Over the weekend mowers were in action and neighbours were water blasting their driveway and it feels like summer is not that far away though heavy rain is being forecast for the South Island in October. And today is cold. I saw two bumblebees yesterday so hopefully they will pollinate my broad beans which have lots of flowers on them.

   Poetry is the theme this week.  Did you see the article in the Sunday Star Times (24 September, A 12) about Bill Manhire? His advice to writers is to ‘Read, read, read’ (unlike some others who say: ‘Write, write, write’). Why he has an AA sign saying ‘Katherine Mansfield Birthplace’ behind him is never mentioned!

   He is quoted as saying that he’s retiring as Director of Victoria University’s Institute of Modern letters (IML), to become ‘a proper writer’.  Damien Wilkins will take over as Director. Bill Manhire has a new book out, Selected Poems (Victoria University Press). The article made me dip into my copy of What to call your Child (Godwit, 1999).  A number of the poems are based on Manhire’s experience in Antarctica. My copy is number 673 of a limited hardback edition of 1500.  ‘Visiting Mr Shackleton’ was a poem that confirmed it was OK to write Found Poetry, a form we all had a go at. I loved the way he used phrases from a visitors' book.

    There’s also a villanelle about a lucky Lotto shop.  Interesting because we mentioned this form at our last poetry meeting when one of our group had written a poem based on this form.  Another well known poem, though not in the book,  is ‘Erebus Voices’, the poem he wrote in 2004 for Sir Ed Hillary to read at the service to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the Erebus disaster in Antarctica.

   Manhire talks about a ‘Wizard of Oz’ syndrome that is common to artists. You want the work to be ‘big and booming and occupying the whole world, but you’re just the little person behind the curtain, crossing out this word and putting in a better word.’ He doesn’t believe in inspiration, just hard work. That reminds me of the quote I put on the Picton Poets’ Facebook page a while ago.

     Bill Manhire acknowledges that in New Zealand poetry is important for ceremonial occasions like weddings and funerals but not so much in daily life whereas in other cultures it is very important to people’s lives.  In the introduction to Reflections we said that for Picton Poets poetry is ‘central to our lives helping us to convey our vision of life in this place we call home.’ Maybe looking back that statement was a bit esoteric but it seemed right at the time (Reflections, Picton Poets an anthology, (Prisma Print, 2011).

In October Bill Manhire will be at the Frankfurt Book Fair http://buchmesse.de/en