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Website title: NZ Poetry Shelf | a poetry page with reviews, interviews and other things
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Early Class
In 1978 in the old Onehunga Primary school hall
we met with a group of teachers and parents
to show off the new technology—a Casio calculator
which I demonstrated with a classmate,
and encouraged them all to use.
Our school principal, teachers, and my friend,
their faces now blurred on a platform
View From A Mountain
Replica waka hourua
cruising up the Whakaraupo ki te !anga
by the Naval Point
seems indifferent
to the semi laden bulk carrier
on its way
to Somewhere Else
with the rest of its ammonium sulphate
caking in the holds
Tēnā waka
has auxiliary power
r...
from The Elements
II
Already ahead of ourselves. Knowing what to do.
Look to the distant wave, crunching over reefs
far below in a bay that is open to the ocean.
The foulest of weather sweeps in off the sea;
leaves bow to the rain, branches bend,
bark peeled from tree trunks flaps in gusts.
Knowing wha...
Tackling the Hens, Mary McCallum
The Cuba Press, 2026
Mary McCallum’s latest poetry collection, Tackling the Hens (2025), is a poetic engagement, both intimate and intricate, with the world ...
tomorrow we are dead
– for Ukraine, 2026
today not born
always in the moment
of epiphany
he came for us
mad dog that he is
on a chain of saliva
who knew his blood
would run this cold
inventing history
today we rise and fall
like the lungs we are
inhaling...