Bill Manhire
@pacificraft.bsky.social
1.8K followers 340 following 990 posts
Socially inept but likes to sing in front of strangers. Wow published by THWUP in NZ http://teherengawakapress.co.nz/wow/ & Carcanet https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800170049/wow/ in the UK. Toitū Te Tiriti!
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pacificraft.bsky.social

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My Final Poem
 
Someone rides a bicycle through a cemetery,
then in and out of my poem.
Why would anyone do that?
 
I was expecting a dark horseman,
not a clown on a bicycle.

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Reposted by Bill Manhire
modernletters.bsky.social
Is that WAKE, Elizabeth Knox’s horror novel, on Jacinda’s bedside table during Covid? Almost yelled out in the theatre. Really good film anyway. PRIME MINISTER @elizabethknoxnz.bsky.social
Reposted by Bill Manhire
johnattridge.bsky.social
Instead of competing for limited resources, other humanities disciplines should accept that they are all essentially branches of literary criticism
Reposted by Bill Manhire
thwupbooks.bsky.social
Join us tomorrow!
thwupbooks.bsky.social
Join us to celebrate All Her Lives: Nine Stories by Ingrid Horrocks. The book will be launched by Emily Perkins.

🌿 Thursday 9 October, 6pm
🌿 Unity Books Wellington
🌿 Free event – all welcome!

Cover: Sarah Wilkins

www.facebook.com/share/19atXe...
The cover of the book shows a young woman in a white shirt, green tie and red skirt sitting down and looking thoughtful. Text around the cover says: 'Join us for the launch of All Her Lives. Thursday 9 October 6pm. Unity Books Wellington.' The logos of THWUP and Unity Books are in the corner. A quote in red text on a green background: 'All Her Lives is a reckoning. A stunning tour de force of women’s lives across centuries, continents and political movements. The collection reads as a protest song book, calling through the ages for change, revolution and peace. Horrocks is one of the most powerful storytellers of our time and All Her Lives is the author's most triumphant work.’ Laura Jean McKay
Reposted by Bill Manhire
domesticanimal.bsky.social
The Govt wants to cut Health NZ staff working on alcohol harm & end its research & social marketing campaigns. Sixty five organisations have signed an open letter to the PM, calling for alcohol industry to be excluded from policy making.
My #cartoon today #NZpol #alcohol #Health #PublicHealth
Cartoon. Title: “Sponsored by the Alcohol Lobby”. Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and Assoc Justice Minister Nicole McKee, drinking together. McKee hands her beer to Doocey and says, “Hold my beer” “I’m going to sort out these Public Health boffins. Lower right it says, “Govt ignores expert advice on alcohol”
Reposted by Bill Manhire
lesleymwheeler.bsky.social
Poets, Shenandoah reading periods are coming up fast! The one for Virginia poets will stay open till 10/31, but Samyak’s great call for formal experiment will hit the cap fast (I’d guess 3 days). www.shenandoahliterary.org/submissions/
Two Shenandoah submission periods for poetry start 10/15 Editorial fellow Samyak Shertok is looking for poems using form, including modified, hybrid, and more The Graybeal Gowan prize offer $1000 for a poem written by someone who has lived in VA at any point for 2+ years
Reposted by Bill Manhire
poetclare.bsky.social
This is really interesting. I do find readers increasingly want to be served up their morals and meanings. Ambiguity makes them uneasy - what if an author has problematic opinions, and they can’t tell? (not a left or right thing btw. it’s both).
newyorker.com
Movies now relentlessly signpost their meaning and intent. “Artists and audiences sometimes defend this legibility as democratic, a way to reach everyone,” Namwali Serpell writes. “It is, in fact, condescending.”
The New Literalism Plaguing Today’s Biggest Movies
Buzzy films from “Anora” to “The Substance” are undone by a relentless signposting of meaning and intent.
www.newyorker.com
Reposted by Bill Manhire
mikeachim.bsky.social
Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...
Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."
pacificraft.bsky.social
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The small god is still inventing himself

Last week scarlet & pale
then just a hint of blue

always changing
always a little overdue

yesterday he was apples
today mostly apples

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Reposted by Bill Manhire
tomgauld.bsky.social
A riddle for @theguardian.com books page.
p.s. My new book 'Physics for Cats' is out this week in bookshops and online. Details at www.tomgauld.com
Title: One door leads to freedom, the others to certain death. You may ask one question. 

Image: Three guards with shields and speard stand in front of three doors. One guard sits at a folding table working at a typewriter, his shield and spear leaning against the wall.

Caption: One guard always tells the truth, one always tells lies, and the third always tells an entrancing story that blends reportage with imagination in an attempt to reach a deeper authenticity by moving beyond the narrow categories of fact and fiction.
Reposted by Bill Manhire
johnattridge.bsky.social
Literary prizes are a cheap distraction from the true purpose of reading great books, which is making people who haven't read them feel bad about themselves
Reposted by Bill Manhire
asls.org.uk
This newspaper hoarding – hung by Tom Leonard here on his bookcase – was described by the author as

“the only ‘trophy’ I ever got for my poetry that continues to give me some pleasure, when I remember it.”

#BannedBooksWeek
3/3
www.tomleonard.co.uk/journal/blog...
A sheet of paper from a newspaper hoarding, suspended in front of a set of bookshelves. The paper hoarding is creased, having been folded up for a long time. The hoarding is white, with a blue bar along the bottom bearing the logo of THE SCOTSMAN newspaper. The headline is hand-written in thick black marker pen:

SCHOOLS BAN
ON AWARD
WINNING
POETRY
Reposted by Bill Manhire
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
A Louise Glück miniature that appeared in The Threepenny Review in 2023. To my knowledge, it remains uncollected.
Passion and Form

Ah, they have kissed!
The rhyme
Comes in unnoticed.
Reposted by Bill Manhire
beefaerie.bsky.social
Back when I was lecturing in Applied Ethics, I would tell my students that imagination is an important moral capacity.

No imagination. No empathy. Just nastiness from the current government. 3/3
Reposted by Bill Manhire
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜

feel free to participate by posting small poems you wrote, +/or small poems you love by somebody else :)

here’s one by Norman MacCaig~
I and my thoughts of you

Remember that old thorn bush
amazed by
its one flower

If I stood by it, would it be diminished
as an image must be when
it stands beside
what it’s an image of?

December 1968
Reposted by Bill Manhire
daniel-barker.bsky.social
Imagine you're at a writers' retreat with the lads and you're all showing off a draft after dinner and then your mate's girlfriend goes here is the novel Frankenstein which I just wrote
Reposted by Bill Manhire
modernletters.bsky.social
Here’s Ingrid Horrocks in the Writer in Residence office at the IIML that she occupied last year: next year she’ll be teaching in the MA programme while Chris Price is on leave www.thepress.co.nz/culture/3608...
What I’m Reading: Ingrid Horrocks
This Wellington writer chooses short reads that can quickly take you into an entirely new world.
www.thepress.co.nz
Reposted by Bill Manhire
carrieetter.bsky.social
This poem by Stephanie Burt—the ending slayed me…. @graywolfpress.bsky.social #translit
Reposted by Bill Manhire
asls.org.uk
I have met old teachers in strange places.
Some have had strokes, some play the violin
in a quiet little heaven of their own…

—Ian Crichton Smith, “Teachers”
in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2020
#poem #poetry #teaching #WorldTeachersDay
4/4
www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017094...
Teachers
by Iain Crichton Smith

I have met old teachers in strange places.
Some have had strokes, some play the violin
in a quiet little heaven of their own.
And some are standing on the banks of Hades
with books about Julius Caesar in their hands,
English grammar, absolute ablative.
Sometimes a huge wind blows them away,
the leaves of autumn. Sometimes in the snow
wearing their gowns of chalk they are writing.
I have met the old teachers in strange places
and there are apples trembling in their hands.
Reposted by Bill Manhire
Reposted by Bill Manhire
ianduhig.bsky.social
Archaic Greek Gold Plaque of Gorgon Flossing Her teeth, 7th century BC. Parco Archeologico di Himera, Palermo
Reposted by Bill Manhire
stephenclarkenz.bsky.social
This is what I expected to find in the collection of a keen photographer living in Dunedin in the mid-1920s. The New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition lit up at night on 1 May 1926 for Albert Percy Godber would have been like a moth to a flame. #LoganPark #Dunedin
The New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition lit up at night, May 1926. Godber, Albert Percy, 1875-1949 :Collection of albums, prints and negatives. Ref: APG-1920-1/2-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. The New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition lit up at night, May 1926. Godber, Albert Percy, 1875-1949 :Collection of albums, prints and negatives. Ref: APG-1921-1/2-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
Reposted by Bill Manhire
poemtoday.bsky.social
Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Alexander Pope

Image courtesy @robertallenpoet.bsky.social

briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/d...