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Jacket 2: Notes on NZ Poetry
Coromandel[photograph: Simon Creasey]First of all, a quick apology. Over the years I've tried to average about one post per fortnight, as those of you who've been kind enough to visit this blog on a...
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The Literature of the Civil War
[Thomas Nast: A Civil War Christmas (Harper's Weekly)]"Haven't you read enough books about the Civil War?" asked Bronwyn the other morning, as she observed me once more starting my long journey through...
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Masson-omania
[Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson]I guess it's a bit mean of me to put up a post about Jeffrey Masson's talk yesterday at Massey University, because it's too late now to invite any of you to come along.You...
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Don't Think It Couldn't Be You
[Peter Reading: Vendange Tardive (2010)]i.m Peter Readingborn Liverpool 27 July 1946died 17 November 2011Well, it's happened again. I was just looking up a few details for my lecture on Peter Reading...
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In the Court of the Crimson King
[Stephen King: The Wind Through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel (2012)]Well, it's finally happened. I knew it would if I kept at it for long enough: kept reading Stephen King books, that is (you can...
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The Green Room
[William Rothenstein: Walter de la Mare (1929)]"The Green Room" is a story about a young man named Alan, who is one day let in on the old bookseller Mr. Elliott's "little secret - namely, that at the...
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Bedside Books
[Bedside Books]Bronwyn calls it the dipping shelf. It's the one where you keep books you think might continue to be entertaining even though you've already read them - perhaps more than once. It's also...
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Fallen Empire Invitation
[Karl Chitham & Jack Ross: Fallen Empire]So I'm having a launch, in Dunedin, on Tuesday 19th July, at 5.30 pm, at the Blue Oyster Art Project Space, to which you are all most cordially invited.If...
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The Plot Thickens: Thoughts on Narrative
[Gene Wolfe: Latro in the Mist: Omnibus edition]Every morning as I drive to work, I turn on the stereo to listen to the next instalment in whichever epic I’m sampling at present. You have to be quick...
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Jack & Bronwyn's Dunedin Adventure
The view from my brother Jim's window(Opoho, North East Valley, Dunedin)I've just spent five days in Dunedin, attending the launch (on Tuesday 19th June) of the MOTH [Museum of True History] show...
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Leicester Kyle in the NZ Geographic
[NZ Geographic 116 (2012)]I had an interesting phone conversation a couple of months ago with journalist Kennedy Warne, who was working on an article about the implications of further strip-mining of...
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Korero
Korero (12 July-2 August, 2012)Korero is a "collaborative exhibition illustrating a fusion between visual art and poetry. 20 artists from various disciplines select from 20 carefully chosen poems on...
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NZ's Best: Matt Harris & Miriam Smith
How Far is Heaven (2012)43,000 Feet (2011)I'm afraid I've only made it to two film festival films so far this year. They've both been extremely interesting, though: last Saturday (21/7) I went to the...
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Fifty Years of Randle McMurphy
[Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)]The publicity gurus at Massey have this thing where they try and get us to take over a high school for the day, with appropriate members of staff...
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Stokes Point Revisited
Auckland Harbour Bridge[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]A couple of years ago I posted a photo-essay about Stokes Point in Northcote, scene of some proposed literary inscriptions celebrating certain late...
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Haut 80s
[Fritz Lang, dir.: Metropolis (1927 / 1984)]I recently bought myself a copy of Metropolis with the notorious "disco" soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder. I agree that this sounds a bit quixotic, given the...
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Top Ten Favourite Poems
[Massey PhD regalia]My colleague Bryan Walpert and I are co-supervising a couple of Doctorates in Creative Writing at Massey University, both focussing on poetry. It's not as easy as you might think to...
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A Day out with David Howard
Poster at Massey Albany[photograph: Jack Ross]Funnily enough, last weekend I was teaching a poetry course in the very room this poster adorned - or should I say "infested." It was, admittedly, a...
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Two Writers (1): Salman Rushdie
[Salman Rushdie: Joseph Anton (2012)]Last Tuesday Bronwyn and I skived off work in the afternoon to go to the pictures. We hadn't been for weeks, and that's always the best time to go: it's cheaper,...
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Two Writers (2): Michael Morrissey
[Michael Morrissey: Tropic of Skorpeo (2012)]A couple of weeks ago I received a package in the mail at work. Funnily enough, it turned out to be a book: Michael Morrissey's latest, in fact. Tropic of...
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