Yes, the Writers on Mondays sessions are marvelous - conversational and intimate with time for the writer to take to the podium and read. This week US poets and partners Nick Twemlow and Robyn Schiff talked with Bill Manhire who wanted the goss on how they'd ended up as poets, how they worked as a couple etc before moving onto the US publishing scene. Nick's poems were personal/confessional and anti-confessional and an oft charming US-eye view of NZ. Robyn let loose an astounding waterfall of words on objects like the Colt Revolver and a tree-eating beetle. A very stimulating hour.

“The Colour of Distances” perhaps is a little more bleached than first meets the eye. Another exclusive offering by NZ Anthologists in support of the literary club; where, for instance, is the New Zealand writer, William Direen, a long time domicile of France on and off over the years? William is a writer of novels, novellas, et al, and is well known within the precincts of the southern latitudes. See the Titus Books website, for confirmation of these points: http://titus.books.online.fr

Yesterday was a stunner here in Wellington! So, I snuck away from work and attended the IML lunch-time series entitled “Lunch with the Laureate” - it was well attended (as you would expect) and Jenny was her usual, absolutely “normal” and uncluttered self. Damien Wilkins makes a great chair and somehow they got to discussing a period of despair that Jenny had when she thought she might have become the Pam Ayrs of NZ - so I had a wee chuckle about that remembering our discussions on Pam Ayrs. But, the truth is, that it is the ordinary and the every-day that Jenny elevates or in her words “transforms” - and she reads with such simplicity and clarity. Her “Confessional” poem - quite long - watching a crane driver from the KM house in Menton, was a great example of her ability to transform the ordinary.
Cheers - I'm always so verbose - I so love the pithy smart comments from curtbutnotshort…but me, I'm a chatterbox.