Notebook – Page 2 – Olivia Macassey

Page 2 of 7

Re-issue of Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Titus Books have released a new e-book edition of my first collection of poetry, Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction! First published in 2005, Love in the Age contains several long poems, including the performance-based poems ‘Exciting Poses’ and ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’.

Buy here:

Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction on Amazon

Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction on Kobo

Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction at Apple Books

Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction at Barnes and Noble

Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction at Vivlio

Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction at MeBooks NZ (NZD$5, available in epub or mobi /kindle format).

“The phrases range from details of an inner city Auckland skyline to desire to colloquialisms to the mechanics of sex, through to continental theory to myth to the perils of gendered embodiment and back to love, to wanting, missing, fullness and the mysteries of attachment. Everything is allowed in, and is kept under exquisite control. In this poetry, giving oneself over to the affect of the unknown is the key to love; the shape of the self can be seen through attention to luck’s accuracy.” – Stephanie Christie

Fast Fibres Poetry 7

August 18, 2020 / Livingston /

Fast Fibres 7

New anthology out now!

Fast Fibres Poetry Seven: from Northland, ed. Piet Nieuwland and Olivia Macassey
(Fast Fibres Poetry Collective, 2020)

Featuring the diverse and talented: Sarah Angus, Stuart Noel Angus, Shelley Arlidge, Julia Barber, Carolyn Bond, Maggie Buxton, Veronica Cleary, Tony Clemow, Geraldine Craw, Courtney Davis, Robert Davis, Kanjini Devi, Lydia Draper, Murray Edmond, Arthur Fairley, Desmond Ford, Malcolm Ford, John Geraets, Michael Giacon, Vaughan Gunson, Jacqueline Gurney, Ann-Marie Houng Lee, Tim Howard, Hayden Hyams, Jac Jenkins, Lynda Joy King, Audrey Lappin, Tracie Lark, Fran Lawrence, Wes Lee, me, Sen McGlinn, Jack McKerchar, David Mounter, Piet Nieuwland, June Pitman-Hayes, Denise O’Hagan, Martin Porter, Kirsty Powell, Vaughan Rapatahana, Ron Riddell, Natascha Rodenburg, Ila Selwyn, Greg Shaw, Naomi Sioux, Joanne Tasker, David Taylor, Vivian Thonger, Alistair Tulett, Gerry Webb, and Mercedes Webb-Pullman.

Art: front cover Scott McFarlane, The Road to Kaikohe (detail); back cover Natascha J.A. Rodenburg, Moving Coil 3.

Launch: Thursday 20 August, 5.30pm to 7.30pm
Location: Poets At ONEONESIX, 116 Bank Street Whangarei

To purchase: contact Piet Nieuwland fastfibres@live.com

Further events:
National Poetry Day: Poetry Posse & Fast Fibres Poets
Friday 21 August, 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Kāri Āhua. The Āhua Garden 22 Bank Street, Whangarei

Kawakawa: Kings Theatre Creative Poetry Open Mic
Sunday 23 August, 1 to 3pm
Kings Theatre Creative, 80 Gillies Street, Kawakawa

Please note: the Fast Fibres Poetry Pop Up at the central library is postponed this year due to Level 2 restrictions.

Great Plate, 2020

July 12, 2020 / Livingston /

Glazed ceramic, 25 cm

The Quarry Arts Centre is running its yearly fundraiser again! My plate, ‘Will the Sea Remember Us?‘ is hand-glazed ceramic with an original, previously unpublished poem applied using caligraphy brush and glaze pencil (the plate itself was thrown by Mike Regan).
Despite the recent lockdown, there is still a lot of creative energy in the community and heaps of cool plates. You can view and bid on all the plates on Trademe here, or in real life at the Yvonne Rust Gallery, 21 Selwyn Ave, Whangarei (open 9.30am-4.30pm, Mon-Sat). The auction closes on Monday, July 20, at 5:30 pm.

We were
made from ocean,
from mud, clay, air; the
shadow of a lone bird, flying
against the sun. We move now
toward an unknown horizon.

Will the sea remember us
when we are gone?

April 4, 2020

To communicate one’s desires to someone without images is brutal. To communicate one’s images without one’s desires is tedious (like recounting one’s dreams or one’s travels). But both of these are easy to do. To communicate the imagined desires and the desired images, on the other hand, is a more difficult task.

– Georgio Agamben, Profanations, trans. Jeff Fort (2007: 53)

March, 2020

March 14, 2020 / Livingston /

This week, I’m excited that NZ poet Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor has written a note about one of my poems, Outhwaite Park, on Paula Green’s NZ Poetry Shelf blog.

Those echoes in the half-dark

Summer, 2020

January 5, 2020 / Livingston /

Look for me in: Rabbit issue 29 – lineages.

Rabbit, a journal of nonfiction poetry is gorgeous as always, and I’m really happy to have a poem in here. The issue theme is lineages (in every sense of the word) and the guest poetry editors are Chi Tran and Matthew Hall. I wanted to mention a few of the poets in it but would soon run out of space – I like every single thing in this issue a lot!

What I am reading: essa may ranapiri’s Ransack, John Geraets’ Everything’s Something in Place and Paula Green’s tour de force, Wild Honey.

January 1, 2020

Aren’t we all searching for a way to unravel ourselves?

– Anita Solak, in Rabbit 29 (2019: 157)

December 25, 2019

This is what I am working on.

Given words, 2019

September 17, 2019 / Livingston /

Given Words, which is an annual National Poetry Day competition in which poets are given several words to make a poem, has now put up this years selection, including winning poems by Lily Holloway and Thalia Peterson.

This is one of two fun given words events I took part in this year! My poem, ‘After the flight’, is included in the selection, which you can read here: Given Words, 2019. There are some really cool poems here, all containing the same 5 words (be sure to check out the under 16s section). The poems were judged by Charles Olsen, Mikaela Nyman, and Clare Arnot, and the competition was supported by The Landing Press.

24 hour poetry

September 12, 2019 / Livingston /

Much to my excitement, my poem ‘Redefinite’ has come first in Joanna Preston‘s amazing 24 Hour Poetry Competition.

It was a really fun event, in which contestants had just 24 hours to write a poem using 10 supplied words, on National Poetry Day. Participants then got to read a bunch of the submitted poems as we voted for Audience choice (Mark Edgecomb), and then we have the winner, runner up (Kirstie McHale), and Organizer’s Husband’s Choice (Briar Lawry) as well. Prizewinners received poetry books, courtesy of Victoria University Press. It was a timely reminder, for me, of the productive, generative element of chance and constraint, & really made me look twice at each of the words we were given. It is a revelation seeing the variety of poems that were produced – the ones we got to read were excellent. Moreover, we were well taken care of – there was even an Emergency Sloth Video on the day, for those of us who were flagging!