Auckland Poetry Reading.
3pm Sunday 31st May 2009.
The Art Lounge Lorne Street. Next to Parsons Bookshop Auckland

Our Own Kind; 100 New Zealand Poems about Animals
Edited by Siobhan Harvey. Photography by Mark Smith.
Random House - $36.99
An illustrated reading from the new publication. Poets Sue Reidy, Stu Bagby and Renee Liang will read from their poems.
Siobhan will read from her introduction. There will be time for questions.
Animal themed images will screen as a backdrop during the readings.
The book will be on sale.
Sunday 31st May 2009
3 - 4 pm at The Art Lounge, Auckland Art Gallery, Ground Floor, entrance from Lorne Street.

From James K Baxter to Sam Hunt, Janet Frame to Denis Glover, Allen Curnow to Lauris Edmond, animals are in so many of our most well-known, most admired poems.
This is a wonderful, carefully chosen anthology.

Fleur Adcock - For a Five-Year-Old
A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.

Siobhan’s background……
author of 2 poetry collections; writes reviews and articles for the Listener and the Christchurch Press; poetry editor of Takahe Magazine; teaches creative writing at Auckland University.

Above post contributed by Helen Parsons,
Parsons Bookshop Auckland
26 Wellesley Street East
Cnr Lorne Street & Wellesley Street
Auckland 1010
New Zealand
books@parsons.co.nz
http://www.parsons.co.nz/