News
Not news from me, but some news on another 26er. John Simmons has a new volume of poetry inspired by Spanish city Seville. It’s available from Paekakariki Press and, in the manner of his last pamphlet, Berliners, it has beautiful illustrations by Alberto German.
Buy your copy. And keep an eye out for some more on the collection in the next newsletter.
– Max Parfitt
I was in New Zealand for three months last year for work and wrote more poems in that time than I had in the previous 9 months. There was something about new environments and regular day trip excursions into the unknown that sparked my creativity. I’m sure being stuck in the backseat of my friend’s car for many hours for those journeys helped as well.
As for the year ahead – I wish to see friends. I wish to travel. I wish to finish writing the book I started three years ago.
I think, looking back, 2025 was a very bitty, turbulent, piecemeal year for me. Some real high moments, some real low ones. What I want from this year is stability in my personal and professional life so that I can live in calm and pleasant routine.
– Harry Ashton-Key
Recommendations
I urge you to read My Dear Kabul, a book I’m confident will make a deep impression. It’s the collective memoir of a group of women writers in Afghanistan, published by Untold Narratives/Coronet. The book is told through a series of WhatsApp messages, sent between women as the Taliban surged into Kabul in 2021, causing the government to collapse and the president to flee the country.
I knew something of the constraints being reimposed on women after 20 years of freedom: suddenly they were banned from education, forbidden to appear in public without a male relative as an escort, and compelled to wear burqas. But I’d never heard directly from the women affected – of course we don’t hear their voices, because speaking out puts their lives at risk.
This amazing book changes all that. We hear from a whole range of women, moment by moment, as their lives narrow – trapped inside, burning their own books and exam certificates, forced out of their careers. In one unforgettable moment a woman describes washing her diaries and notebooks until the water turns blue with ink and the blank pages can be crumpled up and safely discarded. I can’t think of a more powerful image of the erasure of these women’s lives and hopes. It’s a book of immense courage that deserves to be much more widely read.
– Jill Hopper
I recommend The Door-to-Door Poet: My Adventures Across England by Rowan McCabe. It’s as the title suggests: an account of an experiment the author undertook 2019-2020.
I fantasised about such a venture myself when much younger. I’ve now experienced McCabe’s trip vicariously. Should I hit the road with my own?
– Aidan Baker
I recommend the complete works of any artist. The complete works of an artist is my recommendation because it is fascinating seeing another human’s life described by the art they choose to create. A friend of mine’s New Year’s resolution is to watch every Tom Hanks film in chronological order, which is no small feat and I am sure will be illuminating. I myself had three months in New Zealand last autumn where my only book was the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. My only prior experience with the author to do a Year 9 English presentation on A Picture of Dorian Grey, which I did having only read the first page and the book’s wikipedia article. I wish I had actually read the book at the time, because it turns out he’s quite clever and it turns out he’s quite funny and I quite like his work.
I would also like to recommend taking vitamin D tablets because I’ve started taking them and they’ve been a game changer this winter. 10/10.
– Harry Ashton-Key