Bit of a poetry catch-up. Montana Poetry Day is looming and plans are afoot to make it the best yet. It’s on Friday 22 July and there is, like last year, some funding available if you want to organise a poetry event of your very own. Contact Laura Kroetsch at laura.kroetsch@paradise.net.nz or phone her on 04-475 8589.

Hinemoana Baker will be plying her trade in the upcoming Flying Piglets tour. We profiled her book Matuhi | Needle back in January. It appears however that she's giving the big smoke a big swerve though, dammit ...

And Pacific Performance Poet Tusiata Avia (pictured) will be live and reading/performing outrageously from her book Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (VUP) at the Fale Pasifika, Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Auckland on Monday 23 May between 1 and 2pm.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the immortal Walt Whitman that I read today on the CBC website. He said, in an 1888 interview recently unearthed by a student at the College of New Jersey:

First, don't write poetry; second ditto; third ditto.

He was probably a bit blocked that day.