Tag: NZ poetry

Online Launch: A Question Bigger Than A Hawk by Jan FitzGerald

Neil

Chased by a question
bigger than a hawk,
I raced like a rabbit
in fields without cover,
searching for a bolt-hole
among blackberries and hedges.

Award winning Artist and poet Jan FitzGerald  lives in Napier and A Question Bigger Than A Hawk is her fourth collection of poems.  This wide-ranging wonderful collection of poems written with  urgency and compassion, explores many threads such as  mothers and daughters, 1940s / 50s childhoods, love of the natural world,  the secret lives of women and the art of getting older, and our complicated relationship with machines and household appliances.

Normally such a collection would mean a big spectacular live launch event but sadly, for health reasons, Jan couldn’t do a live launch event for this collection. Instead, we have brought in two other award-winning poets, Maggie Rainey-Smith and Rachel McAlpine, to be part of a very special online launch event which will air on our website and YouTube account on Monday 11 July from twelve noon and will be available to watch from that time onwards. These two fabulous poets pay tribute to Jan’s new book and examine her work in comparison with their own.

Wellington novelist, essayist and poet Maggie Rainey-Smith’s book Formica was launched earlier this year and Wellington novelist, web-writer, blogger, and poet Rachel McAlpine celebrated her 80th birthday two years ago with How To Be Old. And  to chair this very special online launch event poet, author and publisher at The Cuba Press, Mary McCallum.

This online launch  celebrates this new collection of poems and Jan’s work, creating an illuminating, entertaining, informative and highly-recommended watch. Our heartfelt thanks go out to Mary McCallum, Maggie Rainey-Smith and Rachel McAlpine.

A Question Bigger Than A Hawk can be ordered at all good bookstores – with personally signed copies available at Wardini’s in Napier if you order now – and on thecubapress.nz.

Watch the launch below or visit our YouTube channel here.

A Question Bigger than a Hawk / FitzGerald, Jan
” A Question Bigger Than A Hawk is Jan FitzGerald’s fourth collection of poems.  This wide-ranging wonderful collection of poems written with  urgency and compassion,   explores many threads such as  mothers and daughters,  1940s / 50s childhoods, love of the natural world,  the secret lives of women and the art of getting older, and  our complicated relationship with machines and household appliances.” ( Adapted from catalogue )

Wayfinder : new & selected poems / FitzGerald, Jan
“Contains the poems Letter to Tomé Torihama (1902-1992), Seahorse, Sky burial , Wildebeest, War pigeons, Cows crossing, Netsuke, Gannets, Sea captain, When I die , Cricket girl, Chrysalis, A mother’s magic, Ticket 250654 RMS Titanic, The cormorants, Winter, Miss Molloye, Cycling, Aubade, Family tree, Highland cattle-beast, Ruaumoko , The doll, The joy gatherers, Holding a tuatara, Bees, Mr Rogers , Yesterway, Mike, In memory of Budgie B. Bird , Fire!, Afterwards, Old orchard, Cricket riff, Pasifika girl, In praise of bees, Frogs, Whale and Wayfinder.” ( adapted from Catalogue) 

Formica / Rainey-Smith, Maggie
“‘Formica’ begins in 1950s Richmond with the author’s family struggling in the aftermath of a war that took her father to Crete to fight and then Poland as a prisoner of war. At the Formica kitchen table, Maggie’s mother is reciting poems while chopping the veggies for tea. Maggie listens while tying her boots for marching practice. Poems follow her as she makes her way in the world – working as a typist, doing her OE, becoming a wife, a mother and grandmother … An unsentimental writer of honesty and humour, Maggie nods to the lives of all women of her generation .” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Daughters of Messene / Rainey-Smith, Maggie
“Your history, Artemis, is full of female warriors.” Artemis has the name of a goddess, but she has trouble living up to it. Instead she usually just runs away. She’s running now … away from the married man she’s been seeing, and the Greek community in New Zealand who think they know what’s best, and into the arms of family in the Peloponnese that she’s never met. She carries her mother’s ashes and an ipod with recordings, which bit by bit tell the shocking story of what happened to Artemis’ grandmother during the Greek Civil War. ” (Adapted from Catalogue)

How to be old : poems / McAlpine, Rachel
“Wellington writer Rachel McAlpine blogs and podcasts about living and ageing and is celebrating her 80th birthday with a book of poems. How to Be Old is an explosion of humanity on the page with some practical tips from the author and sage advice from Elsie aged five.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

 

 

Humming / McAlpine, Rachel
“Living in idyllic Golden Bay, artist Ivan is plagued by a low frequency humming noise: is it whale song, tinnitus, electro-magnetism, a CIA weapon or the voice of God? Worse, Ivan is bored. His sensible lover, Jane, neglects her cafe to support his increasingly bizarre attempts to outwit the Hum. But he is most attracted by the spiritual solutions offered by warrior-woman Xania, a fanatical t’ai chi teacher with links to Argentina. Xania manipulates the monstrous ego of Ivan (who is too famous for his own good) and devises a scandalous fundraising plot involving Powelliphanta, New Zealand’s beautiful native snails.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

XYZ of happiness / McCallum, Mary
““These are poems of happiness… as it comes, when it’s missing and when it is hoped for. Pastel and glib or orange and high-vis, it is almost invisible in a chemical cocktail and strangely visible – but unreachable – in an equation etched into glass. It is a dog unleashed on the grass and a man going about measuring the Earth. It can be heard at the end chemotherapy and in a conversation in the kitchen while a boy drowns in the harbour outside. It wears a pink T-shirt, spins with sycamore seeds and spends a whole poem finding a yellow it can live with.” (Description from Mākaro Press)

The blue / McCallum, Mary
“Lilian lives in an isolated island community at the mouth of Tory Channel trying to make the best of a life that has at its core a secret grief. It is 1938 and for three months of every year the men take to the sea to hunt whales with fast boats and explosive harpoons. This year, the whales aren’t the only ones returning – Lilian’s troubled son Micky has come home too. In this rugged, unsettled world, things are not always what they seem. ” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Poet Interview: Khadro Mohamed

Alayne


Khadro Mohamed is a writer and poet residing on the shores of Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Her poetry collection, We’re All Made of Lightning, is an incredible debut book and a rich exploration of nature, food, family and identity. This book is “a love letter to her homeland, her whakapapa, and herself” -quoted from We Are Babies.

Khadro was kind enough to drop into Te Awe library to chat about her new book, her writing process and how we can only hope to cook as well as our mum. You can check out the interview, and the books mentioned, below! Thank-you to Khadro and also We Are Babies for letting us feature a poem from this collection.


We’re all made of lightning / Mohamed, Khadro
“Khadro Mohamed expertly navigates the experience of being a Muslim women in Aotearoa, bringing us along on her journey of selfhood. Shifting between Aotearoa, Egypt and Somalia, we get a glimpse into her worlds, which are rich and full of life. Mohamed has a sense of wonder for the world around her, exploring nature, food, family and identity. This book is a love letter to her homeland, her whakapapa, and herself.” (Catalogue)

Homie : poems / Smith, Danez
“Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family–blood and chosen–arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours.”– Provided by publisher.” (Catalogue)

Don’t call us dead : poems / Smith, Danez
“Smith’s unflinching poetry addresses race, class, sexuality, faith, social justice, mortality, and the challenges of living HIV positive at the intersection of black and queer identity. The collection opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved on earth. “Dear White America,” which Smith performed at the 2014 Rustbelt Midwest Region Poetry Slam, has as strong an impact on the page as it did on the spoken word stage. Smith’s courage and hope amidst the struggle for unity in America will humble and uplift you.” (Catalogue)

Small hands / Arshi, Mona
“Mona Arshi’s debut collection, ‘Small hands’, introduces a brilliant and compelling new voice. At the centre of the book is the slow detonation of grief after her brother’s death, but her work focuses on the whole variety of human experience: pleasure, hardship, tradition, energised by language which is in turn both tender and risky. Often startling as well as lyrical, Arshi’s poems resist fixity; there is a gentle poignancy at work here which haunts many of the poems. This is humane poetry. Arshi’s is a daring, moving and original voice. – Publisher’s description.” (Catalogue)

 

 

Poet interview: essa may ranapiri

Neil

Echidna is a dangerous animal; she pokes holes in men just to

remind them what kind of monster she is wakes up every single

morning and chooses violence cos what choice does she really have?

essa may ranapiri


Layered meanings that weave three strands of tradition together; Māori esoteric knowledge, Christianity and Greek mythology, into a queerer whole. This is what’s at the heart of essa may ranapiri’s ((Ngāti Wehi Wehi, Ngāti Raukawa-ki-te-Tonga, Te Arawa, Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Pukeko, Ngāti Takatāpui, Na Guinnich, Highgate) second collection of poetry, Echidna. The poems in the Echidna follow their very own interpretation of the myth of Echidna, the Greek mother of monsters, now living in a colonised world with other deities such as Prometheus and Māui. The collection is also very much in conversation with the works and ideas of many other writers such as Keri Hulme, Milton, Hinemoana Baker, Joshua Whitehead and R.S. Thomas, to name but a few.

The poems contained within are unapologetic and raw; embracing gender fluid and non-binary people, building on its own world out of a community of queer and Māori/Pasifika writing whilst also, carefully, placing itself in a whakapapa of takatāpui storytelling.

We are thrilled that ranapiri took time out from their very busy schedule to talk to us about Echidna and we wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to them. For more information, visit Te Herenga Waka University Press.

This interview was done in conjunction with Caffeine and Aspirin, the arts and entertainment review show on Radioactive FM. It was conducted by host Tanya Ashcroft. You can hear the interview, as well as find a selection of essa may ranapiri’s work that is available to borrow, below.

 


 

Echidna / ranapiri, essa may
“The poems in the Echidna follow their very own interpretation of the myth of Echidna the Greek mother of monsters. Now living in a colonised world with other deities such as Prometheus and Māui . The collection are also very much in conversation with the works and ideas of many other writers such as Keri Hulme, Milton,  Hinemoana Baker, Joshua Whitehead  and R.S. Thomas to name but a few.”

Ransack / ranapiri, essa may

” Poems that address the difficulty of assembling and understanding a fractured, unwieldy self through an inherited language – a language whose assumptions and expectations ultimately make it inadequate for such a task. These poems seek richer, less hierarchical sets of words to describe ways of being.” ( Adapted from Catalogue)

 

Poetry New Zealand yearbook. 2022
“Poetry New Zealand, this country’s longest-running poetry magazine, showcases new writing from New Zealand and overseas. This issue features 151 poems by 131 poets, including David Eggleton, Janet Newman, Therese Lloyd, essa may ranapiri, Victor Billot, Amber Esau, Elizabeth Morton, Vaughan Rapatahana, Jordan Hamel and Vana Manasiadis. It also includes the winning entries in the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook student poetry competition, essays and reviews of 38 new poetry books.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Poetry New Zealand Yearbook. 2020
“Each year Poetry New Zealand, this country’s longest-running poetry magazine, rounds up new poetry, reviews and essays, making it the ideal way to catch up with the latest poetry from both established and emerging New Zealand poets. Issue #54 features 130 new poems (including by this year’s featured poet, rising star essa may ranapiri, and C.K. Stead, Elizabeth Smither, Kevin Ireland, Chris Tse, Gregory Kan, Fardowsa Mohammed and Tracey Slaughter); essays (including a graphic essay by Sarah Laing); and reviews of new poetry collections. Poems by the winners of both the Poetry New Zealand Award and the Poetry New Zealand Schools Award are among the line-up.” (Catalogue)

Author interview: Jordan Hamel

Alayne


Jordan Hamel is a Pōneke-based writer, poet and performer. He was the 2018 New Zealand Poetry Slam champion and represented NZ at the World Poetry Slam Champs in the USA in 2019. He is the co-editor of Stasis Journal and co-editor of the climate change poetry anthology No Other Place to Stand (Auckland University Press). He was a 2021 Michael King Writer-in-Residence and placed third in the 2021 Sargeson Prize judged by Patricia Grace. He has had poetry, essays and stories published in The Spinoff, The Pantograph Punch, Newsroom, Sport, NZ Poetry Shelf, Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau and elsewhere.

Hamel’s debut collection, Everyone is everyone except you has just been published by Dead Bird Books and is an excellent, deeply intelligent and entertaining collection. We were lucky enough to have Hamel drop by to talk about his new book, New Zealand poetry, Briscoes and much more. Check out our delightful interview with him below!


Reserve Hamel’s book, as well the other collections mentioned in this interview, via the booklist below!

Everyone is everyone except you / Hamel, Jordan

National anthem / Hassan, Mohamed
“National anthem is a menagerie of exiled memories. A meditation on the beauty and madness of migration, nationalism and the enduring search for home.” (Catalogue)

Conventional weapons / Slaughter, Tracey
“Conventional Weapons is lyrical and dirty, sexy and dark – it is cul-de-sac life, viewed through a grimy ranch slider. These poems closely observe the beauty and depravity of human nature, revealing lives that are hard-bitten and sometimes tragic, but in Tracey Slaughter’s hands they become radiant.” (Catalogue)

Head girl / Sadgrove, Freya Daly
“‘The first time I read Freya’s work I thought . . . uh oh. And then I thought, you have got to be kidding me. And then I thought, God fucking dammit. And then I walked around the house shaking my head thinking . . . OK – alright. And then – finally – I thought, well well well – like a smug policeman. Listen – she’s just the best. I’m going to say this so seriously. She is, unfortunately, the absolute best. Trying to write a clever blurb for her feels like an insult to how right and true and deadly this collection is. God, she’s just so good. She’s the best. She kills me always, every time, and forever.’ –Hera Lindsay Bird” (Catalogue)

Author Interview: Poet, novelist & short story writer Maggie Rainey-Smith

Neil

Amongst many other things Maggie Rainey-Smith is a poet, novelist, and short story writer. And just recently Maggie released her latest collection of poetry called Formica.

Formica is an honest and humorous collection of poems written in an unsentimental fashion that both speaks of Maggie herself and her individual history but also the wider issues that envelope individual lives. The poems in the collection are rooted in the 1950s, avoiding the pitfalls of nostalgia, the poems instead give the reader a more precise and unsentimental look at life.

The collection moves from youth to warrior crone and also pays homage to love in its various forms.

Maggie uses as her raw material the lives of all women of her generation –  “lives too often defined by their fertility and kitchen appliances when there was fun and fulfilment to be had elsewhere. Not that Maggie doesn’t adore her Kenwood mixer, but it lines up with abiding friendships, granddaughters, travel, sex and the joy of words.”

She is a remarkable talent and when the opportunity to interview her about Formica arose, we leapt at it. This interview with  was done in conjunction with the Caffeine and Aspirin arts and entertainment review show on Radioactive FM and was conducted by Caffeine and Aspirin host, Tanya Ashcroft. Below is the podcast of that interview for your enjoyment:

We are thrilled that Maggie took time out from her very busy schedule to talk to us about Formica, her life, and her writing career. We wish to extend our heartfelt thanks.

Content warning: interview includes adult themes

Maggie’s books are available to borrow from the library.

About turns: a novel / Rainey-Smith, Maggie
“Irene has a secret. It slips out inadvertently during book club when the wine has been flowing too freely. Her teenage years as a marching girl are not something she had wanted her friend Ferrida to know about. She’s always wanted Ferrida’s approval, for her friendship is as important and fraught as the one with Paula, when they marched together all those years ago. But friends don’t necessarily march to the same beat, and Irene finds it hard to keep step. ABOUT TURNS, with its humorous insights into New Zealand women and their allegiances, will have you and your friends laughing in unison.” ( Adapted from Catalogue)

Turbulence / Rainey-Smith, Maggie
“Adam is fortyish, coasting along and relatively content while his glamorous partner, Louise, takes centre stage. But half a lifetime ago, his aspirations were higher and he was certain about the future he’d share with Judy. When an unexpected invitation arrives, uncomfortable truths resurface and the secrets of the past spill out. How will Adam manage to attend a reunion in the company of both Louise and Judy – not to mention stepfatherhood and a state of siege at work? ” (Catalogue)

Daughters of Messene / Rainey-Smith, Maggie
“Your history, Artemis, is full of female warriors.” Artemis has the name of a goddess, but she has trouble living up to it. Instead she usually just runs away. She’s running now … away from the married man she’s been seeing, and the Greek community in New Zealand who think they know what’s best, and into the arms of family in the Peloponnese that she’s never met. She carries her mother’s ashes and an ipod with recordings, which bit by bit tell the shocking story of what happened to Artemis’ grandmother during the Greek Civil War.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Interview: Sam Duckor-Jones on his new work ‘Gloria’

Neil
Image of the very pink inside of Gloria


The fabulous local poet and artist Sam Duckor-Jones made waves across international headlines recently, following his ongoing five-year transformation of an 83-year-old church in Greymouth. Designed as a “queer place of worship”, Duckor-Jones is in the process of turning the church into an innovative, immersive work of art. The space, which Duckor-Jones refers to as Gloria, is coloured in a resplendent, veritable explosion of pink hues and tones. It also, delightfully, includes a huge pink neon “Gloria” sign over the altar. The work also features a unique congregation of 50 Papier-mâché people.

Sam says in the Guardian piece about the work that he wants Gloria to “belong to the community”. It has already become a destination for visitors within our shores, and one suspects that when our borders eventually open will attract a lot of visitors from further afield. We were very fortunate to be able to interview Duckor-Jones last year (in conjunction with Radioactive FM), when he talked to us about his poetry and his plans for Gloria (long before word of the work had reached the international media).

You can listen to that interview conducted by Liam Wild below, and read the Guardian piece here.  If you’d like to know more about Duckor-Jones’ work, you can follow this link to his profile at Bowen Galleries.

As well as his artistic practice, Duckor-Jones is also an acclaimed poet. You can borrow his poetry collections from us, which we have collated into a handy booklist at the end of this blog post.

We wish to extend our heart felt thanks to Sam Duckor-Jones and interviewer Liam Wild for this wonderful interview. All photographs in this blog are copyrighted and reproduced with the kind permission of Sam Duckor-Jones


Party legend / Duckor-Jones, Sam
“Sam Duckor Jones’s first poetry collection was a tour of small towns, overgrown lawns, and giant clay men. In Party Legend he turns once again to questions of existence but at an even bigger scale. These are poems about creation, God, intimacy, the surreality of political rhetoric, misunderstandings at the supermarket – and they are fearless in form and address. Though Party Legend is often wildly funny, it is also, in its Duckor-Jonesian way, tender-hearted and consoling.” ( Adapted from Catalogue)

People from the pit stand up / Duckor-Jones, Sam
“This is the voice of someone who is both at home and not at home in the world. Sam Duckor-Jones’s wonderfully fresh, funny, dishevelled poems are alive with art-making and fuelled by a hunger for intimacy. Giant clay men lurk in salons, the lawns of poets overgrow, petrolheads hoon along the beach, birds cry ‘wow-okay, wow-okay, wow-okay’.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

 

Out here : an anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa
“A remarkable anthology of queer New Zealand voices. We became teenagers in the nineties when New Zealand felt a lot less cool about queerness and gender felt much more rigid. We knew instinctively that hiding was the safest strategy. But how to find your community if you’re hidden? Aotearoa is a land of extraordinary queer writers, many of whom have contributed to our rich literary history. But you wouldn’t know it. Decades of erasure and homophobia have rendered some of our most powerful writing invisible. Out Here will change that. This landmark book brings together and celebrates queer New Zealand writers from across the gender and LGBTQIA+ spectrum .” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.

Short poems of New Zealand
” Funny, startling, poignant, illuminating, and always succinct, this anthology celebrates the many moods and forms of the short poem and demonstrates its power in holding our attention. Included here are famous names like Manhire, Glover, Hulme, Bethell, and Cochrane, amongst many new and rediscovered gems.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

 

Annual. 2
“Annual 2 contains all-new material for 9- to- 13-year-olds. The result is a highly original, contemporary take on the much-loved annuals of the past – all in one beautiful package. Alongside familiar names publishing for children – Gavin Mouldey, Sarah Johnson, Ben Galbraith, Barry Faville, Giselle Clarkson, and Gregory O’Brien – you’ll find the unexpected, including a new song by Bic Runga, a small-town mystery by Paul Thomas, and a classic New Zealand comic illustrated by new talent Henry Christian Slane. Smart and packed with content, a book for the whole family.” (Adapted from Catalogue)