The new poetry anthology Ngā Kupu Waikato: an Anthology of Waikato Poetry, edited by Vaughan Rapatahana with an introduction by Mark Houlahan (Waikato Press 2019), is out now, with a book launch at Browsers Bookshop, Victoria Street, Hamilton at 4.00 pm on Sunday 31st March.
The first ever anthology of poems from the Waikato, Ngā Kupu Waikato includes some fantastic work by 40 poets ranging from well-known to new and emerging writers, including Stephanie Christie, Murray Edmond, Amanda Hunt, Terry Locke, Maris O’Rourke, Bob Orr, Vincent O’Sullivan, essa may ranapiri, Tracey Slaughter, and Loren Thomas.
The Waikato region includes the Coromandel Peninsula, where I’m from, and I am fortunate that two of my poems are included: ‘Home’ and ‘At Kuaotunu’.
and they have dragged the old upright piano out of the hall again,
brought it over to the sandy barren where
my now youthful mother begins to sing the night’s raw crescendo and diminuendo
through jazz to blues, the fiddle player resting his beer on top of the case
Our new issue, brief 54 – a special issue on Love – is out now, and has tons of great work in it: writing by John Adams, Nick Ascroft, Cassandra Atherton, Stu Bagby, Cassandra Barnett, Iain Britton, Isaac Brodie, Berengaria Burns, Stephanie Christie, Mary Cresswell, Rene Harrison, Ted Jenner, Robert Kempen, Sid Khanzode, Harvey Molloy, Janet Newman, Piet Nieuwland, Keith Nunes, Sugu Pillay, Vaughan Rapatahana, Sean Redmond, Jack Ross, Carin Smeaton, Ruby Solly, Fiona Stevens, Richard Taylor, Richard von Sturmer, and Mark Young; art/graphic work by Bill Wolak and Matt Kelly; and reviews of books by Stephanie Christie (reviewed by Michael Onslow-Osbourne) and Roger Horrocks. It also has a selection of poems by the late David Lyndon Brown,