There’s A Lot Happening …
… over the next few days!
Poetry on Women on Air: National Poetry Day—And Month!
July 30 is National Poetry Day here in New Zealand, so by way of celebrating poems and poets we are making July Poetry Month at Women on Air. We’ll be interviewing at least one poet on every show from now until July 31, which means five weeks of amazing poetry and poetic voices coming to listeners every Saturday. The poets will also be featured on the Women on Air website here, together with one of their poems for you to read and enjoy.
Our poet for Saturday 3 is Sarah Broom, whose first collection Tigers at Awhitu (2010), was published simultaneously by Auckland University Press, here in NZ, and Carcanet in the UK. When I first read this collection earlier in the year it absolutely blew me away with its combination of wonderful use of language, poetic control, reflective intelligence and emotional power. During much of the writing of Tigers, Sarah was going through treatment for lung cancer (no, she has never smoked), treatment which is ongoing, which is another reason I am grateful for the opportunity to have her on Women on Air this Saturday and to help bring her voice to a wider audience.
Excerpt From Three Birds ii
…
You sit in the bush before dawn,
listening to the seep of the soil, feeling
the rags of the night air on your skin.
You wait until the kokako starts to sing
in the still-dark trees, until slowly
you start to make out its ash-grey form
against the greying light. Eyes black
as the rotting leaves, and at its throat
a hurtled scarp of sky.
© Sarah Broom
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And I Join the Supernatural Underground Blog—I July
The Supernatural Underground is a blog of speculative fiction authors published by HarperCollins USA, and I will be blogging on the Underground for the first time tomorrow, 1 July—and the first of every month thereafter. And no, I haven’t finally decided what I am going to blog about yet. But yes, there will be giveaways. At least two copies of the ARE of The Heir of Night for within North America only, and a couple of copies of Thornspell (given its paperback release on July 2) for international readers.
On Friday 2, actual paperback release day, I’ll also be giving away a further 2 copies of Thornspell right here on this blog. So keep watching this space.
Whoa! That is a big few days. I’ll have to pay attention! 🙂
Don’t draw breath, don’t answer the ‘phone—it’s all a-happen’ fast!