So, I've been reading some end of year 'Best of Lists' for poetry in Aotearoa, and is it just me, or is there a real North Island bias?! Is a contributing factor that we only have one university press in the Mainland? Christchurch poets in particular may suffer due to the fact Canterbury University Press doesn't publish poetry.

My list picks the books I've been reading or want to read, and undeniably it includes some of my friends' books. Lists miss out names, and if your name has been missed, dear struggling poet, it's only because I'm biased like everyone else, including the paid reviewers whose job it is to write the official lists! I try and read local because the poets I hear at Canterbury Poetry Collective and other readings I've attended this year at National Poetry Day Events, Catalyst, Write On School for Young Writers and Caselberg Prize Giving have been outstanding. Don't let's forget them, North Islanders.

(South Island poets in bold)

Deadpan ( OUP 2019) by James Norcliffe is James' tenth poetry collection, and I think it's my favourite so far. The cover captures James' trademark style – poems contained, observant, full of dry wit but at the same time deeply touching. Why isn't this on those famous reviewers' lists?

Diana Bridge's Two or More Islands (OUP 2019) is a beautiful collection. This stunning writer uses her knowledge and experience of the great Asian cultures to write poems that engage with our own Western hearts and story. Her poems made me think of finely crafted sculptures; Intelligent and tactile.

Ruth Hanover's Other (Cold Hub Press 2019) is humane poetry, following and responding to the plight of seekers of asylum and refugee stories; poems of mediation and empathy, poems for our times. A chapbook and first collection by Ruth, it's a beautiful book and fully deserves to be on this list.

In Victoria Broome's debut collection How We Talk to Each Other (Cold Hub Press 2019) the poems sing of Christchurch, family, past and present. Honest and engaging, this suberb writer is well-overdue for publication twice short-listed for the Kathleen Gratton, I defy you not to love this book.

Lynley EdmeadesListening In (OUP 2019) has picked a topic I think is not only timely in a world where everyone is shouting to be heard, but she also pushes form and plays with language, which, most of all, is what I think good poets do, and is particularly important to do in these times when language is being manipulated to extreme ends to create fake news. I love that she does this with wit and craft.

Landfall 238 edited by Emma Neale(OUP 2019) Full of brilliant poets (and flash fiction writers including Zoë Meager and Margaret Moores). Enjoy poems by these accomplished writers – Chris Stewart, Janet Wainscott, Jane Charman, Jeni Curtis, Cindy Botha, Liz Breslin, Marisa Cappetta, John Allison, Iona Winter, Janet Newman, Johanna Emeney, Lissa Moore and Albert Wendt, to name a few.

A Place to Return To by John Allison (Cold Hub Press 2019) is also by an accomplished writer. His poems remind me of the beautifully crafted photographs he shoots of our local Christchurch landscapes. Often wistful, always elegant and well-crafted – another enjoyable read.

Time to sing before the dark (Caxton Press) by Helen Bascand was published posthumously in December 2018 but I felt it needed another airing on this 2019 list because the poems are beautiful, imagistic, witty and intelligent. Check it out.

Wild Honey: Reading New Zealand Women's Poetry by Paula Green (Massey UP 2019) has received a lot of press and features on many lists. Strictly it is a discussion of poetry, with poetry included, rather than a book of poems, but it includes some wonderful poets, from the past and present, and some my very favourites: Fleur Adcock, Johanna Aitchison, Tusiata Avia, Sarah Jane Barnett, Diana Bridge, Rachel Bush, Fiona Farrell, Janet Frame, Alison Glenny, Bernadette Hall, Siobhan Harvey, Helen Heath, Keri Hulme, Anna Jackson, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Frankie McMillan, Lisa Samuels, Sue Wootton and Karen Zelas.

Last but not least, don't forget my book! I know it's cheeky to include, but poets struggle to be read at the best of times so, here I am, shamelessly promoting Contents Under Pressure (Pūkeko Publications 2019) by Gail Ingram. I haven't seen a book like it this year, aiming to push genre, told as a novel in poetry, each poem also standing on its own. It's a paean to Christchurch and the street art that sprang from the cracks after the earthquakes; art as a healer for the main characters, mother and her teenage sons, suffering from mental stress and toying with drugs, in the aftermath of a disaster.

I'm sneaking in number 11, and I'm sure you'll forgive me because, I cannot go past the latest issue of takahē, which is often overlooked by the mainstream press, though not by the best NZ writers out of the land – Fleur Adcock (PM Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry 2019, and with her own collection out this year, which is already deservedly on other lists Fleur Adcock's Collected Poems (VUP 2019)) is takahē's guest poet for this issue, along with poems by Elizabeth Smither, Ruth Arnison, Amanda Hunt, Doc Drumheller, Vivienne Ulrich and Tony Beyer (who also has a chapbook out on my reading list Friday Prayers (Coldhub Press 2019) and looks terrific). If takahē 97 isn't on your reading list this summer, you're truly missing out on one of Aotearoa's leading journals of literature.

This Wednesday (tomorrow!) I've been invited to read at Canterbury Poet's Collective (CPC) alongside one of my favourite writers, Emma Neale, editor of Landfall (I might be name's dropping in my pant-pant excitement!), and local poet, Rodney Foster.

Before I get into my tips for reading poetry, I want to tell you about CPC. It's a series of readings held every spring in Christchurch, featuring some of the best poets in the land. Seriously. In this small lecture theatre at Ara in Christchurch, I've listened to readings by Fiona Farrell, C.K Stead, Tusiata Avia, Alison Glenny, Sue Wootton, David Eggleton, Michelle Leggot and Lynley Edmeades– and that's only to name a few over the last two seasons – how cool is that? The first half of the evening is Open Mic and the second hour is dedicated to the Guest Readers, two locals and one out-of-town guest. Most of the guest readers comment on the quality of poetry in the Open Mic. And no, I'm not on the committee and doing a plug; I'm just a big fan and grateful to the committee for running these evenings. So if you're into poetry and anywhere near Christchurch on a Wednesday evening in spring, check it out!

So how am I going to cope reading my five or so poems without fainting onto the foot of the podium when I look out into that sea of wildly expectant and discerning faces?

I've had a bit of practice lately. If you have a book published, it's a good idea to get out there and spread the word. I've learnt a couple of things along the way. Well, since birth really. My mum was into Toastmasters and us kids had the benefit of her tips. My two sisters and I took out the Junior, Intemediate and Senior school speech competitions one year! One of the things we learned here was to open our mouths. Yes, E-NUN-CI-ATE the words. And practice.

Mum made us read our speeches multiple times so we knew what was coming before we read /performed them. Some readers -– and slam poets – learn their words off by heart. I envy these people and have fantasies about shouting 'Fire!' as they perform, but sadly, no matter how much I practice, I can't do it. There's a major forgetting tendency – as well as that fainting thing - in the face of nerves. I need the comfort of the written word in front of me. But that piece of paper (or screen if you're hip) in front of you is only for comfort. This brings me to what I've learned all over again in recent times. The practice of reading out loud before the performance helps you to connect to your words and, more importantly, what they mean to you. Let me say that again. You develop the emotional connection to the inspiration that lead you to write those words through PRACTICE, which enables your listener to more readily connect to your work on an emotional level. That is what you want. The connection between you and your work and the audience.

I kind of knew this but had to experience it again to understand it, and as a result, I'm feeling more confident about creating that connection in an aware way. I was invited to read at the Pleasant Point Ladies' dinner club earlier this year. Yay, a chance to sell some of my books! But oooo, quite a tough crowd, considering they were farmers and I was reading fairly experimental poetry. I chose some poems around the theme of the land and ones from my book, and duly read to them. But it wasn't until the last one "I cannot write a poem about Christchurch" that I felt I had really touched them. The poem was written as a personal response to the mosque attacks on Christchurch (I've written about this here) and I'd only read it once before, for RNZ. I had invested much emotional energy to read it and I knew I had to do that again for this group. I summoned up that same emotional energy and let them have it. 'Wow.' 'That was good.' I heard such comments ripple around the room. Thinking later about this response, I realised I had to summon up that same connection with all my poems and communicate it. And I have been trying to do so ever since.

I also wanted to add a couple of tips on how to connect to your poem on the night. One fantastic piece of advice came from an afternoon spent many years ago at a talk by Tusiata Avia on how to perform poetry. The thing I remember most that she told us: 'Plant your two feet firmly on the ground and own that poem.' That's right - OWN IT. (Sorry, excuse the shouting - I'm over 50.) It's the same thing as making a connection to your work that I've been talking about but a physical way into it – plant your feet, take a deep breath and say to yourself 'This is me. I'm good enough to be here. My poetry is good enough.' Acknowledge that to yourself before you open your mouth (to enunciate your words, thank you, Mum).

And a final word – the difference between reading a poem and performing it. I've added 'performing' to my title because, in a way, you are. You're summoning up the essence of the poem to communicate it to your audience. That's like a performance in that it takes the same energy. Also you're on stage, as it were, with an audience. But reading a poem is different that acting a poem. And, from my observations, reading a poem is different from what most slam poets do, who seem to be united in the rhythms and tonality of their work.

Rather, I think, the tone, loudness and pitch of your words will match your emotional understanding of your words and phrases. And your body language, likewise. Actors throw their arms around, stamp their feet, sway and flick their hair. These sort of things probably will distract rather than enhance your POETRY READING. We're here to listen to the words, not see your face contort. Remember, keep those feet planted. And don't wiggle too much.

And wish me luck for tomorrow.

Thank you, Bernadette, for allowing me to publish your speech notes here:

NOTES to launch CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE by Bernadette Hall

1. Welcome here to honour Gail, to celebrate with her and Rata and Karen of Pūkeko Publishing this beautiful and oh so timely book. It’s beautiful, it’s very beautiful. And it’s full of intelligence, and surprise and energy that burns off the page. Well, we all know Gail and we recognise that energy. When I first met her in 2008 at the Hagley Writers’ Institute, she was off to see orangutans in Borneo. She revitalised the South Island Writers’ Association in her years as its President. And gained an MA in Creative Writing from Massey University.

2. There’s something that continues to amaze me when it comes to poetry. The way a poem continues to grow, continues to be re-formed by history, by event, by emotional response. So a poem can be said to be both timely and timeless. Take these lines by Janet Frame: I take into my arms more than I can bear to hold.’

3. Gail has taken her time, she digs below the surface. She looks at Christchurch in ruins, she sees the reality and also the patterns that emerge, the long term effects and also their metaphorical weight. There are things that hurt her, that enrage her, that terrify her. She shapes them into something new. A sequence of 52 poems in a virtuosic range of styles, the whole thing working like a novel. This is her work. It demands courage and resilience and an honesty that is sometimes confronting. And so she tells us a story, the story of Baroness Elsa, mother, graffiti artist, who lives in Christchurch and is trying to find herself as much as she’s trying to save her two sons.

4. A powerful story, a dramatic narrative with rising and falling action all presented a series of 52 poems in a virtuosic range of styles. The Australian, Dorothy Porter, at a festival here a few years ago, read from her novel in which she employed a similar technique. She also confronted important social issues, just as Gail has done. Dorothy Porter’s novel went on to win the coveted Franklin prize for fiction much to the consternation of some purists.

5. It’s a beautiful book as you can see, with illustrations by Rata. Here’s Lady Godiva on the front cover. Hidden in the artworks are so many prohibitions NO SKATEBOARDING NO ENTRY WARNING LIVE MONITORING THE POLICE CAR CLEARANCE SALE NO CRUISING ZONE ENDS #RISE UP

6. Pressure, pressure.

As a teenager, the Baroness had felt parental pressure. She ‘had hoped to save her maimed selves, the children she does not yet know.’ But her parents had shaped the safety of the square for her,’ p. 21.

Some responses to pressure I recognised, hilarious. Those different faces we show our children, ‘the brave face, the haunted face’ and then there’s the very last straw, ‘the battle face’ over ‘the whole bloody family set of broken glasses.’

There’s pressure on her older son, Matiu, who studies physics at the University. ‘All content has been lost with external reality’ he wrote on the backseat of the family car. He’s in the middle of a breakdown.

Her younger son, Che-Che devotes himself to ‘smoking dope’ and skateboarding.

There’s her husband with ‘his deep and practical pockets, the loyalty card in his wallet with a Holden insignia patch on it that his mother gave him for the big five –oh’.

There’s societal and consumer pressure, the pressure of commercialism with its fakery and its billboards.

There’s pressure on language so that finally strings of words break up and slide all over page in this book.

In the midst of all of this, there are some things that mothers just aren’t meant to be. The Baroness bursts out, like a cavewoman taking to a wall with a charcoal stick. She climbs a scaffold, takes cans of paint from her coat, squeezes her fists, pops a plastic lid open, blends layers of paint on the wall. She’s a graffiti artist. Up there with Tilt and Banksy, the cranes and scaffolding, the tilt slabs with steel reinforcing, the rebuild.

And at this point I’d like to read a poem that shows her in action.

P. 29 “She’s going to de face a public place”

Here’s ERASURE as actuality and as a figurative device

The scale of the work is enormous, the thinking that’s gone into it. Among other things, it includes the language of science, parts and particles, of the body, of the brain. There’s much undoing of matter, of the earth, of the body, of the mind as if everything is revealing its parts what it is made of.

Conclusion:

'I take into my arms more than I can bear to hold.’

‘Yet still I take into my arms more than I can bear to hold.'

Welcome to my book launch, 5.30pm April 30th in the Spark Room at Tūranga Central Library Christchurch. Rata Ingram my amazing daughter not only designed the cover of my book and did the illustrations, she made a terrific PowerPoint to introduce the order of events. Unfortunately Rata was literally struck down by an ear infection as we set up the room. She lay down on the floor as the show began, unable to even lift her head. I thought I might join her. This was crazy. After writing poetry for ten years, my first collection was being launched, Contents Under Pressure, and what pressure it was. How would the book stand up under scrutiny? How would the launch go? But there was so much to do and happen, I had to perform.

First, as people entered they were greeted and mingled to a mix-tape we'd put together featuring No Zero hip-hop artist aka Fergus Ingram, my talented son. Here's a sample of his creative flair.

Eventually, I was to open my speech with, "It takes a village to raise a book." And I should have added "and to run a book launch!" I didn't realise how much was involved. My stunning sister Phoenix Renata of Phoenix Cosmetics is an experienced Event Organiser in the fashion world. She imagined and set up this 'grazing table' before people arrived. At least 70 people turned up so the grazing table was well and truly grazed. But a new standard had been set for book-launch nibbles.

And here are more of my helpers! My handsome husband and biggest supporter Mick Ingram was on the selling table. There are my books and postcards! And on the right is my Mum and Clara before the crowds flocked in. I'm thinking I am the only person to have their two Mums and two Dads at a book launch. Mum and Dad, who brought me up, came up from Fairlie where I grew up. And Fern, my birth mother, and Ross, my birth father with his wife Renai had come from Auckland for the event. Clara is Phoenix's daughter, my niece by birth. She helped set up the book table for me. See her darling three year old mischievous brother Cayden beside her.

And then the people streamed in. And bought books. And I signed. And the piles of books shrunk down. My friend Joanna Preston had told me to bring a nice pen and to have some phrases ready, perhaps quotes from the book. I liked that idea, and I'd written out some possible choices, such as "Create your own fuzzy pathways" or "I wuz here" or "Paint the bloody town red". It was fun choosing who might like what. But at the same time I was on Planet Floaty, my stomach churning in fear and excitement, the voice in my head saying over and over "This is me at my book launch, I'm signing my own book, this is me, this is it, I'm doing something I have only ever imagined, and how long I have been dreaming this and it's really really real, and I'm doing it, look, look, look, take notice, don't forget."

The business end of the evening started. The amazing Bernadette Hall, who I was not only lucky enough to have as my poetry tutor at Hagley Writers Institute back in 2008 but is one of New Zealand's most esteemed poets with the NZ Order of Merit for Services to Literature, the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement and nine astounding and beautiful poetry collections to her name. I had sent her the manuscript a couple of months before to read and she'd agreed to launch it. But now was crunch time. What did she really think of it?

She started her speech with a quote from Janet Frame, New Zealand's best poet! "I take in my arms more than I can bear to hold". She wove her experience of reading Contents Under Pressure around these words. She saw the protagonist, the graffiti artist, as hilarious, brave, tragic, feminist, going into places you don't imagine middle-aged women going. She said things like "this is an intelligent book", and the poems were "well-crafted" and "full of striking images", and "a lot of thought has gone into the presentation and production," and she commended Karen for publishing it. She read "She's going to de face a public place" which seemed to take on a gravitas for me with Bernadette reading it. Not only because she was Bernadette the well-known poet, but also because she was someone outside myself, so that the poem was now indeed in the world. You can read Bernie's speech notes here.

The whole moment of the speech felt surreal. Bernadette had read my book so deeply and well and was commending it so highly. The joy of that would have to wait for later. The show was in midflight.

Now it was for me to respond and perform. Not only the poems I had practiced, but then to take it out into the world, the shops, the libraries, other readings. I explained a little about my inspiration and the process of writing, then I read "Inspiration: at the beginning of broke, a flyer offers a seed of hope", "You can tell a woman by the way she shops" and the title poem, "Contents Under Pressure". Rata was to read "Black Hole" but she was still on the floor. I'm just so glad she was there. This indeed was one launch that I will never forget.

Contents Under Pressure is available at Scorpio Books, Take Note Ferrymead and other good bookstores and libraries, as well as on my website here.

My first book is launching April 30, and this week it's going to print. The cover is finished after many versions! My amazing daughter, Rata Ingram, designed it. It's based on one of the illustrations in the book. YES! the poetry is illustrated! The pic we used for the cover is a reference to Lady Godiva, an ancestor of the protagonist. My graffiti-artist protagonist admires Godiva because she is someone who was prepared to (literally) expose herself to help people out of their terrible living conditions.

The cover is meant to attract readers as well as give a clue as to what the book is about. When I researched trends in covers, I discovered the colours for 2019 are ... drumroll ... pink and orange. What do you think, Rata gave my horse a pink mane! Collage-style covers continue to be pretty hot too. That made me happy. For this book, my poetry juxtaposes a variety of discourse that shapes the graffiti artist's life and I think the collage-type effects of line drawing on brick wall mimic this. As to matching the cover with its contents, my novella-in-poetry is about an artist and mother, who turns to graffiti in an act of love, desperation as well as protest for her home city of Christchurch, which is in turmoil after the earthquakes. Rata's interpretation is stunning — my modern-day Godiva as feisty graffiti artist.

The back cover includes three commendations. It is in equal parts thrilling and scary to approach poets you admire, ask them to read your manuscript and write a blurb about it, then await the response. How generous and wonderful all of them were. I'm very grateful and humbled by their responses.

Years after the Christchurch earthquakes, the breakages continue. A young physics student is falling apart. His mother takes to the streets at night, tagging her rage and anguish onto the city’s walls. Their story is raw, painful, brave and at times strangely hilarious. Language is shattered in these pages, street art conjures up the nightmares. There’s energy to burn here. Many will feel a tug of recognition as they read. It’s all part of our shared history.Bernadette Hall

Gail Ingram has pulled off something special here. The collection offers a freshness of style and vision. The poems are packed with original, vivid imagery, often visually striking and, to my ear, pitch perfect. They accrue narrative power as the collection progresses. The sequence explores themes of connection and disconnection, subtly advocates for the place of art and language in witnessing the effects of trauma and in providing routes to recovery.Sue Wootton

A great strength of Gail Ingram’s moving collection is how it fractures narrative discourse and syntax to mirror the fault lines running through both the city and family life. Gail pays careful attention to craft with memorable and transformative perceptual images, which take us from "the floating / hammer of the Southern Alps” to “a weed scratching sounds in the wind”. Bryan Walpert

I hope you like the cover as much as I do, and that the poetry lives up to it! You'll have to read it and let me know ;)

***

I wrote a poem in response to the attack on two Christchurch mosques on Friday 15 March 2019. It is the only way I feel capable of responding. For me as a Christchurch writer, it feels necessary on some level to take responsibility as a human-being who lives here here in a community where I have seen love, neighbourliness and strength in the hardship after the earthquakes, but also a community that this attack grew out of.

I turned to Tusiata Avia's poem "I cannot write a poem about Gaza" (Manifesto for Aotearoa New Zealand 2017) as I searched for words for my own poem. Her poem is a response to the Palestinian plight in Israel. It came to mind because it is about another atrocity against another group of persecuted people and it is impossible to be unmoved when you read it. I cried as I wrote my poem and again after reading it in the RNZ studio. Poetry is a personal response that in its making can be transformative and healing. I hope that this poem may be so for some readers too.

Here are the words and the recording Radio New Zealand made of the poem:

Audio of my reading on Radio New Zealand 18/3/19

I cannot write a poem about Christchurch—after Tusiata Avia

I cannot write a poem about Christchurch because I do not speak 160 languages.

I cannot write a poem about Christchurch because there is Brougham St, Moorhouse Ave, Linwood Ave, there is Countdown, there is Hagley Park, there is Hagley School, there are people banging on the door of Canterbury Museum wanting to get in.

I cannot write a poem about Christchurch because I do not know how to ram a car off the road and I do not know how to haul him out the passenger door, and I do not know how to touch his hands.

I cannot write a poem about Christchurch because what does Rebuild the Cathedral mean, what does We are Striking for Climate Change mean, what does Kate Shepherd’s memorial mean, what does the Christchurch Art Gallery in lockdown mean?

I cannot write a poem about Christchurch because I do not understand Kia Kaha Kia Kaha Kia Kaha Kia Kaha.

I cannot write a poem about Christchurch because the only time I have been inside Masjid Al Noor is when a man strapped a Go-Pro to his head and my son and my neighbour’s son and my friends’ sons inside their schools slouched below the curtained windows watched a man through his White Supremacist eyes see the people on the tiled floor and take a gun and

I cannot write a poem about Christchurch because people are taking their shoes off. Because a sermon is being given. Because people are on the floor. Because he is looking for his father. She is clutching her arm with a gunshot wound. Because police are outside the hospital with machine guns. Because this is a developing situation. Because this is not who we are. Because this is who we are.

Some other writing for Christchurch from New Zealand writers:

Johanna Aitchison wrote the poem "Red Painted Bicycles" (scroll down) in response to the mosque attacks.

Jess Fiebig's poem "Elegy for Christchurch" also in response to the mosque attacks (please see The School for Young Writers facebook page - scroll down)

Toby Morris's graphic art "This is us"

Laura Borrowdale's article "Reflections from living over the fence from New Zealand's mass shooting"

Witi Ihimaera's karakia for Christchurch

Janet Frame's poem"When the sun shines more years than fear"

PAINT THE TOWN

Called Contents Under Pressure, it been four years

in the making, Christchurch

cracked, off the wall,

it features graffiti

-art. It really does have

pictures, a mother under pressure

teenagers, depression, drugs,

a family floundering, think Eastgate Mall

Eastgate Mall, Eastgate Mall, language

of science, gansta, list

radio, newspaper, billboard,

take your pick. It's narrative

it's collage, it's Art, it's

new POETRY

and YOU want it.

Title:Contents Under Pressure

Author: Gail Ingram

Illustrator: Rata Ingram

Publisher: Pūkeko Publications

5.30pm. April 30th.

Spark Room, Tūranga, Christchurch.

Don't miss out. Limited print run. Keep the date and watch this space.

Photo by me. Graffiti by Yikes. Manchester St, Christchurch.

that I edited for the New Zealand Poetry Society 2018 has sold out! I like to think it's because everyone who bought a copy liked it so much they decided to get another for their friend and then another.

This is what some of the punters said:

"I am very pleased with it. What a fantastic collection!"

"My gorgeous anthology has arrived. I'm thrilled to be included!"

Perhaps it was the cover. It's rather spectacular, don't you think? Rata, my daughter, designed it for me again this year, and I think she surpassed the great one she did last year for after the cyclone.

Or maybe it's just the wonderful poetry. I thought the standard this year was higher than last. There was a huge pile of 'Goods' to choose from — the middle pile, the ones where I had to make the cut-off. This high standard makes it difficult for editors like me, who are limited by page numbers and space and end up not choosing poems that need to be read, but it is ultimately a win for New Zealand poetry and for readers, who get to be spellbound by the words of our excellent poets.

I do hope you have your copy already and have been enjoying the summer reading. Don't worry though if you want to buy one, you can register your interest by emailing info@poetrysociety.org.nz and they will print a limited run if there are sufficient numbers.

I'm reading for takahē this week, around 340 poems. Last month I read around 1,300 poems for the 2018 New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology. I've read a lot of free verse. I've read a lot of poems about the New Zealand landscape, seascape. Don't get me wrong, I l love free verse, I love the landscape ... loss ... love. But the poems that stand out are the ones that experiment; they have a confident voice, they use irony, they play with tone. The form is exactly right for the content. I get to the end of them and sigh. Or I get to the end of them and I don't know what it is that has made me shiver. They're complex. They don't tell. They're mysterious. I have to read them again. And again. And then I throw my arms up in the air and close my eyes and say, Jesus, that was good.

That's what happened when I read the winning poem for the NZPS competition, Bogusia Wardein's "Bathing in Melancholy", judged by Anne French. I didn't get it on the first reading. But some of the lines were jumping out at me: 'The use of the word rainy is deliberate. There is a reference to / Democritus in the poem. I recall he plucked out his eyes / in order to think ...'. It made me want to go back and read it again. And again. And then the bathing in melancholy of the title struck me. This was more than about writing poetry. 'I am writing for God'. What a god-awful thing to do, but here is she, here we all are, doing it. This is a winning poem all right. It captures the paradox at the heart of all good poetry, the universal dilemma in the particular experience. It's a hard thing to pull off. And I think it's achieved through craft -- playing with and refining the ideas that originate in language. Noticing the way language shapes our experience and then experimenting with shape, form, sound to re-new that experience, make new. Surprise.

You'll be able to read all of Bogusia's poem in November when the new anthology is launched. Read the judge's report here.

I've done a lot of submitting new poems this year. 15 of those submissions (usually there are three or four poems in each submission) I've heard back from, 11 declined, 4 acceptances. And that doesn't count the manuscript submissions, all of which have been rejected. It's hard work and there are way more rejections than I'd like, but sometimes it pays off. One of submission I made earlier in the year was to Hungry Hill Writing for their annual poetry competition; there were prizes and the winning and shortlisted poems are anthologised.

I actually wrote "Me too" for a Rattle Poetry competition in response to a news item (pretty big one, wasn't it, the #MeToo movement!). The poem originated in an exercise in one of Joanna Preston's poetry workshops (I've written about those before). We had to choose a line of poetry -- I chose a line from Maggie Smith's poem "Good Bones" -- and then you had to end each line of your new poem with a word from the original line -- sort of like a acrostic poem in reverse. The actual name for this kind of poem is called 'a golden shovel'. I was pretty pleased with the result. Rattle in the US didn't choose it (one of my rejections) so I sent it to Hungry Hill in Ireland. It came third.

And another poem "The same day we discovered the existence of a new human organ", basically about human ignorance, was shortlisted in the same competition. That's the way it goes. Some judges like your style. This judge was Emily Wills, UK poet. I haven't been placed in a competition out of New Zealand before and I can tell you it's a pretty nice feeling to think someone outside your normal sphere of existence might enjoy something you've written. I'll take that.

I belong to the South Island Writers’ Association (SIWA). I joined SIWA around 12 years ago, and was chair for three of those years, including the 50 year anniversary. Last month I was able to do a feature for Flash Frontieron some of the flash-fiction writers at SIWA. Thank you to the wonderful Michelle Elvy at Flash Frontier, who has kindly allowed me to reprint most of it here. The lead interview is with Rata Ingram, my daughter, but not because she's my daughter! but because as a member of SIWA, she won the SIWA competition that featured in National Flash Fiction Day event, Flash in the Pan 2017.

SIWA boasts Dame Ngaio Marsh as its first patron, and it is a lively group of writers based in Christchurch who meet once a month to take part in member competitions, open-mikes and discussions on the craft of writing and issues related to publishing. Our judges and speakers have included Michelle Elvy, Frankie McMillan, Joanna Preston, Bernadette Hall, Paul Cleave and Elizabeth Knox, to name a few.

Some members' names you might recognise if you are active in the NZ writing scene are Rachel Smith, Celine Gibson, Karen Zelas, Barbara Strang, Sue Kingham, Jenna Heller, Zöe Meager, Jeni Curtis, Jane Seaford, Shirley Eng and Sam Averis.

Last year, our youngest member Rata Ingram won the SIWA 2017 flash fiction competition and read her story at Christchurch’s Flash in the Pan. Her interview, story and related artwork are featured below, along with Sally Carroll’s story, which came second, and a story from the current chairperson, Céline Gibson.

For more about SIWA and how to join, visit the website. I recommend it for meeting other writers and keeping up your craft!

Interview: Rata Ingram, SIWA flash fiction competition winner

Winner of the South Island Writers’ Association (SIWA) Flash Fiction Competition 2017, Rata Ingram, chats to Céline Gibson, Flash Frontier contributor and Otago Regional Winner of National Flash Fiction Day 2015.

Céline Gibson: Biggest congrats, Rata on winning 1st place in the South Island Writers’ Association Flash Fiction Competition 2017, held to coincide with National Flash Fiction Day 2017. Your flash Verus Amicus Cognoscitur is a tender, touching flash on friendship. It felt to this reader to be a piece written to laud and celebrate that fragile gift that is true friendship. Was that the inspiration behind the flash?

Rata Ingram: Yeah, in a way. It was also about – well, I guess at the time I was feeling quite lonely. I think that as writers we tend to base some stories on people we know, or people who have made an impression on our lives, so this story was based on a friend; this friend was there for me when I needed a shoulder.

CG: The way you have chosen to structure the story is unusual – the breaking down of the word ‘amore’ letter by letter. Was this form something you envisioned from the outset, or did the idea suggest itself to you as the story progressed?

RI: I subscribe to an email newsletter called A.Word.a.Day and, true to their name, that’s what they do – send out a vocabulary word each day. They have a theme every week, and at the time, the theme was words that by removing the first letter would still be a word. They gave as an example Virgil’s quote: Verus amicus amore, more, ore, re cognoscitur, which translates into “You can recognize a true friend by their affection, behaviour, words and deeds”. A great Latin example of taking letters off words and making new words. I was really taken by the quote and structured my story around that. It’s meaningful to the story as well – the erasure of letters reflects the character’s need to erase the ‘black marks.’

CG: In the Ore section of your flash, I love the two simple but heart-rending passages of dialogue:

“I know I’m supposed to feel dread,” she said, “But fear is in my hands, not my heart or my head. My cuticles are bleeding.”

“Take this tissue,” he said.

There is much hinted at here about the bond between these two characters without overwriting it. How important is it to trust in your readers to ‘get it’ without resorting to the dreaded ‘signposting’?

RI: It’s very important! It’s that whole maxim of what makes for good writing – show don’t tell. That’s what teachers remind us of from when we first lift a pencil, and they’re right. I’m a fan of mystery stories, and simply put, if everything was spelt out, there’d be no mystery. If you make all the details explicit, the story becomes less relatable, less gripping.

CG: For those readers not overfamiliar with Latin, what is the significance of the title to the theme of your flash? I’ve read a few flashes where, for me, the piece was let down by the title. Your title, however, is a triumph – a mini masterpiece in itself. Was your flash fashioned from the title, or was the title born from the flash?

RI: It’s half of the quote – a true friend is known– and I used the other half for the sub-headings that structure the flash. So, in essence, my flash was fashioned from the title. The title was a gift in many ways! Latin has this dark, antiquated mood to it, which reflects how the character is feeling – the trying to make sense of something that they don’t necessarily understand.

CG: When did you first come across the genre of flash fiction? What is its attraction for you as a young writer in the 21st century?

RI: It would have been a SIWA competition. SIWA has introduced me to a whole raft of genres that I would never have come across otherwise. Discovering flash has been a twofold opportunity in that I not only found out about this whole new genre, but that I also get to now experiment and play with it.

I think my flashes are basically of a poetic nature, because they don’t have much plot – they’re exploring a moment, and in relating to the 21st century it makes sense, because we’re very much in this digital age where life seems more fragmented and fast paced – think of twitter, where you only get 280 characters to express your thoughts to the world. Flash keeps me disciplined in writing short but punchy pieces.

CG: You’re a member of the South Island Writers’ Association (SIWA) which was founded by Dame Ngaio Marsh in 1963. How important is it, do you think, for writers to be part of groups like this? Has your continued involvement with SIWA grown or influenced your writing?

RI: Fitting writing around your life is difficult and can tend to have you NOT getting around to it, but if you have a deadline, you have something to work towards. SIWA’s monthly members’ competitions are good for this. Also, you get feedback from judges, which is really beneficial; you get to explore different genres, and best of all you get to meet other writers doing amazing things.

Being part of SIWA has definitely influenced my writing. I’ve learnt so much from our Outhouse judges – all renowned local and national writers – and from my fellow writers who sometimes give a talk at the meetings. Having the opportunity to judge a competition myself – a blog with the theme ‘10 Things’ – gave me more insight as to how we write. And I would say that in my role as newsletter editor of SIWA, my involvement with it has definitely grown.

CG: It can’t help but be noticed that when you attend SIWA meetings, you often come dressed as a character – which we love, by the way – but what’s that about?

RI: Apart from the fact that it’s fun to do, I’m really just trying to reflect the different shoes that writers reside in.

CG: I think Myrtle was my favourite.

RI: Thank you.

CG: Has there been any literary inspirational figure/s in your life, Rata?

RI: I like the writing of Janet Frame – her playing with words and her sideways insight into the world… it’s possibly something that my character has in Verus Amicus Cognoscitur.

The image I have included was inspired from a passage by Janet Frame’s book Faces in the Water, and the style of Buck Nin’s The Mamakus. You’ll notice black marks (almost resembling bars or needles) and these black marks also feature in my story, as a metaphor (or a reality) of isolation.

CG: Finally, what lies ahead for you in your writing career?

RI: I want to continue to grow and develop my writing, obviously. Long-term… I would like to make a collection of thematically similar short stories, poems, flashes and essays. I think I’m building that up now in my writing, anyway. It wouldn’t be a book in the conventional sense because of its collage type of structure, but I think New Zealand is okay with that now – thanks to young writers like Ashleigh Young and Hera Lindsay Bird who challenge the traditional book forms.

SOME WRITING FROM THE SOUTH ISLAND WRITERS ...

'Verus Amicus Cognoscitur' by Rata Ingram

Amore / love It’d been a while since she’d seen anyone real. She stayed in the room with the sea-green walls and the skirting board that was exactly the height of her hand. When she heard footsteps from down the hall she stopped smoothing the black marks and peered out from where she had crept, under the bed. The door flinched. He walked in carrying the bulbous red mug, the only one she would drink from, full of hot tea. A teardrop of milk slid down the side.

More / acts The tea was hot but she was thirsty. She wrapped her fingers around the mug and pressed tightly until her nailbeds turned white and she couldn’t feel her fingertips. He laid a hand over hers and she heard the rasp of skin among the static grazing the corners of her ears.

Ore / words She wanted to wait for him to say something but it was her turn to speak. He cared about the symmetry of dialogue. She would speak, then he.

“I know I’m supposed to feel dread,” she said. “But fear is in my hands, not my heart or my head. My cuticles are bleeding.”

“Take this tissue,” he said.

The symmetry meant she tried to fit too much into her sentences, and they became tangential, like some German professor talking amicably to a blackboard, grammar uncannily tacked onto the ends of things. Now she had nothing. She’d abandoned words but was not alone from them.

Re / facts “Can you help me clean the marks on the walls?” she asked.

“I will. I’ll bandage your hands and you can show me where they are.”

He wanted to help her eradicate them. She pointed, and he took a cloth to the clean paintwork. He hoped they weren’t quite real yet.

'That’s My Girl' by Sally Carroll

Behind our garage there’s dirt like crap. My school skirt is covered in wet, clay shit. I’m hiding, listening for Dad’s footsteps… he’ll be in one hell of a mood until he sobers up. Then he’ll admire my guts for standing up for Mum. He taught me. I’d put my fists up to his face, play-fighting, “Get your knuckles straight,” he’d say, “That’s my girl.”

I got him good. I was ironing my new dress from the Sallies when I heard Mum scream. I grabbed the iron and blasted into the kitchen. My pissed Dad was forcing Mum’s hand over the stove, over a hot element, yelling, “Where’s the sixty bucks?” He turned letting Mum go, his eyes wide. He lifted his fist at me. I plunged. I slammed the iron at his chest. “Jesus,” he hollered rushing to the cold tap. I dropped the iron and ran.

I can’t hear footsteps. I’ll sneak into the house and grab the forty bucks stuffed under the ironing board. I hid it there after shopping at the Sallies. Fish n’ chips will be good, and some cigs and mixes. My phone… it’s a text… ‘What’s the yelling?’ it says. Shit. It’s from Tim. He’s on the street. No way he’ll enter my property cos’ he hates my parents. His parents have jobs and everything. If he posts stuff on Facebook about Dad’s yelling and Mum’s screaming… I don’t care if he’s my boyfriend… I’ll belt him one.

He’s sitting on the neighbour’s fence. I shrug when he asks me about the screaming. He puts on his I don’t believe you look. I let him know.

“We’ve just finished having fish n’ chips for dinner, crumbed blue cod, not that shark shit your family has.”

'Christmas Saboteur' by Céline Gibson

They bustled into the bedroom and settled on the shag-pile to watch her antics from the far side of the bed.

With the flourish of a magician, parcels of brown paper, roughly bound with string, were whisked from behind a sheet, then lobbed across the room. “For you, for you, and for you.” Feverish fingers tugged at bows.

“We’re having Christmas dinner out this year,” she said, whizzing the last brown parcel across the paisley eiderdown.

They envisioned a fancy restaurant, their best clothes, waitresses hovering with pads and pencils.

“Victoria Park,” she said. “Sandwiches and a thermos.”

Their beaks parted. Tiny, choky chirps about the worst Christmas, ever. No festive paper; no Christmas tree cleverly studded with cotton-wool balls to replicate snow; no naked dolly in the laundry basket masquerading as Baby Jesus. Mean old Mummy, out to sabotage Christmas.

Their father poked a hole in his parcel. “Lovely – Old Spice … again.” He plodded to the bathroom and shut the door. Poor Daddy!

At Victoria Park she reprised her magician role, producing ham-and-mustard sandwiches, tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs from a chilly-bin.

Daddy stretched out in his deck-lounger, took a sip from his beer can. The chicks admired their Christmas sandals while pecking at their sandwiches. Mummy shook her wrist to admire the charms on her bracelet – a ladybird, shamrock, apple, anchor and number 13.

Her brood watched her slice into the Christmas cake. Mummy was so pretty; Daddy was so happy. This was the best Christmas, ever.

I was lucky e

Gail Ingram: Tēnā koe, Anton. You are a terrific advocate of indigenous writing in Aotearoa, a publisher of two volumes of Māori poetry, and editor of New Zealand’s only Māori literary journal, the fabulous Ora Nui. Can you tell us about what inspired you – first, to publish the collection of poetry written by your mother For someone I love – a collection of writing by Arapera Blank, and second, to establish New Zealand’s only journal of Māori writing Ora Nui?

Anton Blank: While Arapera is a very important writer in the Māori literary canon, she is less well known than some who followed. Her love affair with my father Pius Blank is very central to her writing. I wanted to publish something unique which captured the power of her writing, and gave an insider’s view of her life. It had to be very intimate, and beautiful, because beauty is a recurring theme in her poetry. I also wanted to move away from a strident political statement. The politics are there but they are carried by the beauty of the prose and images.

Being gay and very integrated into mainstream New Zealand culture, I have always struggled to see myself in Māori texts, which tend to reduce Māori masculinity to a few hackneyed stereotypes. There is a preference for hyper-masculinity which we see at its most exaggerated in kapa haka, and a priviledging of age, with older males being most revered. Arapera bucked against these traditions and I have inherited her healthy disregard for the Māori patriarchy.

I established Ora Nui to increase the range of experiences in Māori literature. There is some really good contemporary Māori writing out there, which situates Māori tradition in the broader context of urban environs and globalisation. For me this is the realistic representation of the Māori experience. Jean Riki and Reihana Robinson, for example, weave their identity into long form prose that investigates global concerns. This is Māori literature at its most exciting.

GI: Issue 2 of Ora Nui was a collaboration with the First Nations Australia Writers’ Network. What were your reasons for collaborating? What differences did you notice between the writing of the two groups as a collective? Similarities?

AB: Issue 3 of Ora Nui takes this idea even further by including contributions from writers in Asia and Europe. By limiting the contributions to Māori writers, we get a closed, internally-focused discussion. I believe that as indigenous people, we have a lot to say about identity. Our cultural intelligence can and should inform broader discussions about diversity.

Māori and Aboriginal have a shared experience of colonisation which played out very differently in the two settings. The physical landscape of the two countries is also different. So while the pain and grief of colonisation is present in both Māori and Aboriginal literature, the narratives and language are different, and specific to time and place. This is evident in Ora Nui 2.

Issue 4 of Ora Nui, which we will begin working on later this year, will be a collaboration with indigenous Taiwanese writers. The theory of the Austronesian migration posits that Māori migrated originally from Taiwan, through the Pacific, to Aotearoa. I want to shine a spotlight on this aspect of our history, and reflect on what this means as Asians continue to migrate to Aotearoa New Zealand.

GI: What are your feelings about creating a written record of Māori stories and poems in an oral tradition? Do you feel as though you are forging a new path, given that at least in the English literary tradition there seems to be a difference in the kind of work that’s performed orally versus the written variety?

AB:I hear this question asked a lot and I find it a little bit annoying. It assumes Māori don’t have a literary tradition.

Māori have been literate for over 150 years now. I love writing, my sister and I are both writers, a gift inherited from Arapera. My mother loved Keats and Shakespeare. My uncle Wi Kuki, an actor, also loved English literature. I’m more influenced by the beatniks and post-modernists. So who owns literature now? We all do.

It’s not one or the other, it’s both. Oral and written traditions help us retain and develop our culture. We have to be open to change and new modes of communication.

GI: I found the cover art for Ora Nui mesmerizing – beautiful, powerful, political. Paula Green, on reviewing Ora Nui Issue 3, describes the journal as ‘a symphonic treat of art and writing’. Do you give your artists a brief? What role do you want the art to play in the journal? Do you have a favourite artist?

AB: I have tried giving Ora Nui a theme but it doesn’t work; people don’t write to brief. With the open submissions process, we get a sense of the current concerns of Māori literature. I wanted the images to provide pauses in the text, and be moments of reflection. Everything is connected. Beauty is the messenger.

GI: Our guest editor Vaughan Rapatahana asks: You have long been an advocate of tino rangatiratanga for Māori, especially after their colonised past history. Similarly and equally, you are also a strong advocate of the rights of ngā tamariki, LGBT, underprivileged and marginalised sectors of Aotearoa New Zealand society. What can writers and artists do to voice similar concerns in a literary culture that tends to ignore – indeed, sometimes even abnegate – such issues?

AB: We need to increase the diversity of voices in literature and this means we have to be proactive and search for them. I am used to working on large collaborative projects where Māori wellbeing is a concern. Sometimes I am the squeaky wheel but people respect that. You have to be resilient to work against the hegemony. Everyone benefits from diversity.

GI: What do you like to read? Can you recommend some up and coming Māori writers for readers to check out? How about any favourite flash fiction you’ve read recently?

AB: At the moment I am reading Shermaine Alexei’s memoir of his mother, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me. It’s a mix of narrative and poetry. He’s also very funny and his recounting of life on the reservation reminds me of aspects of my family.

My favourite flash fiction right now – my own. There’s a story in the middle of my new short story collection Global Roaming titled ‘The Call’. I wanted it to be break in the middle of the collection, a short moment between the longer pieces. It’s about love and responsibility.

Every single Māori writer in Ora Nui 3 is great, and I don’t want to single out my personal favourites. I’ve already flagged a couple. I am most drawn to writing that I can see myself in. I’d like to see more Māori writing fiction – short stories and novels – and literary non-fiction. We always get a lot of poetry submissions.

GI: Finally, what writing / publishing / editing projects are you working on now, and when can we look forward to their release?

AB: My short story collection Global Roaming will be available in shops and from my website in the next few weeks.

My next project will be a non-fiction title exploring how we can use the Treaty of Waitangi to transition to diversity and multi-culturalism. Many Māori are resistant to multiculturalism but I believe indigeneity and diversity can co-exist, they are complementary. Māori need to lead these discussions of cultural change.

After that work will begin on Ora Nui 4. And I’d like to start writing a novel, based on one of the short stories from Global Roaming.

Thank you, Anton, wonderful to korero with you.

Anton Blank (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu) has an extensive history in social work, communications, Māori development, public health and literature. Anton has held senior roles in the government and not-for-profit sectors, including Communications Services Manager at the Ministry of Education and Executive Director of the Māori child advocacy organisation Mana Ririki. He has maintained a significant media profile as a Māori child advocate and cultural commentator and was the Principal Investigator of the 2016 report Unconscious bias and education – a comparative study of Māori and African American students. Anton is also the editor and founder of the Māori literary journal Ora Nui.

I would like to thank Ivy Alvarez for publishing the following article in the Feb 2018 edition of a fine line:

On editing the 2017 NZPS anthology after the cyclone

by Gail Ingram

At the beginning of August, a pile of poems around two hand-spans high arrived in the post. My job: to select around 100 of the 1285 poems entered in the annual NZPS competition, lay them out in an 124-page anthology all ready for printing by October’s end.

There are four sections – Adult Open, Junior Open, Adult Haiku and Junior Haiku – and the four judges had already chosen the winners from each section for inclusion in the anthology.

Yes, Probably, Possibly, No

I spent about four days reading the Adult Open section, sorting poems into piles of Yes, Probably, Possibly and No — I got this idea from Canterbury’s father of poetry James Norcliffe.

The largest piles were the middle two. At times, I would get a string of what seemed to be poorly-written, clichéd or old-fashioned rhyming poems, and I wondered if I was judging too harshly, but then I’d have an ‘oh-oh’ or a laugh-out-loud moment, and I kept on.

It was my first time editing alone. The downside of this was I couldn’t bounce my choices against someone else. The upside, of course, was I could put my own stamp on the anthology.

After the strange first hours of doubt, I got into a rhythm, a more instinctive style than the analytical up-close style I ordinarily use for poetry reading. I tuned into the feeling of the piece, noticing techniques if they leapt out either to help or hinder.

I judged blind but, as a member of the poetry community, I recognised a small number of poems. I selected most of them. They were good poems, though I was aware I might have been influenced precisely because I had seen them before, and also because I knew the poets were well-respected. I suspect this latter bias cannot be helped, though, like other editors in this situation, I trusted in my intent not to choose a poem if I didn’t think it up to scratch.

On the flip side, it was a thrill to discover later that I had selected other poets I knew along with those to be published for the first time. Also, I felt assured that any familiarity bias might have been flattened out along the way, since I read almost every poem at least three times by the end of the process. I used this same process of sorting for each of the other three sections. As you would expect, reading the haiku and senryu was much quicker.

How many gems?

The next step I took was to work out exactly how many poems I could include. I decided to base this on the percentage of entries for each section. Thus, the section that would make up the largest portion of the book would be the Adult Open since there was a far greater number of poems entered in this section — a little under half of the total.

This was where the re-reading of poems came in. I went through all piles again to check I hadn’t missed any gems. Of course, one woman’s gem is another woman’s gravel.

I wanted the poems I chose to connect or resonate with the heart, all through the cunning and craft of the poet. I wanted there to be an awareness of language as a tool, for it to rise above mere description. I also wanted the poet to treat everyday or common subjects with an original or surprising arrangement of vocabulary, lines or form, or alternatively, to capture new subjects.

The poems in the ‘No’ pile didn’t do this. Some might force words into unnatural order to fit the rhyme scheme, for example, or a haiku might describe an interesting action, but without the necessary break in meaning to give the reader pause to reflect.

Chaos to order

Finally, I had the poems I wanted. Laurice Gilbert — the real gem of the whole process, my NZPS go-to when I had any questions — emailed to ask for the title of the new anthology. This was traditionally chosen from a phrase in one of the prize-winning poems. I’d been playing with a couple of ideas but kept coming back to the title that won the Adult Open, “After the cyclone” by Alexandra Fraser.

Cyclones and global warming were in the news, plus Alexandra’s poem was brilliant, capturing, I felt, the zeitgeist of these turbulent times. Having a title helped me to sort the poems into the order they would come in the book.

The first poems were chosen quite mechanically by their placing in the competitions, but still, I placed poems together that complemented each other by topic, tone or feeling when I could, a process I’d practiced in one of Joanna Preston’s outstanding workshops. After that, I laid out all my selections on the lounge floor, choosing the first and last poems of each section to hook into the title-theme, after the cyclone. Then, I slotted each poem into its designated page.

Final details

The last month of the process, I spent mailing the poets to give them the good news, formatting the poems, sending the poets proofs for checking, and finally sending the PDF to Laurice and my daughter Rata Ingram (who also designed the cover) for proofreading.

There were many little mistakes, but Laurice assured me this was normal. Two days before the final print, Rata spotted one of the poets’ names spelled as ‘Cathering’. Man, I’m glad we got that one!

Observations

Three things I learned:

At some point during those first few days, I realized what a huge privilege it was to be able to see what preoccupied a relatively large group of individuals from this land and in this time – and not just any individuals, but poets – people who, through the act of writing poetry, must observe, reflect and care enough about the world to write it down.I also got a sense of what it was that might distinguish this group of mainly NZ poets from others. You cared a lot about our landscape, the sea, our genealogy. Your observations were often wry or humorous. Amongst the Open section, there was a sense that you are older, concerned with personal histories, but also outward-looking with the world, and concerned for the people in it.The last thing that stood out (unrelated to the first two) was that the Junior section seemed under-subscribed, with the selections seeming to come from a handful of schools. Teachers sometimes set the class the same task, which potentially eliminated poems that were too closely related by form or content. This means there is a huge potential for younger writers next year to get out there, enter, and be noticed!

I would like to say thank you NZPS for this awesome opportunity. I’m back next August, so I look forward to reading your gems.

Once were elvers

Isn't it strange a river

close to the sea appears slow?

Your cheek was smooth when we met

but now I trace the pocks and furrows

with my finger. It’s expanding, the universe;

my arse is getting bigger, but none of us notice.

We travel through galaxies until we find

our burrow in the sea-sand.

I give you this world

in a bowl, here you are.

Filled with eggs of eels, pupil embryos

held in by skin, but I remember

the sashay and flick of your sleek form

under the water of a mountain.

We were married 25 years ago today -- our silver anniversary. I wrote this poem in 2014 and it got published in takahe 84 in 2015, yay! It's about sharing a very long journey together; eels travel 2000 kms from our NZ rivers to Tonga to lay their eggs, and their elvers travel back again to begin their lives. Wow, this gift of a journey, the beauty and excitement of the beginning, collecting memories, losing time, and how lucky we are and how precious it is to have someone we love to go through it all with. That would be someone called Zippy for me, the inspiration for the poem. It was love at first sight ('I want that man!')and thunder bolts and fire crackers in a flat in London in 1988. Our flatmates put rocks under our tent in the back yard, but that didn't deter us. Five years later back in NZ at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Tekapo surrounded by our amazing friends and family, we tied the knot. Our big love gave us two little elvers of our own, Rata and Fergus, and now they're 21 and 19. As they branch out on their own journeys, our next adventure into more unexplored territory begins. Scary. Hard work. Exhiliharating. Am I up for it? Yep.

Yesterday -- that's right, a sunny Sunday -- I spent six hours in a back room of a friendly country pub built out of salvaged earthquake materials 20 ks out of the Christchurch. What ever for? For kick-starting my Muse, of course, with around 12 other disciples of poetry, at Lincoln's wonderful newest pub, The Laboratory. Kick-starting the Muse was the name -- and the game -- of this particular workshop I was attending. By the end of the day, I had four promising first-draft poems to take home with me. Four. How many poems do you write on any good writing day? Well then, let's talk about Joanna Preston's workshops, the-most-productive-of poetry workshops.

They are also the most educational, mind-expanding and feel-good classes in and out of town that any aspiring, jaded or muse-free poet could ever hope for. And word has got around. People in her class came from as far as Dunedin and as wide as Temuka and Kaiapoi to be inspired to write limericks, lyrics and poems that include maypoles and underwear (often related). The results are often mind-blowingly good. After giving us some models of the kind of thing she wants from poets like Billy Collins to Seamus Heaney to Viola T Paradise (yes you read that right, and you should see the poem), we are given half an hour to give it a go. We share our results and usually there are at least two or three poems that floor us. All the more astounding given that they are first drafts. Those of us lucky enough to be living in Christchurch will often hear many of these poems in shiny new polished outfits performed at the Canterbury Poetry Collective's Spring Reading Series. Many others turn up in journals and anthologies all over New Zealand and further afield. Where would Canterbury poetry be without Joanna?

Joanna runs her poetry classes throughout the year in Christchurch and Lincoln. The next one starts March -- '2017 -- an Odyssey by Anthology', which is one of her famous 'Reading for Writing' workshops. Not only a chance to sample contemporary poetry from across the globe but to increase your knowledge and craft of poetry. Her handouts are copious and informative. I have been to many poetry workshops over the years but this one really is the best little poetry workshop in town. Don't miss out. Book online at The Dark Feathered Art, and check out her blog too.

I've just sent in my article to a fine lineon my experience and reflections of editing the New Zealand Poetry Society (NZPS) 2017 Anthology, after the cyclone. I take the reader through the process of editing a poetry anthology -- the troubles and joys -- as well as share my impressions on how it felt to read and select around 100 poems from around the 1300 poems I received. It was a real privilege to get a sense of what concerned a relatively large group of poets from mainly NZ in 2017. I give my impression of where the interests of the group lay and how their writing might differ from other poetry in other places and times. Check it out in a fine line next month or keep an eye on this space!

A fine line is the NZPS quarterly online magazine edited by the wonderful Ivy Alvarez. As well as articles, it publishes poems from its members. It's easy to join NZPS, not too expensive, and if you're a budding poet from Aotearoa, I recommend it.