Auckland Poetry

Senryu

Diamonds are forever

But you’ll not always be there

To see their sparkle.

Rangitoto

You emerge,

Upwards from water,

like the hump of a whale.

Like a grass-stained knee,

breaking the water surface in a bathtub.

But your smooth greenness,

belies your dirty red rockiness.

From Takapuna’s shore,

I can hold you in my hand.

But adventuring to your summit

feels like forever

when you’re a child.

I remember walking

in dehydrated step

short legged.

Red,

with prickly heat.

You can’t even see anything,

most of the way up.

Its just another bush walk.

Until the top.

And then,

all this effort expended,

for a view

that’s a dime a dozen anyway.

Copyright © Anna-Kaye Forsyth 2006

Oxjam Event

OXJAM Open mic/Jam Night

Wed 24th October, 8pm

Roasted Addiqtion Cafe, New North Rd, Kingsland

Performers $2.50, non-performers $5.

Come out and add your voice to help make trade fair. All proceeds go to Oxfam who will match our efforts. Homemade jam for sale too.

To register to read or play text OXJAM + your name to 027 203 4847 or show up on the night and put your name down.

Cheers.

Anna Kaye

Poetry Live

from 8pm, Tuesday October 16th, 2007

at The Classic Studio, 321 Queen Street

(upstairs, next door to The Classic Comedy Club - just up from the Town Hall)

Door charge: KOHA

Open Mic (5 minute max)

MC: Renee Liang

featuring Guest Musician Fiona McEwen at 8 pm

with Steve Terry on guitar

Singer/songwriter and rhythm guitarist, Fiona McEwen’s unique, melodic style can be

described as “contemporary folk/pop/rock with a touch of flamenco”.

Fiona McEwen has been writing songs and playing music most of her life. Having studied recorder,

percussion, piano and viola while at school, in 1986 she sang backup in a band “Pacific Roadshow” which toured

around the South Island, and started learning the guitar and writing her own songs. After bringing up

three children, Fiona launched on the Auckland open mic scene in 2004 and has since performed at open mic nights

including Suede Bar, Diablo, Grand Central, Forde’s Front Bench, PR Bar, Snatch and ‘Speakeasy’ at the

Classic Comedy Bar, and at city markets, folk clubs, festivals, including Prana New Year Festival and Titirangi Festival

of Music, and various venues including Corban Estate Arts Centre, The Wine Cellar, Sky City, The Patriot,

The Occidental, Elevation Cafe and The Dogs Bollix. Fiona was also the featured singer/songwriter on

“The Verona Sessions” which screened live on Alt TV in August 2007.

www.myspace.com/fionamcewen

Guest Poet: Charis Boos

“understated and clever, has an air of sophistication, she plays with words like a pro,
carrying listeners away with her imagery and styley metaphors”

I’m unable to breathe; and I don’t mind

Just don’t move me or I might break lose of you

An uncomplicated flash of stillness and intrigue locks me in Like a magical moment created by poetry

Yet I don’t know you, by name sure, by smell and touch, I’ve studied you very well;

You speak like language is liquid, an ode to Sade and Al Green

While I strum to your words on my guitar that holds a thousand of my deepest thoughts under the strings

So I add you – without telling you

I don’t think you’d mind

Sonnet: to Futility

And now I too know what the wise man meant,
That sage who, idling by the doleful age
Whose point at which Philosophy’s cold bent
Reeals the folly with which we all wage
Our silly, private battles, tiny wars,
Stale efforts meaningless as Time defined,
All that we, us, we inveterate bores
Might deem our feckless history refined,
That we might then assign some paltry worth
– While here aboard our tiny, drifting spec –
To all those things we’ve done since fateful birth
Placed us here astride this cosmic wreck:
He said: All will come and stand at the brink
Where fame and glory to nothingness sink.

Welcome to the new AucklandPoetry.com - the aim is to provide writers with a social platform to present and share their work. After much software testing, it seems apparent to me that this is by far the most user friendly and idiot proof writing tool (wordpress) to allow you to join and share your work.

It is simple:

1/Register to join

2/Login to post your poems - an admin link should appear under Meta

3/Do leave comments on others poems

We will post the most commented upon poems to our blogspot archive of searchable poetry which gets indexed by google and allows you to find your works forever.

The AucklandPoetry Blogspot archive is : http://aucklandpoetry.blogspot.com - this site will become our Featured Poetry Archive in due course - featuring the best of your submissions on this site.

The previous version of the AucklandPoetry site is here: http://aucklandpoetry.com/akp - we discontinued that particular style of site as it lost work due to logging out the user. This blogging method is designed for writers and is technically superior to most others plus the templates kind of work right.

There is a living culture of poetry in Auckland. We are very interested in featuring Live Performance work with a view to publishing digital content for market.

Tibet used to be a quaint place, full of monks and poor people who didn’t often washed their faces.Intrepid westerners liked the place, thought it was a
Paradise, even though no one stayed too long. Then the Chinese came and, as occupiers often, do destroyed works of art, the Lama, and his staff,fled to
India. Today modernity has arrived, there is less poverty, roads have been built and it has been said that there are dancehalls and painted ladies in
Lhasa. Life is better now chiefly for the poor, yet people would, it’s been said, endure the hardship of freedom and yak butter in their morning tea for a taste of independence. The intrepid would be back and write books about this authentic

November Love.

He was around thirty, dressed in a grey suit, but he had no arms, (accident) zip open, a man desperate and drunk, came into my café wanted a beer with a straw, that’s what I gave him. He needed a pee I had things to attend to in the kitchen, a woman, his age, said she was a nurse, helped him; back from the loo he looked respectable. In her company he was more at ease and joked about his plight, asked the time had to take a ferry home as he lived on one of the islands. Ten to nine the nurse followed him down to the docks, she didn’t return; but took the ferrytoo, I think, and became his arms, lover and caring wife. She had left a plastic bag behind it was full of crumbled up bread and stale cakes meant for the ducks; I went to the park next morning and fed them crumbs of love

Epigram.