Bill Manhire

Cartoon. Title: “Sponsored by the Alcohol Lobby”. Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and Assoc Justice Minister Nicole McKee, drinking together. McKee hands her beer to Doocey and says, “Hold my beer” “I’m going to sort out these Public Health boffins. Lower right it says, “Govt ignores expert advice on alcohol”

The Govt wants to cut Health NZ staff working on alcohol harm & end its research & social marketing campaigns. Sixty five organisations have signed an open letter to the PM, calling for alcohol industry to be excluded from policy making.
My #cartoon today #NZpol #alcohol #Health #PublicHealth

Two Shenandoah submission periods for poetry start 10/15

Editorial fellow Samyak Shertok is looking for poems using form, including modified, hybrid, and more

The Graybeal Gowan prize offer $1000 for a poem written by someone who has lived in VA at any point for 2+ years

Poets, Shenandoah reading periods are coming up fast! The one for Virginia poets will stay open till 10/31, but Samyak’s great call for formal experiment will hit the cap fast (I’d guess 3 days). www.shenandoahliterary.org/submissions/

This is really interesting. I do find readers increasingly want to be served up their morals and meanings. Ambiguity makes them uneasy - what if an author has problematic opinions, and they can’t tell? (not a left or right thing btw. it’s both).

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

😇

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The small god is still inventing himself

Last week scarlet & pale
then just a hint of blue

always changing
always a little overdue

yesterday he was apples
today mostly apples

.

Title: One door leads to freedom, the others to certain death. You may ask one question. Image: Three guards with shields and speard stand in front of three doors. One guard sits at a folding table working at a typewriter, his shield and spear leaning against the wall. Caption: One guard always tells the truth, one always tells lies, and the third always tells an entrancing story that blends reportage with imagination in an attempt to reach a deeper authenticity by moving beyond the narrow categories of fact and fiction.

A riddle for @theguardian.com books page.
p.s. My new book 'Physics for Cats' is out this week in bookshops and online. Details at www.tomgauld.com

Literary prizes are a cheap distraction from the true purpose of reading great books, which is making people who haven't read them feel bad about themselves

A sheet of paper from a newspaper hoarding, suspended in front of a set of bookshelves. The paper hoarding is creased, having been folded up for a long time. The hoarding is white, with a blue bar along the bottom bearing the logo of THE SCOTSMAN newspaper. The headline is hand-written in thick black marker pen: SCHOOLS BAN ON AWARD WINNING POETRY

This newspaper hoarding – hung by Tom Leonard here on his bookcase – was described by the author as

“the only ‘trophy’ I ever got for my poetry that continues to give me some pleasure, when I remember it.”

#BannedBooksWeek
3/3
www.tomleonard.co.uk/journal/blog...

Passion and Form Ah, they have kissed! The rhyme Comes in unnoticed.

A Louise Glück miniature that appeared in The Threepenny Review in 2023. To my knowledge, it remains uncollected.

Back when I was lecturing in Applied Ethics, I would tell my students that imagination is an important moral capacity.

No imagination. No empathy. Just nastiness from the current government. 3/3

I and my thoughts of you Remember that old thorn bush amazed by its one flower If I stood by it, would it be diminished as an image must be when it stands beside what it’s an image of? December 1968

happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜

feel free to participate by posting small poems you wrote, +/or small poems you love by somebody else :)

here’s one by Norman MacCaig~

Imagine you're at a writers' retreat with the lads and you're all showing off a draft after dinner and then your mate's girlfriend goes here is the novel Frankenstein which I just wrote

What I’m Reading: Ingrid Horrocks This Wellington writer chooses short reads that can quickly take you into an entirely new world.

Here’s Ingrid Horrocks in the Writer in Residence office at the IIML that she occupied last year: next year she’ll be teaching in the MA programme while Chris Price is on leave www.thepress.co.nz/culture/3608...

This poem by Stephanie Burt—the ending slayed me…. @graywolfpress.bsky.social #translit

Teachers by Iain Crichton Smith I have met old teachers in strange places. Some have had strokes, some play the violin in a quiet little heaven of their own. And some are standing on the banks of Hades with books about Julius Caesar in their hands, English grammar, absolute ablative. Sometimes a huge wind blows them away, the leaves of autumn. Sometimes in the snow wearing their gowns of chalk they are writing. I have met the old teachers in strange places and there are apples trembling in their hands.

I have met old teachers in strange places.
Some have had strokes, some play the violin
in a quiet little heaven of their own…

—Ian Crichton Smith, “Teachers”
in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2020
#poem #poetry #teaching #WorldTeachersDay
4/4
www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017094...

If you like yelling about misuse of the passive voice, THIS IS IT.

Archaic Greek Gold Plaque of Gorgon Flossing Her teeth, 7th century BC. Parco Archeologico di Himera, Palermo

The City to Sea Bridge and the legacy of trailblazing Māori architect Rewi Thompson The fate of the bridge described as a turning point for Māori architecture has swung back and forth over the past few months.

watching this space..

www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu...

Lecturer - English Company Description: Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of AucklandThe University of Auckland is New Zealand’s pre-eminent University, with a turnover of $1.1bn, including research revenue of over $...

Job alert! University of Auckland, lectureship in English, in the long 19th century:

jobs.smartrecruiters.com/TheUniversit...

The New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition lit up at night, May 1926. Godber, Albert Percy, 1875-1949 :Collection of albums, prints and negatives. Ref: APG-1920-1/2-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

The New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition lit up at night, May 1926. Godber, Albert Percy, 1875-1949 :Collection of albums, prints and negatives. Ref: APG-1921-1/2-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

This is what I expected to find in the collection of a keen photographer living in Dunedin in the mid-1920s. The New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition lit up at night on 1 May 1926 for Albert Percy Godber would have been like a moth to a flame. #LoganPark #Dunedin

Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Alexander Pope

Image courtesy @robertallenpoet.bsky.social‬

briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/d...

The You’re Still Doing This? award for poets aged 45-55

Toad by Norman MacCaig Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse squeeze under the rickety door and sit, full of satisfaction, in a man’s house? You clamber towards me on your four corners – right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot. I love you for being a toad, for crawling like a Japanese wrestler, and for not being frightened. I put you in my purse hand, not shutting it, and set you down outside directly under every star. A jewel in your head? Toad, you’ve put one in mine, a tiny radiance in a dark place.

Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse
squeeze under the rickety door and sit,
full of satisfaction, in a man’s house?

—Norman MacCaig, “Toad”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)
#poem #poetry #BookWormSat
birlinn.co.uk/product/the-...

'our mis- / steps // widen / the path'

Seamus Heaney’s Ribbons: A beautiful poem about his sisters, published for the first time The reader is transported by Heaney’s illuminating memory: we’re in a school, a photographer is visiting and the girls are having their picture taken

A previously unpublished poem by Seamus Heaney, along with an essay by Rosie Lavan, giving the context for the poem.
I will be speaking to Rosie and Bernard O'Donoghue, co-editors of The Poems of Seamus Heaney, at The Source Arts Centre, Thurles, on Nov. 1st.

www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

Emerging Māori Writer in Residence | Te Pūtahi Tuhi Auaha o Te Ao / International Institute of Modern Letters | Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Apply for the Emerging Māori Writer in Residence—$15,000 stipend, mentorship, and writing space.

Māori writers, it's time to apply for the 2026 Emerging Māori Writer in Residence — a $15,000 stipend, mentorship, and writing space at the IIML could be yours if you apply by 31 October!
www.wgtn.ac.nz/modernletter...

The Blue Boat

How late the daylight edges
toward the northern light
as though journeying
in a blue boat, gilded in mussel shell

with, slung from its mast, a lantern
like our old idea of the soul

Kathleen Jamie

A chicken is a noble beast,
The cow is much forlorner;
Standing in the pouring rain,
With a leg at every corner.

William McGonagall (1830–1902)

While I’m on a posting roll, I just realized that the way to save the Humanities is by rebranding Higher Ed as where you go to learn how to Do Your Own Research