Daffodil Paddock

Tonight in Wellington, a panel celebrating Maurice Gee's writing for children features Kate De Goldi, Claire Mabey, Harry Ricketts, Anna Jackson, Tatjana Schaefer and Dr Vivien van Rij, chaired by Emeritus Professor Kathryn Walls. Floor 12, Rutherford House, Bunny Street, 5.30-7pm - all welcome!

Celebrities and venture capitalists throw millions at a company claiming it can breed fake dodos, which seems especially cruel given the dodo’s living relative., the Samoan tooth-billed pigeon or manumea, is on the brink of extinction for lack of money. news.mongabay.com/2025/09/fund...

Leonard Cohen - BOTD in 1934

Every so often I find seven short poems from new books in my reading pile and put them together with the idea that people might like to read one a day over the week (binge reading is also fine, of course). Here's the latest selection:

There were two peeks inside Sick Power Trip on Reading Room this weekend! First, 'Bino' by Erik Kennedy. newsroom.co.nz/2025/09/20/s...

The big tech companies are reversing the intellectual and political gains of the Enlightenment and returning us to a New Dark Ages of ignorance, rage and superstition - it's the most important story of our time jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-o...

The Roos Carr figures are dating to the Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age. They were inadvertently unearthed by laborers during ditch maintenance at Roos Carr in 1836. Approximately two meters beneath the surface, the workers discovered a collection of well-preserved...🧵1/3 📷 me #archaeology 🏺

“The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he.” Karl Kraus (1874-1936), journalist, critic and satirist

A gorgeous advance copy to end the week ❤️ @thwupbooks.bsky.social

Writers of Aotearoa, his is your reminder that Turbine | Kapohau 2025 is open for submissions of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction until 1 November - check out the submission guidelines and send us your work!

Ahem - we'd just like to point out that if you would like to write your book alongside a cohort of supportive others, and with the guidance of a supervisor (aka mentor), applications for our 2026 MA in Creative Writing are open until 1 November.... www.wgtn.ac.nz/modernletter...

Mahmoud Darwish, trans Ian Wedde and Fawwaz Tuqan

With history on its final legs at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage thinking of the long government involvement in public history going back to the Centennial Branch in 1937 and the War History Branch seen here at a conference to plan the 2NZEF official histories in July 1946. #MakingHistory

We were very pleased to get the news today that the Australian National Dictionary Centre will be saved, thanks to an anonymous donation and the halt on involuntary redundancies under the Renew ANU plan. We thank everyone for their generous support through these difficult times.

🧵Spotted While Roaming in Aotearoa New Zealand: In Kmart at 9pm. Two men (late teens) are looking at the Star Wars Lego. One slowly says to the other: "Hey...whaddya think the Death Star smells like?" The other frowns: "Dunno. Lynx deodorant?" Thoughtful silence follows. (1)

Sally Rooney unable to collect award due to threat of arrest for supporting Palestine Action The Normal People author can no longer safely enter the UK without potentially facing arrest, her publisher stated at the Sky Arts awards ceremony last night. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

Legendary British musician Brian Eno, who helped organize & produce the Together for Palestine benefit concert, performs the poem “Oh Rascal Children of Gaza, ” written by Palestinian poet Khaled Juma #Wembley

Very sad to hear that Dame Joan Metge has died. www.royalsociety.org.nz/150th-annive...

See you at Unity tonight!

Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Creative Writing - 5 years University College Dublin Full time, temporary www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOS472/l...

A nod and corona today to William Carlos Williams (b. 17 September 1883). Out of _Collected Poems 1921-1931_ (The Objectivist Press, 1934). With a Preface by Wallace Stevens: “His passion for the anti-poetic is a blood passion and not a passion of the inkpot. The anti-poetic is his spirit’s cure.”

A #poem for #NationalFoxDay! 🦊 #fox #poetry Ian Hamilton Finlay FOX see me wan time ah wis a fox an wis ah sleekit! ah gaed slinkin heh an snappin yeh the blokes aa sayed ah wis a GREAT fox aw nae kiddin ah wis pretty good had a whole damn wood in them days hen

'With Carcanet I have the confidence to have creative conversations at the production level, which is one of the characteristics of working with small, independent presses.' Anthony Vahni Capildeo, in an interview for @gutter.bsky.social Read in full here: www.guttermag.co.uk/recent-writi...

Happy Birthday, Doctor Williams:

“People always ask, ‘Who’s your ideal reader?’ Mine is somebody who reads a few pages and then falls asleep and has a fantastic dream.” From our Art of the Essay interview with Eliot Weinberger in our new Fall issue. buff.ly/PIJNDC7

Submission Open 15th September to 15th of October 2025 Submissions are now open for issue 28 of The Manchester Review. The Editors are looking forward to reading the best of your poetry, fiction, and non fiction.

Applications are invited for the 2026 CISS Scottish Writing Fellowship at the University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand. Flights, accommodation & stipend for 2 months at the Caselberg House near Dunedin. Apply at the link below by 31 October. Good luck…! www.otago.ac.nz/ciss

So where can art history take you?

Actors are in the building rehearsing MA scripts for Writers on Mondays at Circa next week, and we have the second of the Next Page readings at Meow tonight - spring has sprung! www.wgtn.ac.nz/modernletter...

NZNO nurses are quite literally turning their back on a speech from Health Minister Simeon Brown at their AGM

One of these rich dudes invested in a food company with all proceeds going to kids in need. The other started Sundance Institute, boosting the lives of countless artists. Hey modern rich dudes, don't be a typical greedy AI crypto-prick, be like these two.

Surely one of very best dictionary titles www.publish.csiro.au/book/8193#pr...

Getting excited for the first Next Page reading featuring students from the 2025 MA (Page) workshops tonight - see you at Meow, 6pm, e te whānau!

If New Zealand wants a space ecosystem it needs to nurture new space enterprises. I've surveyed the state of play and put together my list of our six most promising saplings... excursionset.com/blog/2025/09...

Please join the ELCC programme for the launch of Charles Ferrall's new book this Thursday at Unity! www.unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-eve...

We’re back! Open for poetry submissions for issue ten. berlinlit.com/submissions/

If we all used the Bible as a literary model every novel would end with 10,000 words of complete gibberish from a heretofore minor character who had a bad dream

We love to see our former Schools Poetry Award winners and finalists go on to do great things: check out 2019 winner Xiaole Zhan's bio note at the end of this poem!

I am advocating for you to be killed but I am using my inside voice you must debate me this is called democracy

After making a dumb joke on here about the creative side of academic writing as "unfunded hobbit research", I then wrote a serious post about it

The neighbourhood

I think about this poem by Ian Duhig — about Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a man shouting ‘Britain first’ — every day at the moment. No other contemporary poet has looked so clearly at the political reality of the far right as a minority who must always be appeased

Left: the young poet Right: the mature poet

Review: Elizabeth Knox’s Kings of This World is both dangerous and dreamy

Announcing Sala Alas, my first solo exhibition in New Zealand for ten years. Opening 6pm, Tuesday 28th October at 218c Willis Street, Wellington.