There’s quite a lot going on the poetry world at the moment…

At home, the push for the Montana Poetry day has begun on the Book Council website. Poetry groups, bookshops, librarians and community groups are invited to take part in ‘the day that recognises and celebrates New Zealand poetry’. Poetry has shown a huge rise in popularity in New Zealand recently, and the aim of the day is to get communities and individuals involved at a variety of levels. If you have any ideas about this, or if you are or would like to be a poetry person, contact the co-ordinator, Laura Kroetsch at laura.kroetsch@paradise.net.nz, or by phone on 04-475-8589.

Meanwhile, in England, 56-year-old publishing mogul Felix Dennis is on a self-proclaimed crusade to save poetry from free-form weirdness by reclaiming rhyme. His subjects include love, business, dogs (his personal favourite subject) or his former crack habit. Here’s one of his, read at a London event:

I wish I liked your modern verse
I wish it were not so… perverse
I wish the lines were not so dense
Or even made a bit of sense.

Mr Dennis is the publisher of Maxim, an ‘irreverent’ men’s magazine, whose racy combination of scantily clad women and frat-boy humor has made Maxim the best-selling men’s lifestyle magazine in the world. He is particularly proud of a cover line he wrote himself for Maxim when our own Lucy Lawless appeared in it in April 1999: ‘Xena Like You’ve Never Seen 'Er!’ He has also played drums for Eric Clapton, written a biography of Bruce Lee and been to jail for publishing Oz, a rather rude magazine.

His first volume of poetry was named A Glass Half Full and despite critical indifference, sold all 10,000 copies printed. The late-2002 English reading tour was dubbed the ‘Did I Mention the Free Wine Tour’, on the advice of Mick Jagger, Dennis’s neighbour in Mustique. He usually arrived by helicopter, prompting former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins to growl “The associations between poetry and poverty are very strong and if you arrive by helicopter, people would doubt your credentials.”

Nevertheless, A Glass Half Full is to be launched in America in September. Miramax Books, Mr Dennis’s US publisher has ordered 25,000 copies to be printed, and Mr Dennis himself is paying for a private jet to shuttle him about.

“It would be nice if Mr Letterman or Oprah gave me two minutes,” he says. “I’d blow their bloody socks off.”

Could this be the man who put the pot in poetry? Rock on...