JAFA

Just Another fantastic Anthology

Auckland in Poetry

Edited by Stu Bagby

Antediluvian Press -$28.95

Stu Bagby, who has been writing poetry for many years, published in various literary journals and several anthologies including Best New Zealand Poems 2005, has now put together a most interesting, and I suspect unique collection, of verse all of which has Auckland as its theme.

It includes verse from the likes of C.K.Stead, Sam Hunt, J.K.Baxter, Kevin Ireland, Iain Sharp, Michele Leggott, Louis Johnson, Albert Wendt, Glen Colquhoun, David Eggelton, Keith Sinclair, Bob Harvey, Allen Curnow , Stephanie Johnson , Vincent O'Sullivan, Hone Tuwhare and lots of others too.

I especially enjoyed this one from Bob Orr:

Container Terminal

The sun rising

above Rangitoto...

there were tracks

across the tide

I stood in sunlight

the colour of containers.

An old freighter with

a beard of rust

lay anchored

in midstream.

Gulls flew between

the masts of moored ships.

Huge wharf cranes

walked the water's edge.

Into my hand they lowered an island.

And from Kevin Ireland:

Pity about the Gulls

Walking the beach this morning

you could see yachts putting out

the white flags of their sails to sue

for peace on Earth, jaunty waves

leaning up against the horizon,

shelling out buckets of small change,

and an ocean liner, with a toothpaste

smile, sporting Rangitoto

on its beam like a cocked hat.

Pity about the gulls.

Heads down,backs hunched,

they humped the misery of the world,

drilling screams into the cliffs,

rubbing the shine off the day.

Always, some bastard has to spoil it.

An excellent and thoroughly entertaining anthology that will be especially welcomed by poetry-loving Aucklanders and ex-pat Aucklanders.

Available now from your independent bookseller or from the editor at s.bagby@xtra.co.bz

Cover art - Richard Killeen - Man, land,sea and sky.

Apology to Bob Orr and Kevin Ireland for the double spacing in their poems. Technical glitch that I cannot fix.