Oh Christchurch, we’ve bled so often over the last few years. I don’t have any words for the way I feel right now. I don’t believe in God, but I am praying to the universe that the police stop the people who have done this, and that no-one else gets hurt. Stay safe, people. Hold on …
There is no such thing as a surfeit of good Belgian chocolates (until you have to choose just six)
One of the best things about preparing to teach classes is the amount of reading that I get to do. Am required to do, in fact. I imagine it's something like being the menu tester at a superb restaurant, or a product quality inspector at a very good chocolate factory, somewhere in Belgium, say, where …
Sing for a winner …
Thank you to those who entered the glosa competition – wow! I love what each of you did with the lines you chose, and I’m guessing you had fun doing it. (I hope so, at least!) Picking a winner was tricky, but in the end I’m going with Jac Jenkins’ wired – I think it …
Revisiting Nicky’s house
Got a lovely special delivery the other day – Doesn’t it look fantastic? Yes, but what do Dunedin Scarfie flats have to do with Joanna Preston, Tasmanaut Poet? Quite simply, they’ve included a poem of mine in it: Visit to Nicky’s House. The story goes back a way. I originally wrote the poem for the anthology Under …
time to sing – and enter a competition
Time to wheel out the first of my Pimping the Book competitions for time to sing before the dark. And for this first competition, your task is to write a glosa. What the heck is a glosa? Well, according to my notes from the class I taught in 2015 on Unusual Forms: The glosa (or glose) is an …
A Dark Feathered Art 