Find out about the benefits of joining the New Zealand Poetry Society here
Deadline for submissions to the NZPS magazine, a fine line: 7 February. Submission guidelines are at: http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/aboutsubmissionguidelines
The NZPS notes with sorrow the death of Cyril Childs on 27/1/12. Cyril was a past-President of the Society, and can fairly be described as the "Grandfather of NZ haiku". He edited both of our national haiku anthologies (1993 and 1998) and was one of the selectors for Windrift's 2008 national haiku anthology the taste of nashi. Cyril also judged the haiku section of our annual international competition in 1997, 2002 and 2006. His knowledge and experience of haiku was highly valued and respected, and his passing is a great loss to the haiku community. We extend our deepest condolences to his family.Web-based International Initiative Formed To Promote Poetry For Young People
Poetry Advocates for Children and Young Adults is a new grassroots, not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting poetry for every age group.
Its growing membership is a combination of poets, authors, teachers, students, scholars, editors, librarians, booksellers, and readers of every age from around the world. PACYA is currently run by a team of 17 advisors who will serve from 2011-2013.
The organization is dedicated to:
* Speaking out for the need to engage with poetry
* Creating a global online hubfor news
* Organizing and promoting readings, awards, workshops, and conferences in North America and internationally, reviews, essays, and interviews; learning /scholarly resources; communication and networking; audiovisual archives; collaborative projects; and more at every age level-and addressing the challenges of doing so.
To learn more about PACYA, visit its blog at poetryadvocates.wordpress.com
New Online Poetry Reading Group (UK)
Intended to attract a whole new audience of poetry lovers, this new online poetry reading group is free and open to everyone. Join by registering at the site: http://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/news/79/new_online_poetry_reading_group_january_2011_choices/
Tuesday Poems
Novelist Mary McCallum has been doing her bit for poetry in the blogosphere. The Tuesday Poem is an initiative that creates a kind of open-mike session in cyberspace each Tuesday morning. Poets post poems first thing in the morning (or last thing Monday night) then link to each other and ‘pop in and out of each other's poems all day', as Mary describes it, as well as being visited by other readers. Mary's inviting other poets to join in: visit the blog at www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com to find out how.
Poetry Posters
"The only thing that can save the world is reclaiming the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does." Allen Ginsberg.
Giving poetry the street visibility of punk and rock and roll, Phantom Billstickers launched a new series of poem posters in late April 2010. Placing poems on the walls of cities across New Zealand, the United States and towns and cities everywhere, the intent is to bring poetry to the attention of the world. This is Phantom Billstickers' fourth run of Poem Posters
An interesting mix of Kiwi and American poets is featured. From Aotearoa (New Zealand): Chris Knox, well known Kiwi musician, song writer and Beat Mystic; Bill Manhire, New Zealand's Man of Letters and five-times winner of the New Zealand Book Awards Poetry Prize; Tusiata Avia, Pacifika performance poet and current Ursula Bethel Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch; Stephen Oliver, poet and voice artist, author of fifteen volumes of poetry; Cilla McQueen, poet and artist, three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for poetry and current New Zealand Poet Laureate; Mariana Isara, winner of the Heritage Christchurch summer poets competition.
From the USA: Robert Creeley, Black Mountain poet of the Charles Olson school and guardian of innovative poets and poetics everywhere; Gerald Stern, Poet Laureate of New Jersey, recipient of the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, US National Book Award winner for poetry and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets; Michael Palma, poet and translator of Dante's 'Inferno'; Roy Smith, vital unpublished poet from New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Jim Wilson, the founder of Phantom Billstickers, New Zealand's poster company, is a keen advocate and committed supporter of poetry and the arts. Jim's aim is to take Kiwi arts to the world. He has worked to post streets and cafe walls with poem posters in places like Baltimore, Knoxville and Nashville, through to Seattle and Portland. At least a dozen other American cities are also involved, from Mississippi State to New York City. Recently volunteers have been enlisted to place poem posters in Boulder and Iowa City (close to the Iowa Writers' Workshop which is arguably the top writers' workshop in the States). The city of Berlin, Germany, is also to be added to the list of destinations to feel the heat, passion and beauty of poem posters on its walls.
New Zealand, one of the poetry and music hearts of the world, first saw Phantom Billstickers' poem posters in June 2009. Cities and towns throughout the country enjoy a damn good pasting of poem posters and as Kiwi poet Stephen Oliver puts it: "Poem posters are part of the dress code of any city that recommends itself to its citizens."
In the previous three rounds of Poetry Posters the poets featured have included Janet Frame, Geoff Cochrane, Campbell McKay, Brian Turner, Jackie Steincamp, Bill Direen, Michele Leggott, Sam Hunt, Gary McCormick, Hilaire Campbell, Jeffery McCaleb, Ben Brown, Michael White, Nicholas Thomas, Tusiata Avia, Pablo Nova, Robert Pinsky, Marcie Sims, Joe Treceno, Lawrence Arabia, Josie McQuail, Jay Clarkson and Sandra Bell.
At the April 28th Launch some of the Phantom Billstickers poets will read and the event will be hosted by celebrated poet and New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate Michele Leggott. The evening will also feature LOUNGE#13 which is an exciting project run by the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre & the English Department at the University of Auckland. Local poets reading include: Ben Daniels, Martin Edmond, Paula Green, Greg Zan, Zarah Butcher McGunnigle, Sacha Norrie, Jack Ross and Sonja Yelich.
Printing poems on posters is largely about hope. In a world of splitting opinions, extreme violence and never-ending political and commercial intrigue, the aim is to bring Truth and Beauty back into the streets. These posters and in fact all posters are 'Flora for the Concrete Jungle'. The wish is that people participate in and celebrate the creativity of language. The aim is to be inspirational and uplifting; the presence of poems in our cities is about reclaiming the world through art. You can read about the poetry project at: www.0800phantom.co.nz
The Cuba Street Garret, Wellington
The Cuba Street Garret is a combination of solitude and community for the toner-stained wretches we know as writers. We have transformed a flat on Cuba Street, outfitting it with offices so that writers can move in and get to work. Heat, Internet, and cleaning services are provided, of course. This workspace is called The Cuba Street Garret because Cuba Street is where it's located, and 'Garret' since there are few writers who can even afford a garret these days, but this would perhaps make that dream possible for several of them.
Costs are, naturally, a primary concern for everyone, so the rent is currently only $80 per week; it could well be less than that once the fourteen (14) offices are filled. And there are no lengthy leases. Writers will never be asked to commit to more than one month at a time. The success of The Cuba Street Garret will come from the positive atmosphere therein. Members of The Garret meet for lunch once a month.
Further Information: Located in the Watkins Building (corner of Cuba and Vivian Streets), The Cuba Street Garret has a progenitor of a sort back in San Francisco, The Sanchez Grotto Annex http://www.sanchezannex.com if anyone wants to see how a writers' workspace works. Those offices now have a waiting list, and we expect to have the same level of participation in Wellington.
Writers who wish to learn more or visit The Garret should contact Travis Cottreau: travis.cottreau(at)gmail.com
Dame Fiona honoured by France
Heartiest congratulations to our Patron Dame Fiona Kidman who was recently awarded France's prestigious Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Chevalier rank. She joins an impressive list of those honoured for their having "significantly contributed to the enrichment of the French cultural inheritance." For more about this award, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordre_des_Arts_et_des_Lettres 1000 New Zealand classics released as eBooks
New Zealanders can now freely download - and store in their pockets - hundreds of our most well-known books, courtesy of Victoria University's New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC). More than 1000 New Zealand electronic books (eBooks) are now available for download on the NZETC website at http://www.nzetc.org, giving people easy access to some of the great works in New Zealand literature including Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party and Other Stories, Bill Pearson's Coal Flat, and Robin Hyde's The Godwits Fly.
Although New Zealand does not yet share the same choice of eBook device hardware as available overseas, devices sold locally such as Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch make the reading of eBooks a simple and portable experience. The New Zealand eBooks, made available using the major emerging ePub standard, represent many of the texts already accessible for online browsing on the NZETC website, and are suited to viewing on modern eBook devices such as the iPhone, Sony Reader, and IRex ILiad.
The ePub standard is an open standard supported by many major publishers and hardware vendors, with many of the major online bookstores making titles available for purchase in this format. Waterstones bookstore, one of the largest chains in the United Kingdom, offers more than 12,000 titles exclusively in the ePub format, while Sony has stated its intention to sell only books in the ePub format by the end of this year.
Some of the major titles released this week by the NZETC include:
• The Life of Captain James Cook, by J. C. Beaglehole (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Bea04Cook.html)
• The Garden Party and Other Stories, by Katherine Mansfield (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-ManGard.html)
• Coal Flat, by Bill Pearson (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-PeaCoal.html)
• The Godwits Fly, by Robin Hyde (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-HydGodw.html)
• We Will Not Cease, by Archibald Baxter (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-BaxWeWi.html)
• Infantry Brigadier, by Howard Karl Kippenberger (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-KipInfa.html)
• Tutira, by William Guthrie Smith (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-GutTuti.html)
• My Life, by Jean Batten (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-BatMyL.html)
The NZETC is a free online archive of New Zealand and Pacific texts and heritage materials, based at Victoria University. It offers an ever expanding, fully searchable, set of images and full-text books, manuscripts and journals. The NZETC collaborates with organisations interested in digitising their collections and making digital content available online, providing expertise and technical assistance, and is interested in projects aiming to make content more widely available to a New Zealand audience through the use of open standards.
One can only wait with bated breath to see if poetry texts are to be included.
New Poet Laureate for New Zealand
Bluff poet Cilla McQueen is New Zealand's second Poet Laureate, taking over from Michele Leggott. Details at: http://authors.org.nz/afa.asp?idWebPage=40048&idDetails=19673
Poems in the Waiting Room, Dunedin
Ruth Arnison of Otago has successfully established a local Poems in the Waiting Room scheme, under licence and start-up grant from Poems in the Waiting Room UK. The initial summer print run in November/December 2008 was 500 cards; there were 1000 for autumn and she's looking at 2000 cards for the winter edition. The poetry cards combine classic poems, including many from UK PitWR earlier editions, with new work by New Zealand poets. They have been welcomed by Dunedin medical practitioners and rest homes, and supplies have quickly run out in a number of surgeries. Armed with the local licence, Ruth is now looking forward to expanding the project to cover more of NZ. Contact Ruth Arnison arnison@xnet.co.nz You can follow the progress of the project at http://www.pitwrnz.blogspot.com/
Radio Interview - National Coordinator
Laurice Gilbert, NZPS National Coordinator and current President, was interviewed by Eva Radich on Radio New Zealand's 'Upbeat' programme, on Wednesday 23rd April. Go to: http://www.fluctu8.com/media/8392/36590/ and scroll down to the Upbeat box. It's just over 20 minutes long, so allow plenty of listening time.
Humour in poetry
A wee Scottish poetry joke currently doing the rounds on the Internet (with many thanks to the IIML for sharing it):
Tony Blair is visiting an Edinburgh hospital. He enters a ward full of patients with no obvious sign of injury or illness and greets one. The patient replies:
Fair fa your honest sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin race,
Aboon them a ye take yer place,
Painch, tripe or thairm,
As langs my airm.
Blair is confused, so he just grins and moves on to the next patient. The patient responds:
Some hae meat an canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat an we can eat,
So let the Lord be thankit.
Even more confused, and his grin now rictus-like, the PM moves on to the next
patient, who immediately begins to chant:
Wee sleekit, cowerin, timorous beasty,
O the panic in thy breasty,
Thou needna start awa sae hastie,
Wi bickering brattle
Now seriously troubled, Blair turns to the accompanying doctor and asks, ‘Is this a psychiatric ward?'
‘No,' replies the doctor, ‘this is the serious Burns unit.'
