“I love it when you open a book, and a bus or a train ticket falls out,” said Leticia. “Suddenly you remember the place where you read the book. The landscape you were travelling through.”
So I mark my pages with boarding passes and ticket butts from around the globe. And every time I open a book I remember Leticia.
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E hoa ma,
To commemorate the anniversary of the siege of Parihaka there will be a gathering this Friday, November 5, from 8pm onwards at the Pol Hill anti-aircraft battery site - that's the big concrete structures on route to the wind turbine. BYO musical instruments, poetry, stories, fireworks, friends, kai… There's a great view so you can watch the fireworks down at the waterfront. If it’s raining come anyway, there’s some shelter up there. Hopefully we’ll get a fire permit… The site is on a path just off Ashton Fitchett or Waterhouse streets.
Also check out "the (un)known island, tales of trade". This is a Roadworks/Red Mole production featuring our very own Cara. "To the island come explorers, entrepreneurs, set on discovering new territories and extending the reaches of free trade. In the island they find paradise. The island, in them, finds other things." Described as like the carnival pantomime version of The Corporation, with poetry and amazing masks, this is not to be missed. It's on at WACT studio, level 1, 44 Cable St (opposite Te Papa) @ 8pm 3-10 November, with a special early showing at 6:30 on Friday 5 so there's plenty of time to make it up to Brooklyn afterwards. $12/$8/Gold Coin for children.
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Hinemoana’s book and CD were launched on Sunday, both stunning works, beautifully produced. Buy them now, but not from the CD Store (who fund the homophobic Maxim Institute) or Unity books…
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Now that I've finished my course in Classical Traditions in English Literature, I feel all clever and educated and I can write ghazals with Classical references… go me.
After Sappho
After the moon turns
I wait for you.
Rivers
wick away the darkness.
Matariki balances on the horizon;
the annual dance begins.
Yours is not
the death of the moon.
I wait for light.
Our sun burns alone.