{"id":43683,"date":"2026-03-16T06:30:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T17:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=43683"},"modified":"2026-03-15T20:56:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T07:56:31","slug":"tim-jones-canterbury-poets-booker-prize-winners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2026\/03\/16\/tim-jones-canterbury-poets-booker-prize-winners\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Jones, Canterbury Poets, & Booker Prize Winners"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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<\/em><\/a>, published by Cuba Press<\/a>, and I was keen to hear him read from that, as well as putting down my ‘shilling’ (in 2026 $ terms \ud83d\ude09 ) for my very own copy.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, 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. \ud83d\ude00 It’s still very new, but reading a poem to an audience is always a good test of whether it has ‘legs’. (It does!)<\/p>\n

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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

We went on to attend a welcome for Booker Prize winning author, Shehan Karunatilaka<\/a> 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<\/em><\/span><\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friends","category-other-writers","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43688,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43683\/revisions\/43688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}