A(nother) Difficult Day

Just back from handing over the manuscript of time to sing beofre the dark to Bruce Bascand and his sister Robyn.  I’ve written and erased dozens of paragraphs that follow on from that simple statement. Stupid. Let’s just go with the observation that I didn’t handle it as well as I would have liked, and I’m …

CPC Spring 2017 Poetry in Performance 

It’s that time again – Spring, the season of rain, daffodils, blackbirds fighting, lambs gambolling, bud burst, and weekly evictions of starlings from my roof space. And most of all, time for the annual Canterbury Poets’ Collective Poetry in Performance readings. Hooray! For anyone who hasn’t been before, it’s the longest-running poetry readings series in …

Judge? Mental.

Here we are, beginning the long slide into winter, and in a clever attempt to keep warm I’m donning my best wig and doing another stint of judging. Two stints, in fact: judging the Junior Poetry Competition for the New Zealand Poetry Society, and the Jean Ruddenklau Poetry Trophy for the South Island Writers’ Association. …