Glottis in Dunedin has prolific poet Stephen Oliver as their guest this coming Monday night at the Arc Café in High Street at 9pm.

Stephen was once a resident of Dunedin but it has apparently been thirty years since he last gave a reading there. I smell nostalgia… Did a bit of digging (there’s lots on google) and found this poem on the Victoria University Press website – a dark musing on the trashing of the Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan three years ago (can it really be that long?).

Great, but didn’t like the resurrection of impotent rage it brought back. Sigh. Ah, the world we live in. I had been previously infused with a rather enjoyable melancholy brought about by the online poetry of another ex-pat, Andrew Johnston, who has a very different and delicious style, but that’s another story.

Mr Oliver’s latest effort (although with his output, the work obviously flows fairly freely), Ballads, Satire & Salt – A Book of Diversions (Greywacke Press, Sydney, 2003, $19.95) will be on sale at the venue. Nicholas Reid rapturously and lengthily reviewed it and some of his other recent works in February this year.

All in all, if I was going to be in Dunedin rather than Titirangi on Monday, I would definitely be there. Fascinating chap.