There must be something in the water. Honestly, for a cultural wasteland, Christchurch has a lot going on at the moment!
Tonight is the launch of Bernadette Hall‘s 9th poetry collection, The Lustre Jug (Victoria University Press, rrp $24.99). It’s being held in the TelstraClear Club, right in front of the Cathedral. Geoff Cochrane will be doing the honours, starting at 5.30 pm.
Then on Thursday 20th August, it will be the turn of Frankie McMillan – her first poetry collection, Dressing for the Cannibals (Sudden Valley Press, rrp $20) will be launched at the Central Library from 5.30 to 6.30 pm. Frankie and I are both members of the Poots Group, so I’ve seen a number of these poems already. It’s going to be a fabulous book.
So if you add those two to the launches of The Summer King, Marissa Jonpillai’s Hymns for Her, Ross Brighton’s A Pelt, A Shrub, A Soil Sample (and that’s just June/July), Tusiata Avia’s Bloodclot and David Gregory’s Push, Christchurch is looking remarkably like the centre of the poetic universe …
A Dark Feathered Art 
You will have to battle for the title with Palmerston North! Can it be any coincidence that these cities were designed by the same … town designer guy … and that both have a Square?
Ooh, don’t you start, you, you … Northerner!
Most Christchurch residents have simply decided to ignore the AA’s listing. Obviously the reason they left us off the list was because we’re so good, we’d otherwise have to occupy the top five positions …