Something for the last week of poetry month: "The Most Beautiful Love Poem of All Time" by Hera Lindsay Bird is really something. She also has a name of which I am truly envious. (Hera Bird. Come on.) I must disclaim at this juncture that Hera is a v good friend of my flattie and I've met her a few times and like her a lot but this poem is really ( Read more... )

101 sonnets
101 Sonnets from Shakespeare to Heaney,
a Faber Penguin audio tape

"A sonnet is a box of dreams" ~ Don Patterson
A hundred winding dusty miles, and all the while ( Read more... )

1. I've just hit 51 new books read this year (re-reads were not counted, but included a re-read of the Tiggie Tompson series, several of the YW books, and Monstrous Regiment, by Terry PRatchett.) I'd like to thank Octavia Butler (three books), the Mitford sisters (four books between them, and another one in progress), and particularly Lois McMaster ( Read more... )

So I wasn't feeling it yesterday poemwise and today I still don't have personal inspiration. Here's an Anne French poem herself, or actually (since it's a very long poem) part of a poem. This is from her book Wild, and I often - being a Wellingtonian - find myself thinking of her last couplet as I walk.

I: In Petts Wood (from Seeking the wild ( Read more... )

When you see this, post the names of 10 women poets off the top of your head. Good times ( Read more... )

April is poetry month. A word or two about poetry month: I tend to post New Zealand poets. This is not because I inherently think I should, or anything, but because the poets I read fall into two categories: very famous American and occasionally British poets; and New Zealand poets. I feel like the idea of poetry month is not "Let's post "The Love ( Read more... )

I don't usually do Valentine's Day except apparently today I do. I was looking through my poetry bookmarks to find a poem to send a friend who sent me one of those Valentine's pics with the adorable fluffy animal and a heart on it, but I rejected everything as too sappy or too intimate or too angsty - so I'm in the market for a poem which is ( Read more... )

TimepieceI got home from work and looked at ( Read more... )

Hotere

When you offer only three
vertical lines precisely drawn
and set into a dark pool of lacquer
it is a visual kind of starvation:

and even though my eyeballs
roll up and over to peer inside
myself, when I reach the beginning
of your eternity I say instead: hell
let’s have another feed of mussels

Like, I have to think about it, man.When you ( Read more... )

HakaI want to know ( Read more... )