Five and Twenty

Our Spring card at Mt Cook

No, not blackbirds BUT five birthdays and 20 editions of Poems in the Waiting Room. And we are celebrating!!

Firstly, with the opening of our PoArtry exhibition Bellamys at Five on Sunday September 1 @ 5pm – Bellamys Gallery, Macandrew Bay, Dunedin. And then Four Poets, followed a week later by Questions and Answers. All the details can be found here

A couple of weeks ago I started thinking about this page and thought it would be great to have a photo of all 20 editions. Our cat thought differently! I had  just lined up all the cards when she decided the photo was worthless without her presence.

And yes, although some of the colours are repeated, she is sitting on/surrounded by all 20 editions of New Zealand’s Poems in the Waiting Room cards.

So now I’d like to introduce you to the poets in our Spring 2013 card…….

Brian Turner

Click here to read about Brian.

 Dan Healy

 I was born in Wales. I work as a Bookseller in Cambridge. I have two collections Winter Lines and Facsimiles both published by Cinnamon Press. I also edited the collection Cambridge Poets published by Oleander Press.

Eve Merriam

Eve was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Cornell as well as the University of Pennsylvania. Eve was a poet, playwright, and teacher, who wrote more than 50 books of poetry and prose.

Gill McEvoy

Gill  is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her first full collection The Plucking Shed was published by Cinnamon Press, 2010. Her second, Rise, was published in May 2013, by Cinnamon Press. She has 2 earlier pamphlets from Happenstance Press,  but these are now out of print. Gill lives in Chester, UK, a beautiful walled city where she runs several regular poetry events. She was struck down by ovarian cancer in late 2000, has survived so far, and is now determined to make the very best of life’s rich moments!

Grace Paley

Born in the Bronx in 1922, Grace Paley was a renowned writer and activist. Her Collected Stories was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She died in Vermont on August 22, 2007.

Janet Frame

Janet was born in Dunedin in 1924. She first gained international acclaim as a novelist when she was living in London in the early 1960s, but poetry was always her first love. Although she only published one volume of poems in her lifetime, The Pocket Mirror, she incorporated poetry into her prose works. Since her death in Dunedin in 2004 the charitable trust she founded, the Janet Frame Literary Trust, has, under her instructions, published several posthumous works including The Goose Bath: Poems which won the poetry category at the Montana NZ Book Awards  in 2007. 

Listen to recordings of Janet Frame reading poems at the UK Poetry Archive.

Jeff Daniel Marion

Jeff  has published nine poetry collections, four poetry chapbooks, and a children’s book. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Southern Poetry Review, Shenandoah, Atlanta Review, Tar River Poetry, and many others. In 1978, he received the first Literary Fellowship awarded by the Tennessee Arts Commission. Ebbing & Flowing Springs: New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976-2001 won the 2003 Independent Publisher Award in Poetry and was named Appalachian Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. His collection Father received the 2009 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize, and in 2011 he was awarded the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He served as the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence for the University of Tennessee Libraries, Knoxville, from 2009-2011. In spring 2013, his work and career were celebrated at Carson-Newman University and Walters State Community College.

Karen Peterson Butterworth

Karen’s poetry and prose have appeared in journals and anthologies in seven countries. She has published seven books as writer or editor: most recently (as co-editor with Nola Borrell) the taste of nashi:New Zealand Haiku (Windrift 2008), obtainable by emailing karenpetbut@xtra.co.nz or nola.borrell@xtra.co.nz. Karen now lives in Otaki and themes for her writing come to her while observing human behaviour or gazing at the sunlit leaves of trees she has planted and watched grow over a quarter century.

Michael Swan

Click here to read about Michael. He’s one of the poets participating in our Bellamys at Five exhibition.

Coming soon to a Medical Centre near you

the spring edition of Poems in the Waiting Room