Our winter card always features NZ poets and the prizewinners in our annual poetry competition. We’ve sent 8500 winter cards out into the world so look out for this burgundy poetry card in your nearest medical waiting room, rest home or hospice. ENJOY.
Andrew Paul Wood is a writer, poet, critic, art historian, educator, curator and translator based in Christchurch. He completed a PhD in aspects of postmodern New Zealand painting at the University of Canterbury. His books include Quietus: Observations on an Altered City (2012), a psychogeography of post-earthquake Christchurch with photographer Doc Ross, and three translations (with Friedrich Voit) of the poetry of Karl Wolfskehl, Under New Stars: Poems of the New Zealand Exile (2012), To The Germans (2013), and Three Worlds / Drei Welten. Selected Poems (2015).
Diane Brown is a novelist, memoirist, and poet who runs her own creative writing school, Creative Writing Dunedin. Her publications include two collections of poetry – Before The Divorce We Go To Disneyland (1997) – winner of the NZSA Best First Book of Poetry at the Montana Book Awards 1997 – and Learning to Lie Together (2004); two novels, If The Tongue Fits (1999) and Eight Stages of Grace (2002) – a verse novel which was a finalist in the Montana Book Awards 2003; a travel memoir, Liars and Lovers (2004) and a prose/poetic work, Here Comes Another Vital Moment (2006).
Her latest book, Taking My Mother To The Opera, Otago University Press (2015) is an extended poetic family memoir, in part about post World War Two domestic life and the ageing of parents.
Jenny Powell is a poet, performance poet and creative writing tutor. Her poetry has been published in a wide range of literary magazines. Her collections include Sweet Banana Wax Peppers (1998), Hats (2000) and Ticket Home(2012). As an artist interested in collaborative work, she has published Double Jointed (2003) with ten poets of her choice, and Locating the Madonna (2004) with poet Anna Jackson. Her plays The Montecillo Child and Alive In Berlin were produced by Talking House. The Case of the Missing Body is Powell’s account of discovering purposeful physical movement, and the subsequent relationship between body and mind (Otago University Press, 2016).
Kath Beattie says, Writing has been a way of life from the beginning. We had no money for books, so we wrote our own. Since then I’ve had several adult and children’s short stories, children’s chapter books, two books in the Scholastic ‘My Story’ series, early childhood readers, articles, travel pieces and poems published and/or broadcast. I’ve also self-published a book on Loss and Grief. Kath’s poem, Riding West, won First Prize in this years PitWR competition.
Margaret Moores was a bookseller for many years but now works as a publisher’s sales representative. She lives in Auckland and has recently completed a Master of Creative Writing at Massey University. Her poems and short fiction have been published in journals and anthologies in New Zealand and Australia. Margaret’s poem, Aeroplaning, won Second Place in the 2017 PitWR competition.
Rob Hack has lived in Paekakariki since 2005, after a third attempt to live across the ditch. He has been an insurance salesman, greenkeeper , builder, personal trainer, gym owner, factory hand, gardener, shop assistant etc and currently works as a handyman, to buy second-hand poetry books, and petrol so he can visit his grandchildren each week.
He’s performed his poems in Kapiti and Wellington for 15 years and hosts a poetry show on Paekakariki FM radio called Not at the Table: poetry and stuff.
I first came across Rob’s writing when browsing the bookshelves at the University Book Shop and discovered Everything is Here. It’s published by Escalator Press and I can thoroughly recommend it – go buy it now.
Samantha Montgomerie is a writer and teacher. Several of her poems have been included in the New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology, and a number have also been published in newspapers. She is awaiting the publication of two children’s early readers in July. She lives on the Otago Peninsula. Threads by Samantha won Third place in the PitWR competition this year.
Stella Carruthers is a writer and textile artist, a lifelong Wellingtonian and ardent tea drinker. She is interested in exploring personal narratives and appreciating the little beautiful moments in everyday life. She seeks to live according to eco-conscious and New Domestic values. She is currently studying library and information studies and has a BA in Art History from Victoria University of Wellington.
Poems in the Waiting Room (NZ) 