Category Archives: Poetry
Everything
This morning when I looked out my window they were the first thing I noticed. I saw them flocking outside my house. I like to look at them from the back window. I get the sun there. Yes, I wondered … Continue reading
Dear Bob Cunis
One of the things I did when up was up in Auckland for the writers’ festival was meet my friend Donald for breakfast one morning, on K Road, just after I had fallen over while walking to meet him. It … Continue reading
Bad, but not damned: On Tim Upperton
Tim Upperton is the kind of poet who tends to have his poems shared without people asking his permission or paying him money. They’re the kind of poems that you want to share with another person immediately. So you do, which … Continue reading
Memorandum of Understanding
BY BILL NELSON Understand that we will be working together / and this means / we do not have to like each other. / Understand that we have common goals / and aspirations, we have aspirations / most of all. … Continue reading
Metamorphosis
or, Ode to Jerry Small boy dressed as barn owl. Barn owl with mouth of shark. Cover of Whitley Strieber’s Communion but the alien’s smiling. Boiled can of condensed milk. Neighbour at RSA on Sunday afternoon. Slow prattle of … Continue reading
A bike ride with James Brown
I’ve been a big fan of James Brown’s poems for a long time. The first poem of his I read was ‘Loneliness’, in 2001. It’s probably still his most well known poem, all these years later. I wonder if James is … Continue reading
We should catch up. Let’s catch up
1. I started out this morning thinking maybe I’d write something about Poetry Night (which, by the way, you should record a poem for and send to me immediately) but I got distracted by the Frank O’Hara poem where Frank sees a note on … Continue reading
Rejection mash-up
What can you do with some failures? Ground them into a fine paste then mash them together. These lines come from five (rightly) rejected poems. Preservation I have lost my coat. Like many coats that go on to be lost … Continue reading
A stick of dynamite
This blog has been very quiet lately, I know. In the last couple of months all of my confidence in writing, and in having anything of worth to say, has just been detonated. If we think of confidence as being … Continue reading
The point at the end of the world
“When Bill Clinton was inaugurated,” Alpert (Herb) said, “they had ten saxophone players at the party. It was mostly the young guns, but Gerry Mulligan was in there too. Afterward, he called me and said, ‘Man, you know, these young … Continue reading
