Writing poems is like waiting for lightning to strike. But it's hard to order your life around that. – Stephen Dobyns from As the Poet Said … I was thinking about the business of inspiration. What a strange variation of it we seem to have as poets, and all the ways we complicate it. When I …
Canterbury Poets’ Spring 2012 Readings Series
Hooray hooray, spring has sprung, the garden is going ape-shit, and it’s time for the CPC Poetry Readings again! Isn’t it a nifty poster? Not to mention a fascinating lineup? (Well, other than me.) (No, bollocks to that – including me!) You can download a copy of the official poster for yourself, your friends and/or …
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Things Teaching Has Taught Me
1. Build it, and they will come. Timetable it, and they might. Or not. Depends, really. 2. No matter how organised you think you are, you aren't. 3. Bulldog clips. 4. The class that you're sure will be really popular will take the full amount of time available to clear the minimum numbers threshold. 5. …
The Barbarians may have been Slightly Delayed
I know a lot of the posts I’ve done have been doom and gloom stories about the dire state of publishing; of poetry in particular, and literature in general. And I stand by my comments: things are very definitely not peachy. New Zealand writers make bugger-all, and poets negative bugger-all. And it’s the same all …
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Anniversaries; delayed commemoration of, and associated excuses
Yesterday was the second anniversary of the first earthquake. I had planned to blog about it on the day, but, Mother Nature having a very highly tuned sense of irony, there was a particularly exciting thunder storm that spent the afternoon tethered to Southbridge. We had lightning, we had thunder, we had hail. We even …
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A Dark Feathered Art 