These are the sorts of things you can do if you're serious about art, creativity, and growing an economy

Poetry in Performance 2nd session Thurs 9 Oct with Gregory Kan, Lee Fraser, Philip Armstrong + open mic - brought to you by the Canterbury Poets’ Collective. Tickets (incl zoom option) $10 at the door or at events.humanitix.com/copy-of-poet...

And that's why GDP is an absolute bullshit metric for gauging the "prosperity" of an economic system. GDP measures how well the billionaires are doing, and it ignores what AI costs the average resident or their communities. Fuck billionaires. Fuck AI. And fuck GDP. We need a universal income ASAP

. The small god is still inventing himself Last week scarlet & pale then just a hint of blue always changing always a little overdue yesterday he was apples today mostly apples .

Sophie van Waardenberg on the sonnet: "For me, they’re good containers because you have to be a bit declamatory, a bit argumentative, and then you can betray yourself, you can cast doubt on the whole thing, you can shrug the whole thing off and go out into the sunlight." badapple.gay/2025/08/08/v...

Job alert! University of Auckland, lectureship in English, in the long 19th century: jobs.smartrecruiters.com/TheUniversit...

Excellent launch speech for the new Nick Ascroft teherengawakapress.co.nz/blogs/news/i...

I always love a poem in which the poet names themself but this one is particularly brilliant: nzpoetryshelf.com/2025/10/01/p...

So loving this new series! A Tuesday toast to the wonderful Jackson! nzpoetryshelf.com/2025/10/01/p...

Going to the theatre is like being somewhere else Reading memoir is like being someone else Reading novel is like being sometime else Poem is all banana moonlight spills on the sidewalk

Waiting for the moment when the lightbulb goes on at Labour HQ & Hipkins stands up and says “ you know the billions this Govt has promised to the oil companies? Well, we’re going end that & invest it in YOU with subsidised solar on every roof in 10 years.”

when times are hard sometimes you just need yeasty yeasty fry bread. and poetry. nzpoetryshelf.com/2025/09/29/p...

The best thing you'll see all day 😍 thespinoff.co.nz/pop-culture/...

They deleted it again. Here’s the campaign - www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-... And here’s proof Sahar is not a scammer - gizmodo.com/the-rise-of-...

I've just submitted on the Electoral Amendment Bill for voters in Aotearoa New Zealand. It would remove right to enrol and vote on Election Day and would disqualify all prisoners from voting while in prison. Submissions close at 1pm on Thursday 11 September. #NZpol www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/mak...

Hi 🧪 Has there been any media coverage of this letter from almost 5000 scientists calling on Israel to stop its inhumane treatment of Palestinians in Gaza? I haven’t been able to find Anything. sites.google.com/view/stateme...

My winter reading highlights - from Solvej Balle to Karl Ove Knausgaard: www.annajackson.nz/enthusiasms....

Clarice Lispector on writing a story about Laura the hen: "a hen is hollow"; "like a woman," adds Marina Collasanti; "of course!" says Lispector.

Look at this graph. The share of national income going to the richest 10 percent was lowest (and share to lower 90 percent highest) when union membership was at its highest. As unions have weakened, inequality has widened. This is why we must build back union power.

Out now! The 114th issue of takahē is free online for everyone to enjoy. www.takahe.org.nz/takahe-114/ This issue is a little slimmer, but just as carefully curated with new words and art to challenge, stimulate and engross. We hope you love it. Let us know your favourites! 🖤

"No matter how hard you try you can never spin as badly again" - the inimitable Jennifer Compton www.takahe.org.nz/first-wool/

It's a terrific review and weird of me to keep thinking it will put people off when she calls the paragraphs "poems" and talks about the book as a "collection" of "poetry," when I myself call it a "poem in five parts"! www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro...

Just can’t give up on a world that contains paragraphs like this

Heads up, writers of Aotearoa - it's time to submit your poems, stories, and essays for the next edition of Turbine | Kapohau! (Check the submission guidelines first.) turbinekapohau.org.nz

I love the work of these poets so much and all three books they are talking about are achingly good!

Mary Ruefle

Bach's Goldberg Variations annotated by Glenn Gould

@annagk.bsky.social and I are welcoming short pedagogy articles/approaches that use Dickens's Working Notes, or that center compositional process or serial form in some way. If you teach Dickens, check out the dickensnotes.com platform!

Look at all our elegant hands.

'When I was much younger, I was really lucky to have done a reading with Hone Tuwhare and spent some time with him. It was truly magic. I always dip into his poems for that kind of special energy.' The new Poet Laureate Robert Sullivan on the first Māori Poet Laureate.

SEE YOU TONIGHT!

What incredible news — yay! #poetryday

Top of my list of enthusiasms today, the announcement of Robert Sullivan as our new Poet Laureate! www.annajackson.nz/enthusiasms....

Speaking of great NZ poetry, now listening to the Don McGlashan live album which opens with these lines: "Oh Harbour Bridge Why'd you have to be so grey? I drove her to the airport And I ran out of things to say" So good.

Happy poetry day

Can one truly know a bee? thespinoff.co.nz/books/20-08-...

if you're stuck in a romantic conundrum, you can simply ask yourself What Would Catullus Do? and then don't do that

Nikky Finney

I like the idea that there is only one NZ Poet Laureate who just regenerates into a new body every few years. Also they have two hearts and come from space.

In which she explains she wrote Audition after she got stuck in a cupboard. So, of course, giants swelling up inside a space ship if they stop talking!

"It never occurred to me before that creating a poem and creating a molecule had very much in common, but I’ve changed my mind." From a review of Terrier, Worrier! Now to create a molecule. www.flaxroots.com/flaxflower/t...

In tomorrow's warm-up for Poetry Day, what @newsroom.co.nz describes as 'an all-star cast led by poetry czar Nick Ascroft' will read poems from Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2024. Includes the living poets pictured below and poems by the late Fleur Adcock, Vincent O’Sullivan and Paula Harris.

A conversation starter from the great conversationalist Simon Sweetman: "if you take only the art there is no artist. If you want only the product and not any connection to the maker then you are just a consumer, not an art-lover, you are just the person lapping up product."

Get your school board to sign the pledge - to show central govt that schools want funding for the Living Wage for around 15,000 cleaners, caretakers, canteen staff, & groundskeepers. 1/n

The Othernauts! I can't wait.

Well, let me put this in terms that a scientist might understand: when you throw your colleagues to the wolves, you are training them to expect to be fed

You crazy kids know what to do! #NZPol www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

Alice Oswald arrested this afternoon for supporting Palestine Action.

A collage conversation to celebrate The Venetian Blind Poems - poets ask about punctuation, politics, writing as an invasion of your own privacy, poetry as a form of friendship... nzpoetryshelf.com/2025/08/12/p...