Joanna Preston: Tasmanaut Poet
After a couple of weeks where the weather has been glorious and my garden has gone berserk, winter has paid us a return visit. Rain, sleet, wind, murk, yuck. Lousy for gardening: good for writing. Better still for judging the 2013 Takahe poetry competition. The bundle arrived this morning. 311 poems, to be whittled down …
Continue reading "A Suitable Occupation for a Wet Week – the 2013 Takahe poetry comp"
It’s this time of the year when I usually do a private overview of what I’ve managed to achieve over the previous twelve months. So it’s spookily appropriate that David Howard asked me to provide a “career overview” in thirteen poems and associated comments for the Truck poetry blog, where he is guest editor this …
Continue reading "A status update (but not in a facebooky way)"
On Thursday night I was at the monthly meeting of the South Island Writers' Association, to present the results of the Jean Ruddenklau Poetry Trophy for 2012. It was the first time I'd managed to deliver judgement in person, and was an … interesting experience. The competition itself was quite tricky to judge. Usually you …
Continue reading "Poetry, judgement, and the Oh God of Earthquakes"
The poet judges not as a judge judges, but as the sun falling around a helpless thing. – Walt Whitman Here we are, finally. The winners, losers and place-getters have been chosen, and the list dispatched to the competition secretary. Now I just have to finish polishing my judge’s report, and clean the blu-tack marks …
Continue reading "The Sun and Helpless Things – the end of judgement"
A justice with grave justices shall sit; He praise their wisdom, they admire his wit. – John Gay, from ‘The Birth of the Squire’. After the best part of five days deep immersion in the top 32 contenders for the 2011 NZPS Haiku Competition, I've finally got my order sorted. Well, almost. I now know …
Continue reading "In pursuit of wit and wisdom – the final decisions"
A Dark Feathered Art 