Rotorua. He was a newspaper subeditor for more than twenty years, but changed lanes and now sees life from a different perspective. He’s been published in Poetry New Zealand, Landfall, takahē, brief, Trout, Catalyst and Snorkel among others, has been anthologised many times and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His book of poetry and short fiction, catching a ride on a paradox, is sold by the lunatic fringe.
• Jessamine O Connor lives in the west of Ireland, and facilitates the award-winning Hermit Collective, and the Wrong Side of the Tracks Writers. During World War II, Jessamine’s grandmother had a baby in a Catholic ‘mother-and-baby home’, and the baby was adopted to a family in New Zealand. They were never reunited, although the daughter travelled to Ireland to find her mother as she was dying in a hospice, the local priest denying knowing who she was. This poem was written as the unmarked mass graves of children were being discovered at similar ‘homes’ across Ireland.
• Charles Olsen is a Nelson-born poet and artist. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1981, and to Spain in 2003. His latest collection of poems is Antípodas (Huerga & Fierro, 2016, bilingual edition). He runs the online Spanish poetry project Palabras prestadas or ‘Given Words’. His website is charlesolsen.es.
• Chris Parsons is a psychologist working in Christchurch. His writing appears in print in JAAM, Poetry New Zealand, Southerly and takahē, and online in Blackmail Press, Snorkel and The Typewriter.
• I. K. Paterson-Harkness is a writer and musician from Auckland. Her publications include two novellas, both shortlisted for a Sir Julius Vogel award. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as Landfall, JAAM and Writing Tomorrow. Her writing and music can be found at www.ikpatersonharkness.com and @ikpatersonhark.
• Jessica Pawley is a postgraduate student of English, currently researching the effects of digital interactivity on the processes of reading and writing. She has two Young Adult speculative fiction novel series pending publication by Steam Press.
• Kiri Piahana-Wong is a New Zealander of Māori (Ngāti Ranginui), Chinese and Pākehā (English) ancestry. She is a poet and editor, and is the publisher at Anahera Press. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, and she has edited editions of JAAM magazine and Flash Frontier. Kiri is an MC at Poetry Live, New Zealand’s longest-running live poetry venue. Her first poetry collection, Night Swimming (Anahera Press), was released in 2013, and she has recently completed her second book, Tidelines. Kiri lives in northwest Auckland in a small house surrounded by miles of fields.
• Joanna Preston is a Tasmanaut poet, editor and freelance creative writing tutor. Her first collection, The summer king (OUP, 2009), won both the 2008 Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry and the 2010 Mary Gilmore Prize. Her poems have been published widely, most recently in JAAM, Poetry New Zealand and Landfall. She is the poetry editor for takahē magazine.
• Hayden Pyke lives in Hamilton and writes bits and pieces by night when his other life isn’t around. He has had some success in local short story and poetry competitions, and has published a few short stories in online journals.
• Vaughan Rapatahana is a New Zealand writer and reviewer. Although perhaps best known for his poetry, his bibliography also includes prose fiction, educational material, academic articles, philosophy, and language critiques. Rapatahana is of Māori ancestry, and many of his works deal with the subjects of colonial repression and cultural encounter. His writing has been published in New Zealand and internationally. In 2009, he was a semi-finalist for the Proverse Prize in Literature. He was also a finalist in the 2013 erbacce prize for poetry. His latest poetry collection, Atonement (UST Press, Manila, 2016), has been nominated for the National Book Award in the Philippines
• Sahanika Ratnayake is a vaguely nomadic person: her parents moved to New Zealand from Sri Lanka when she was five, and since then she has lived intermittently in New Zealand, Melbourne and the United Kingdom. Aside from writing poetry, she studies philosophy, an activity she fears is an obscene decadence and a scam.
• Nicholas Reid is an Auckland historian and poet, who four times edited Poetry New Zealand in its old format. Two of his collections have so far appeared, The Little Enemy (2011) and Mirror World (2016), both published by Steele Roberts.
• Edward Reilly was born in 1944 in Adelaide, South Australia. He was a secondary-school teacher and then a sessional academic. In 2000 he earned a PhD in Poetics from Victoria University in Melbourne. His prose, study guides and poetry have been published in Australia and overseas. He has a tenuous connection with New Zealand through his great-uncle, Thomas Cawthron of Nelson, and nurses a desire to return to Paihia.
• Ron Riddell has worked/performed in many countries. A painter, musician and the author of a number of plays and novels, he has published twenty-one collections of verse. His new book of poems (reviewed in this issue of Poetry New Zealand) is called Dance of Blue Dragonflies (Printable Reality, 2016). His work has been translated into German, Japanese, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi and Spanish. Ron was the founder and is the current chairperson of The Titirangi Poets.
• David Romanda lives in Kawasaki City, Japan. His work has appeared in Ambit Magazine, Magma Poetry, The Moth, Poetry New Zealand and PN Review.
• Jack Ross is the managing editor of Poetry New Zealand. He works as a senior lecturer in creative writing at Massey University’s Auckland campus. His latest collection, A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems and Sequences 1981–2014, was published by HeadworX in 2014. See further on his blog The Imaginary Museum (http://mairangibay.blogspot.com/).
• Lisa Samuels' recent books include Anti M (Chax, 2013), Tender Girl (Dusie, 2015) and A TransPacific Poetics, edited with Sawako Nakayasu (Litmus, forthcoming 2017). Her poetry has inspired musical scores and scholarly essays internationally and features in anthologies such as Out of Everywhere 2 (Reality Street, 2015). A US-born transnational writer, Lisa has lived in Aotearoa/New Zealand since 2006, where she teaches at the University of Auckland.
• Jo-Ella Sarich lives in Petone, Lower Hutt, close to the beach with its views over Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She is married with two small children and works in the public sector. She has recently taken up writing in her spare time.
• L. E. Scott is an African American poet/writer who has lived in New Zealand for many years. He has had a number of poetry collections published. His work has also been published previously in Poetry New Zealand, and in other literary journals such as Landfall, takahē, JAAM and Sport, in magazines such as the New Zealand Listener, and in anthologies both in New Zealand and overseas.
• Ila Selwyn published a book of poetry, two sisters, in 2011. She was an MC for Poetry Live in Auckland for four years, and left in 2009 to organise and run the rhythm & verse readings in Titirangi. In 2015 she graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Auckland.
• Kerrin P. Sharpe’s first book, three days in a wishing well, was published by Victoria University Press (VUP) in 2012. A group of her poems also appeared in 2013 in the UK publication Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet). A second book, there’s a medical name for this, was published by VUP in 2014, and her latest collection is rabbit rabbit (VUP, 2016).
• Emma Shi was the winner of the National Schools Poetry Award 2013, and her work has also been published in Landfall. She is currently studying Classics and English at Victoria University of Wellington.
• Sarah Shirley is married with two young children. She is a medical student in her final year of study. Her poems have appeared in takahē, Star*Line and Ars Medica.
• Antonia Smith is a high-school student living in Auckland. She writes of her poem: ‘I am fascinated by the coincidence of everything. Each moment is made up of a million intertwining details — the tiniest aspects of the most ordinary setting have been set in motion by some extraordinary event thousands of years in the past. I guess that this poem is a an attempt to describe this strange relationship between time and environment.’
• Elizabeth Smither is working on a new collection, Night Horse, to be published by AUP in 2017. She was awarded the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize 2016.
• Courtney Speedy is a nineteen-year-old poet from Whangarei. She has had poetry published in four separate collections: Re-draft: The Word is Out (2014) and Write Off Line: They Came in From the Dark (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014), as well as the international collections LONELY and LOVE (both 2016).
• Michael Steven is an Auckland-based poet and the author of various books of poems, including Homage to Robert Creeley (2007) and Bartering Lines (2009).
• Bill Sutton lives in Napier. He has worked as a scientist, politician and policy analyst, and his poems have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, takahē, JAAM, Blackmail Press, Catalyst and Broadsheet. His first poetry collection Jabberwocky was published by Steele Roberts in 2014.
• Richard Taylor is an Aucklander whose work has been published in various publications, including some previous issues of Poetry New Zealand. His two main books are RED (Dead Poets, 1996), and Conversation with a stone (Titus, 2007). It is said of Taylor that his mind is like an enormous ice-cream.
• Loren Thomas is an MA student at the University of Waikato. She has previously been published in Mayhem and Poetry New Zealand.
• Nicola Thorstensen lives and writes in Dunedin. Her poetry has previously appeared in takahē and the Otago Daily Times. She placed first in the published poet section of the Robert Burns Poetry Competition 2016.
• Steven Toussaint is the author of The Bellfounder (The Cultural Society, 2015) and Fiddlehead (Compound Press, 2014), and recent poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly and The Spinoff. He is currently writer in residence at the University of Waikato and co-administers the Horoeka/Lancewood Reading Grant.
• Iva Vemić writes: ‘I have written poetry since learning the English language as a child. Moving here from Serbia in 1996 with my family, I quickly fell head-over-heels for English and in particular poetry. Since then, I have been published in Re-Draft 4 and A Fine Line — New Zealand Poetry Society’s quarterly magazine. I attained a BA in Creative Writing at AUT in 2012.’
• Suzanne Verrall lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Her flash fiction, essays and poetry have been or are forthcoming in Flash Frontier, Archer Magazine, Lip Magazine and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.
• Bryan Walpert is the author of: three collections of poetry, Etymology (Cinnamon Press, 2009), A History Of Glass (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011) and most recently Native Bird (Mākaro Press, 2015); a collection of short stories, Ephraim’s eyes (Pewter Rose Press, 2009); and the monograph Resistance to Science in Contemporary American Poetry (Routledge, 2011). He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University. www.bryanwalpert.com.
• Devon Webb is an eighteen-year-old poet who resides in Auckland. By day she works in a pizza shop and by night she wanders the city streets looking for people and places to fall in love with. She writes a lot of poetry. Her social media accounts can be found at: www.facebook.com/Devon-Webb-Poetry-1484667075162976/?fref=ts; www.tumblr.com/ blog/leatherbounddiaries; www.instagram.com/devonwebbpoetry/.
• Mercedes Webb-Pullman was born in Kaitaia and attended Colenso High School, Napier. She left New Zealand in 1969, living in Australia and the United States, and returned home to help care for her mother in 2008. She obtained a Diploma of Creative Writing from Whitireia Polytechnic in 2009, and graduated from Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters with an MA in Creative Writing in 2011. She lives on the Kāpiti coast, and happily reads her poetry at open mic sessions, and recently at Pegasus Books in Wellington as a featured poet. Her poems and prose have appeared in Turbine, 4th Floor, Swamp, Reconfigurations, The Electronic Bridge, Otoliths, Connotations, The Red Room, Typewriter and Cliterature, among others.
• Anna Woods works in digital media and has a special interest in digital modes of reading, particularly metadata, social media and the evolving definition of authorship in the digital world. She has been published by NZ Poetry Society. The poetry included here has been, she writes, ‘procedurally generated from texts sourced from the Poetry Foundation’s Poem-a-Day email. They are assemblages of multiple texts, parsed through social media and then written through and marked up, but there may be elements that remain recognisable to readers.’
• Mark Young was born in Hokitika, now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, and has been publishing poetry for almost sixty years. He is the author of over thirty-five books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo and art history. His work has been widely anthologised, and his essays and poetry translated into a number of languages. His most recent books are Mineral Terpsichore, from gradient books of Finland, and The Chorus of the Sphinxes, from Moria Books in Chicago. An ebook, The Holy Sonnets unDonne, was published in early 2016 by Red Ceilings Press; another, a few geographies, was released in late 2016 from One Sentence Poems; and another, For the Witches of Romania, is scheduled for publication by Beard of Bees. He is the editor of Otoliths.
• Karen Zelas’s third collection of poetry, I am Minerva, was published by Mākaro Press in August 2016. www.karenzelas.com.

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About Poetry New Zealand

Poetry New Zealand is New Zealand’s longest-running poetry magazine, showcasing new writing from this country and overseas. It presents the work of talented newcomers and developing writers as well as that of established leaders in the field.

Founded by Wellington poet Louis Johnson, who edited it from 1951 to 1964 as the New Zealand Poetry Yearbook, it was revived as a biennial volume by Frank McKay in 1971, a series which lasted until 1984. David Drummond (in collaboration with Oz Kraus’s Brick Row Publishing) began to publish it again biannually in 1990. The journal reached its 48th issue in 2014, the year its present managing editor, Jack Ross of Massey University’s School of English and Media Studies, took it back to its roots by renaming it the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook.

Poetry New Zealand has been edited by some of New Zealand’s most distinguished poets and academics, including Elizabeth Caffin, Grant Duncan, Riemke Ensing, Bernard Gadd, Leonard Lambert, Harry Ricketts, Elizabeth Smither and Brian Turner. The journal was overseen from 1993 to 2014 by celebrated poet, novelist, anthologist, editor and literary critic Alistair Paterson ONZM, with help from master printer John Denny of Puriri Press, and guest editors Owen Bullock, Siobhan Harvey and Nicholas Reid.

The magazine’s policy is to support poetry and poets both in New Zealand and overseas. Each issue since 1994 has contained a substantial feature showcasing the work of a developing or established poet. It also includes a selection of poetry from New Zealand and abroad, as well as essays, reviews and critical commentary.

Managing editor
Jack Ross
editor@poetrynz.net

Advisory board

• Thom Conroy
• Jen Crawford
• John Denny
• Matthew Harris
• Ingrid Horrocks
• David Howard
• Bronwyn Lloyd
• Alistair Paterson
• Tracey Slaughter
• Bryan Walpert

Website: www.poetrynz.net
Webmaster: Warren Olds
Blog: poetrynzblog.blogspot.co.nz
Index: poetrynz.blogspot.co.nz

Submissions: The submission dates for each issue are between 1 May and 31 July of each year. Submit either (preferably) by email, with your poems pasted in the body of the message or included as a MSWord file attachment; or by post, to the address below, with a stamped self-addressed envelope, and contact details in your covering letter.

Dr Jack Ross
School of English and Media Studies
Massey University, Albany Campus
Private Bag 102904
North Shore Mail Centre
Auckland 0745

Please remember to include a short biography and current postal address with your submission. Each contributor will receive a free copy of the issue their work is included in.

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