Hey!

I collected the summer poetry card from the printers during my lunch break today and then arrived home to find an email from Lyvie at the RNZFB saying they aim to have the summer card transcribed into Braille by the end of next week. How’s that for great timing!

So I popped out to the garden and a few cornflowers and ‘pinks’ were kind enough to support the cards while I played around trying to avoid shadows and too much sunshine. I know, I know, this is Dunedin but we have had a wonderful summery day with lots of sunshine. Believe it or not!

It will take me a few evenings to address and envelope 3500 cards so don’t go heading off to your medical centre just yet. But I promise they’ll be in rest homes, medical centres and prisons by December 1.

And now, a brief who’s who of the poets appearing in our summer card.

Margaret Beverland was born in Otorohanga.  Being a woman of few words, the discovery of the haiku poetry form was like finding nuggets of gold popping up on the back lawn. The haiku ‘whitebait season’ is carved on a rock at the Katikati Haiku Pathway.

Waiata Dawn Davies taught school until 1990. Her latest collection (4th) of poetry is entitled ‘Over & Out From Down Under’. She lives and writes in a fishing crib at the mouth of the Waitaki River for 8 months per year, travels and writes in the Northern Hemisphere for the rest of year. Waiata has 8 sons, 21 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.

Eric Dodson lives in Tauranga where he spends his retirement fishing, gardening and writing poetry. His poems and haiku have appeared in NZ journals including Poetry NZ and Kokako.

Michael Lavers completed an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and is now a PhD candidate at the University of Utah. He has poems published in multiple journals, including River Styx, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Mary McCallum is an award-winning poet and novelist whose poetry awards include the inaugural Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize 2011. Mary also curates the Tuesday Poem blog, tutors at Massey University, and freelances as a writer, reviewer and bookseller.

Kaitrin McMullan was born in Scotland where she lived until she was two. She now resides in the green Leith Valley Dunedin where the winter sun really can squeeze a smile from willing cheeks.  She is a professional storyteller, tale trader and puppeteer.

Alistair Paterson is a poet, editor, anthologist, fiction writer and critic. In 1993 he won the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award. He has been the editor of Poetry New Zealand since 1993. In 2007 he was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature.

Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914 and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917.

Pat White lives in Wairarapa. Author of ‘How the land lies: of longing and belonging’.   He is presently writing a life of Peter Hooper, and working on new poetry.

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The title of the first poem in the summer card is Hey! Now the title of this post makes sense doesn’t it!

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Cheers Ruth