Thought we’d do a bit of a poetry round-up as there seems to be plenty happening out there at the moment. Thanks to Christine O’Brien of AUP for the info …

Some new poetry collections are being bandied about. These include The Red Tram by C K Stead, (right, sort of) which went public on Monday at Unity Books. It’s another great collection by all accounts, with some Auckland poems, some childhood stuff, and reflections on Allen Curnow, Janet Frame, Dennis Glover and others. He read a couple of poems from this book at the Going West Festival, one in particular about his Dad was quite powerful as I recall …

There’s also a peculiarly Auckland book of poems called Palaver Lava Queen, great title, by Sue Fitchett. It’s all about Jafa central with its ‘geologically, psychologically, culturally fragmented and fractured nature and its migratory connections to the countries of the Pacific and the Pacific Rim and beyond’. That’s going to be launched at the Womens’ Bookshop on 22 November.

Then there’s matuhi | needle, a first book by writer, musician and broadcaster Hinemoana Baker. We’ve just been sent this to review, and will do so in the near future, but we can definitely say for now that it’s GORGEOUS. Its stunning design includes five colour paintings by the Ngai Tahu artist Jenny Rendall and a CD featuring Hinemoana reading six of her poems and a song excerpted from her music CD Puawai. Watch this space …

Finally, The Late Great Blackball Bridge Sonnets by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman are poems of his childhood in the West Coast mining town where his father was a miner and of his coming-of-age in the 50s and 60s.

Then there are a couple of new anthologies out too: Golden Weather – North Shore Writers Past and Present is a bunch of writings by authors who have all lived in Auckland’s suburban utopia. Edited by Graeme Lay for the prose and Jack Ross for the poetry. There’s Barbara Anderson, ARD Fairburn, Allen Curnow, Maurice Duggan, Janet Frame, Sam Hunt, Michele Leggott, Kevin Ireland, Robin Hyde, Frank Sargeson, Michael King and Shonagh Koea. Should be quite scrumptious.

And there's a ‘best of’ by Bernadette Hall called Merino Princess: Selected Poems launches in Christchurch tomorrow. Bernadette Hall is one of best known and loved of contemporary New Zealand poets. This book brings together the best of her five previous collections. She’ll be heading off in a couple of weeks to Antarctica of course, with Kathryn Madill. (Quick brag here – I had a ‘significant birthday’ recently and lo! There, from my dear Chris, was a Madill painting – a surreal dreamscape angel flying darkly, silently ‘over wide green seas’ … purrrrrrr. Can’t wait to see what the pair of them get up to in Antarctica.)

On-line, the new Blackmail Press edition number 11 is up and running with Titirangi’s own Andrew Fagan on the starting blocks with some poetry. Quite the renaissance man.

Finally for now, if live stuff is your thing, check out Poetry Live, Tuesdays from 8 pm at the Grand Central, 126 Ponsonby Road, Auckland. On the 23rd November they have poet Janet Charman with muso Andrea Geange. And in Wellington, every Sunday afternoon from 2-4 at Bluenote on the corner of Cuba and Vivian St there’s an open mike … it’s free, and they’d like you to Have A Go! Email poetrystudio@paradise.net.nz for more info on this one.