Yesterday I said goodbye to a poetry group that I've been a member of for the best part of ten years. And I do mean the best part – these guys have taught me so much, seen me through so many writing phases and stumbles and growth spurts and dry spells ... they were my …
Before the Sirocco – launch ahoy!
Well it's finally done: the 2008 NZPS anthology Before the Sirocco is now officially out of my hands. I've even submitted my expenses claim. It's been an interesting task. Certainly much easier this time around – you always forget just how much donkey-work there is. Things like checking names and addresses, entering data onto lists. Printing. Posting. …
Subverting Clichés – an axe to grind
One of the exercises I gave my CPIT students recently was the classic "reanimating clichés" (i.e. take a cliché and treat it as though literally true. Explore it. Give it life again). I've always enjoyed it, and have managed to get a couple of perfectly acceptable poems from it in the past. One (light) poem …
students and Paul Muldoon’s “Quoof”
The session before last, I showed my CPIT students a range of different modern sonnets, ending with the least typical of all, Paul Muldoon's Quoof. It caused quite a lot of discussion. Among other things, why a poet would risk such an out-there image as my hand on her breast like the smouldering one-off spoor …
Micro-review – Renegade’s Magic
Finally got around to finishing the final book in Robin Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy, Renegade's Magic. Hmm. It's definitely better than the second book, Forest Mage. And possibly even better than the first, Shaman's Crossing. But the ending is quite weak, and is virtually identical to the ending of Fool's Fate (and, for that matter, to Assassin's …
A Dark Feathered Art 