Bill Manhire

YT's Poem of the Week: 'Gaza' by Bill Manhire @pacificraft.bsky.social @carcanet.bsky.social
www.yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem...

There are just a couple days left to apply to come work with us at the Bookshop.

More details about the position here: www.lrb.co.uk/pages/standa...

Attention-Starved Waif I have always been needy, wailing for water and laughs as far back as the days when I wore soft yellow and only had two star-coloured teeth. I read an article about turning need into rugged self-sufficiency by drying it out overnight in a low oven, switching it to convection just before bed. No, my mistake, that’s how you make fruit leather. The process I’m thinking of is longer and involves self-denial and stern language and whips, and it can’t really be done in the home, it has to be done everywhere you are alive, all the time, it takes place in the car and in court and when you’re having blood taken, and for it to work it will have to take over your sleep. In fact, it takes so long that it’s not practical to recommend it to anyone except the most patient self-improver, and the thing about patience is that it’s always a virtue that other people have.

I have four (!) poems in the new 'PN Review'. I think it's fair to share this one and say buy the mag if you're in the UK. =)

'Attention-Starved Waif' is a very me poem, obvs.

www.pnreview.co.uk/magazines/pn...

No pasaran! 🇪🇸

God bless the Spanish for standing hard against this soulless, brutality. This is leadership:

Go here for a reading guide to @pipadam.bsky.social's Audition! Plus an interview ("I think the most dangerous thing I see is when an author believes they're ‘giving a community a voice’ with complete disregard for the voices that already exist in that community" coffeehousepress.org/pages/readin...

The Bookseller comment piece title: Are your books unintentionally alienating readers?

Poets!

Covid hospitalisations climb as New Zealand enters new wave There’s been an increase in hospitalisations and in wastewater detections, and it’s expected to last another month or two.

Thanks to this article, I went from "I must get my booster before winter" to "I will get my booster this week". So today, between meetings, I went to my local pharmacy as a walk-in. The entire process (including the precautionary hanging around afterwards) took 15 mins. Get to it Kiwis #nz

Short corporate poem.

Stephen Gallagher and Dave Long just won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction and Composition for Secrets at Red Rocks! 🙌

For sale | 6 Harris Street, Karitane, Dunedin, Otago - homes.co.nz Free property records for 6 Harris Street, Karitane, Dunedin, Otago. Free Sales History. Contact agent James Columb, Nearby sales, Mortgage loans, Council records, School zones, and more. homes.co.nz,...

Real estate marketing with Sylvia Plath

homes.co.nz/address/waik...

You’ve Done It Again, Michael | Jynne Dilling Even as the pace of work life quickened exponentially across the next two decades, email inboxes overflowing, media outlets proliferating and then contracting, websites and newsletters dominating and ...

An appreciation of Michael Silverblatt, one of the best literary podcasters before @davidnaimon.bsky.social, at n+1. Silverblatt died in February, but you can still listen to his back catalogue at the Bookworm (KCRW) podcast
www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

Send me your poems! ✨️

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

Wow! Thank you, Heidi.

I love 'Anecdote for Fathers'.

I have a copy of the old Panther Books edition stashed away somewhere. treloars.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/122...

The UK and NZ editions of Bill Manhire’s Lyrical Ballads

Night and day

Fitzcarraldo Editions acquires three books by Mary Ruefle for a landmark UK publication | Fitzcarraldo Editions Fitzcarraldo Editions will publish Mary Ruefle’s Golden Crumbs in October 2026, collecting her first three books of prose. This landmark publication will be Mary Ruefle’s first in the UK.   Golden Cru...

love this. and WHAT an author photo fitzcarraldoeditions.com/2026/02/fitz...

😊

Here's the Trade Me listing for the room my son has available in his small but perfectly formed Aro Valley house, very reasonable rent in great location. Please share with anyone you think would be interested

In today’s post

Cartoon. Title: “All Business” Three frames. Police Minister Mark Mitchell, wearing a headset, and sitting at a computer, answering calls to an Emergency Services phone line. In the first frame he’s looking slightly bored, saying. “Emergency, which service do you require? Police, fire or ambulance?” Then he says, “Police?” 2nd frame he’s looking up ands saying, “Someone who has mental health problems? No, sorry, the police no longer respond to mental health call-outs” 3rd frame, looking considerably more lively, he’s saying, “Cluttering up a business’ doorway??!! Well, that puts a different complexion on it!”

All Business. The government’s new focus on a the homeless, beggars, and street people. “Move on” orders, fines and prison sentences. My Stuff #cartoon today #NZpol #Homes #Homeless #Poverty #prison #MentalHealth #Police

The latest sonnet chain has begun: it’s a) our 4th and b) an #ArtSonnetChain, edited by @sophieherx.bsky.social & Nancy Campbell.

And the first line to be carried, last line of sonnet 1 to 1st line of sonnet 2, is by Sophie:

‘The trouble with beauty is its ugliness…’

#NewBootsAndPantisocracies

Coming up in Akaroa, brilliant destination for a summer writers festival. The road is open again after the flooding, so this is a great chance to support the town and see some great writers.
www.rawafestival.com/2026-programme

The Sunday Poem, by Cliff Fell Lines on kissing in the dawn and river mist

The Sunday Poem, by Cliff Fell newsroom.co.nz/2026/02/22/t...
A beautiful poem...

If you want to protect your home from being burgled by poets

I like this tiny poem by Bill Manhire @pacificraft.bsky.social from his forthcoming Carcanet collection Lyrical Ballads.

The neighbourhood

six drawings of a child's swing: 1. What the committee discussed (swing with an unworkable 3-layer seat) 2. What the project team designed (swing with unworkable 3 ropes, one through the middle of the seat) 3. what the mayor approved (swing stretched across the trunk of the tree) 4. what the contractors installed (swing with ropes attached to the trunk instead of a branch, seat sits useless on the ground) 5. what the engineers modified it to (the top of the tree is cut off so the swing can go through the middle of the tree) 6. what the public really wanted (an old tyre hanging invitingly from a branch)

Scan of a photocopy of one of the most right-on political cartoons ever. Clipped from a NZ peace magazine in the 1980s. #kikorangi

Poetry Shelf celebrates Iain Sharp (24 April 1953 – 24 January 2026) Poetry. Dear old poetry. Your rusty relics groan on forgotten shelves of secondhand bookshops – Wordsworth and Shelley bearded with cobwebs,Spenser dispensed with, the pages of both Brownings…

And now Greg O'Brien has chosen a poem and shared a terrific anecdote to two nzpoetryshelf.com/2026/02/18/p...

A bland villanelle is called a vanillanelle