Poetry Shelf celebrates! nzpoetryshelf.com/2025/11/07/p...

‘I vote with the hand that holds this knife. I vote for the fish, the bird, the ocean and a raised land shaped by explosion, erosion and willful life.’ Dinah Hawken reads from her poem ‘The Uprising’ after receiving the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry last night.

Congratulations, Hannah!

The land is like a sea-bird but where are its wings? The land is like a fish. The fish of Māui, hauled up from the sea floor, writhing. The ocean is a road, a table and a bed. It takes our bodies up to air and floats them. The ocean is an open question. Dinah Hawken, 'The Uprising', 2014

Great to see poet Dinah Hawken here! Such a clear-sighted, brave and – when you least expect it – mischievous writer.

True, that. What a great choice.

Microscopic: Microscopic cross-section photo of a Pine Needle (Xmas Tree)

David Bowie’s 100 Must Read Books

C D Rose has won the 2025 Goldsmith's Prize for fiction that 'breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the form' www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

Couple of days late to this but Helen Garner's Baillie Gifford Prize win is still very good news. It would be over-stating things to call Garner "neglected" but she's always deserved to be a major religion rather than a cult item. #BookSky www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

Have you fully recovered from an eating disorder and/or cared for someone with an ED? Would you like to use your lived experience to support other individuals in treatment/recovery? If so, come & join me as a peer support worker at the Specialist ED Service in Hamilton!! jobs.govt.nz/jobtools/jnc...

the 4 editors pick a fave each from Starling - read and love today, and reread and relove over the weekend ⭐️ nzpoetryshelf.com/2025/11/06/p...

The powerful new memoir by Tāme Iti is a reminder that he is due a royal honour

This essay began its life a long time ago, in conversation with an @elccprogramme.bsky.social Summer Scholar, Tuioleloto Laura Toailoa. It’s taken years to bring some of that early thinking to fruition. Thank you so much to the Defoe Society for this award

Sad news www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

Oh it's happening www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/5...

I need to share my euphoria and sense of complete f***ing triumph that it is 5 November, grading done, and I’m in actual stacks with 7 weeks to go til shutdown 💪 [antipodean academic calendar] also we still have stacks

Poetry protest!! www.odt.co.nz/regions/cent...

Great to see this book will soon be launched in Dunedin: Hannah Bulloch did the MA in 2016 and has been on her own long and challenging journey while writing about her family's extraordinary 1963 adventure. 27 November, UBS Otago, 5.30 pm

And it’s a wrap - 30 MA folios handed in tonight and off to their examiners in the morning. Here’s Team Makereti in their official t-shirt looking pleased to have crossed the finish line. Time for a cup of tea and a lie down. Congratulations everyone!🥂💐💐💐

Tech wythout heart ys harmful. For a bettir future we need poetrye, creativitye, historical studye, love of languages, dreames, dialogues, new storyes, & intellectual curiositye. We must fund & expand higher educacioun yn HEART: H umanityes E thiques A rtes R hetorique & the crafte of T eaching

Jane Austen. Spike Lee. MrBeast. “Modern Family.” The Atlantic’s new AI Watchdog search tool lets you see which creative works tech companies may have used to train their generative-AI models: https://theatln.tc/vQSlfiyC

Now I am almost as wary of books as I am of people. They are also capable of hurting you, pushing you into the limbo of the forgotten ... When there are so many all saying the same thing they can shout you down and make you doubt, not only your memory, but your senses.

“New Zealand is a beautiful country, but … a bunch of beautiful mountains can’t really pay your rent and pay your bills.”

Mudcake, moss and flowers #Kindergarten at its best.

Please come and see my show at BATS next week: open.substack.com/pub/simonswe... Live poetry readings with improvised musical soundscape from the band Filtersphere. $25 waged, $15 unwaged, we’re donating to Women’s Refuge. Nov 13-15 at BATS theatre. Tickets at BATS: bats.co.nz/whats-on/dic...

“It is also November. The noons are more laconic and the sundowns sterner...November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.” -Emily Dickinson, letter to Elizabeth Holland (Nov 1865) #everynightapoem #november

'I was living with a man who fictionalised every aspect of his life,' writes Elspeth Sandys. 'Since it ended I have lived on my own'

I was in a discussion last night where it was pointed out that what is happening here is exactly what happened in the UK with Gove, & it hasn’t turned out so great for them over there. We have to stop this, MUST stop this!! #nzpol

Besides Rock Star Robertson (also a class act when he launched the Landfall exhibition in Dunedin a couple of weeks ago), another star of the festival was Mr Braunias's 'formidable opponent' Damien Wilkins, who seems to have won over his combative interlocuter newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/03/g...

Want to explore the art of short story writing in a series of supportive workshops with me? Apply for CREW 254 Tri 1 intake by 1 Dec @modernletters.bsky.social ✍️ Students consistently rate the course excellent. Or to quote from a recent thank you card: "BEST EVER." www.wgtn.ac.nz/modernletter...

Didn’t quite make the deadline to apply for the MA in Creative Writing? Good news: we’ve extended it until Friday. It’s not too late to come and write your poetry/fiction/creative nonfiction/script with us next year!

Every year I do a guest lecture for THEA101 about Hamilton and most times, when I cut to my first slide of LMM, everyone groans. This year they applauded. The vibe has shifted

6pm Thursday at Unity Wellington, all welcome! :)

The explosion of novels about complicated female friendships, in the Elena Ferrante mold, is evolving the genre. Lily Meyer on “L.A. Women” and how feminist art is getting fun:

This Thursday at Unity Books Wellington Harry Ricketts will launch his new poetry collection, Bonfires on the Ice, with launch speech from Ashleigh Young, and readings from Tim Grgec, Morgan Bach, James Brown, and the author himself. www.facebook.com/events/31652...

“Our moral authority comes from taking action to rapidly reduce our per capita emissions by taking up available low emissions technologies and lifestyles, and transforming the source of our national income away from high emissions activities.” — Rod Carr

Some good news: the Whitireia Publishing Course will continue as a collaboration between the Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) and Whitireia. Places for the 2026 intake are limited, so anyone interested can register their interest here: www.whitireiapublishing.co.nz.

Trump slammed for lavish Gatsby-themed party as vital food funding lapses “They were careless people...they smashed up things...and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness...and let other people clean up the mess they had made” www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...

Lana Lin has a new essay (about archives and appendices) at @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social!

Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Beautiful Digital Edition of the Poet’s Pressed Plants & Flowers Is Now Online

You might have seen that Siouxsie won her legal battle against the UoA, but even after the damages were awarded she ended up massively out of pocket. So she's asking for help - There's been lots of support already, which is cool to see - Siouxsie deserves it! www.pledgeme.co.nz/projects/852...

An epic poem on what hope sounds like.

“In Sāmoa, our people are the doctors, the lawyers, the prime ministers. I’ve grown up always surrounded by our people being educated, being in leadership.” — Dr Emma Dunlop-Bennett, assistant vice-chancellor (Pasifika), Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington.

Renowned artist and author Sam Mahon explains just how he came to make that “disgusting” sculpture of Nick Smith ahead of the launch of his new book.

Last night we celebrated the end of our course and the birth four books. We're especially proud of our fellow students; Cerys D'Arcy, winner of best all-round publishing student and Anna Morete, winner of most promising editor. We wish next year's ākonga all the best for 2026.

"The Lord tunnels into the lost worlds of Palestine before Israel, not as counterfactual or nostalgia. It rebuilds those worlds as text, through breathtaking descriptions." Kaelen Wilson-Goldie on Soraya Antonius's The Lord 4columns.org/wilson-goldi...