Crikey, you pop up north for a few days with the kids and looky here: chaos. There’s just too much going on at the moment, but best pull finger and get a couple of excellent, urgent events up straight away.

Both are tomorrow, or if you sensibly stay away from your computer on a Sunday night, today, Monday the 18th.

Since it’s so topical I’ll go for the Film Festival mention first: a short film based on a certain period in Katherine Mansfield’s life will be screening in Auckland and Wellington starting tomorrow. An Indiscreet Journey is based on the Mansfield story by the same name. Check out the Book Council’s listing for more info on the film.

It will be screening in Auckland with 6 other short films (ranging in length from 2mins 25sec to this one at 24mins) in the Homegrown festival put together by Auckland’s brilliant Moving Image Centre.

Times: Monday at 6.15 and Tuesday 19 at 4pm, both at Village 6 Auckland, and in Wellington on 23 July at 4.45 at Paramount – filmmaker Olivia Lory Kay will be at the Wellington screening. Leafsalon is willing to bet CK Stead will be at one of ‘em too…

Next must-do is the launch tomorrow of the latest greatest offering from Victoria University Press: a box of bees by Emily Dobson is just the sweetest offering.

It even came with its own teaser campaign – a wee pottle of mahogany Arataki manuka honey from her family’s business. Then the book arrived, just in time to take on holiday. With another perfect Sarah Maxey cover, and all (she has me and the bees on their knees). I love honey. And … you guessed it – I love this.

I’ve been reading it lolling on a tatty bach couch listening to the rain, deaf to mutinous children. It’s taken me to honey sheds from the Hawkes Bay to Crete and back, smelling that redolent dark sweet honey, feeling those sticky overalls, crunching that wax. These poems are quiet ruminations, tracings, perfect little vignettes of her family’s history; her travels, her lovers (these poems include some quite thrilling sexy bits I must say …) and through it all, she’s always coming back to the honey. Quite educational, in parts. And more often than not, there’s an undercurrent of quiet humour, a joie de vivre that is deceptively simple and just lovely. You realise you have a small smile on your face ...

This is young Emily’s first book – she’s been a bit of a winner all the way though, scoring the Adam Foundation Prize for best folio from Bill Manhire’s MA at Victoria, and following it up with the Schaeffer Fellowship to Iowa University’s renowned creative writing programme this year. Whew. One to watch. And you can do that today, Monday at 1pm at the City Gallery, Wellington. For free.

But wait! That’s not all! Appearing with Emily, in a last minute change of lineup (replacing Anna Jackson), is Anne Kennedy for goodness sake. She’s over from Hawaii where she’s taking up a teaching fellowship in Creative Writing. Anne got the poetry prize in last year’s Montanas, with her book Sing Song and she’s … well, she’s just one of our most brilliant, original writers. She does poetry, novels, scripts (Crush, Jewel’s Darl etc) and has a new novel-length poetry book out – this from the IIML:

Anne Kennedy's new volume The time of the giants is another book-length sequence that reads like a novel. Wonderfully inventive, moving and amusing, it focuses on a family of giants and in particular the daughter's efforts to conceal from her lover just how tall she really is. Typically for Kennedy, this fabulous tale also includes a gentle satire on contemporary manners.

So, two fantastic reasons to pop out at lunchtime and bask in the braininess of two very different talents. Enlightenment, inspiration and refreshment shall be yours.