Hooray! I've just found out that the three short poetry courses I pitched for the CPIT Summer School programme have been approved! I can't go into detail yet, but if you fancy dedicating some time to the muse this summer, you might like to pencil the following dates into your diary: ◊ 18th, 19th, 20th …
launching moments in the whirlwind
Saturday was the launch of the 2009 NZPS anthology, moments in the whirlwind. It was an interesting event, as always – a quite different segment of the poetry public to those you tend to see at other Canterbury poetry events. And a decent crowd too – probably a hundred or so people. Chairs were at …
The Summer King – now on Amazon!
Yes, at long last, The Summer King is available through Amazon! Both US and UK now have it listed, and apparently a batch has been shipped out to the US distributors, so it should be in stock any day now. The other thing this means is the possibility for people to start leaving reviews in …
Angels, Demons, and Edward Hirsch
I just finished reading Edward Hirsch's The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration. It's a fascinating read – he draws from all sorts of different sources, from Poetry to Painting to Modern Dance to Jazz, with lots of other digressions along the way. He takes Lorca's idea of the Duende …
The disturbingly talented Emma Jones
Just a little out of date (ok, a couple of weeks) is the news that my disturbingly talented compatriot, Emma Jones, has won the Forward Prize for Best First Book 2009 for her book, The Striped World (Faber and Faber, 2008). Apparently not only is she the first Australian to win the award, but also …
A Dark Feathered Art 