In the long slog to press ‘send’ on The Wall of Night #4 manuscript, a great deal fell by the wayside, including poetry and participating in the regular Canterbury Poets Collective (CPC) reading seasons.

Now the manuscript is with the publisher, I had been *thinking* of getting back into poetry, but the intention morphed from ‘thinking’ to ‘action’ when my friend Tim Jones indicated that he would be a guest reader at last weekend’s CPC reading. Tim has a new poetry collection out, titled Dracula In The Colonies, published by Cuba Press, and I was keen to hear him read from that, as well as putting down my ‘shilling’ (in 2026 $ terms 😉 ) for my very own copy.

So I not only caught up with Tim in advance of the reading, but felt inspired to read a (new!!!) poem myself! Titled Braided River, it speaks to both the titular braided rivers of NZ’s Canterbury province (where I dwell!) and the process of writing the fourth and final WALL series’ novel. 😀 It’s still very new, but reading a poem to an audience is always a good test of whether it has ‘legs’. (It does!)

Tim was the anchor man for the evening’s three guest poets and was very much on form — and I have already charged through the first section of Dracula in the Colonies and am enjoying it immensely. It does feel very good to be getting back into poetry again, both reading and writing it, though tis early days in the latter respect.

During the course of the day, Tim and I also caught up with another Canterbury (ex-USian) poet, Erik Kennedy , who currently has a collection, titled Sick Power Trip (Te Herenga Waka University Press) in the final round of the Ockham NZ Poetry Awards.

We went on to attend a welcome for Booker Prize winning author, Shehan Karunatilaka of Sri Lanka, who is the current Writer-in-Residence at the University of Canterbury. Shehan won the Booker for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida in 2022.

Tis unquestionably wonderful to have writers of such calibre here with us in Christchurch, and also very nice to have the opportunity to meet Shehan Karunatilaka in person — on one of those mild, sunny, autumnal afternoons that Canterbury knows how to put on at this time of year.