2 days ago
The Sunday Poem, by Mark Prisco
cat
the cat mourns like it feels pain, silently.
he doesn't give himself away like a nightingale.
talks only when he has to; slinks
crevices of what you think when you're not thinking
looking out the window.
he came to inspect the hole i dug
at the end of the day & sniffed it before i filled it up again.
he knows death. like me
there's a dark spot in him somewhere which he gets used to
& forgets.
Taken with kind permission from the new anthology Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2025 (Massey University Press, $37) edited by Dr Tracey Slaughter, and available in bookstores nationwide. It's the latest annual of the yearbook founded in 1951 by Louis Johnson and serves as a subjective, sometimes eccentric best-of round-up of new poetry in New Zealand. The 2025 iteration has 141 new poems by 127 poets, including Victor Billot, Fiona Kidman, Damien Levi, Amber Esau, Diane Brown, Michael Steven, and Erik Kennedy, and three winners of its schools' competition, Ellie Zhou, St Andrew's College (Year 11), Jasmine Liu, Rangitoto College (Year 12) and Chloe Morrison-Clarke, Papanui High School (Year 13). The yearbook always shines a light on a featured poet and in 2025 the honour belongs to Hamilton-based Mark Prisco, with 15 poems. Tracey Slaughter describes him as a 'writer who lives and breathes his craft and is willing to work nights at Countdown if it means [he] gets to keep scratching down lines'. In his dazzling review of the Yearbook, Charles Bisley singled out Prisco, writing, 'Prisco's phantasmagoric reveries have stayed in my mind…[his poems] are holding on for dear life.'
Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day will take place next Friday, August 22. The full programme of nationwide events includes live performances of poetry and music by David Eggleton and others at Te Puna Creative Hub, Henderson; an open mic night at HB Williams Memorial Library, 34 Bright Street, Gisborne; a poetry and pizza event at Firebird Café, Levin; and an all-star cast led by poetry czar Nick Ascroft will read their own work as well as poems by such as the late Fleur Adcock, Vincent O'Sullivan and Paula Harris at Rongomaraeroa, Te Marae, Level 4, Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington.
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