Lindsay Rabbit at Poetry Society/JAAM 26 progress report/Congrats to Tim Jones

I prefer my posts to be tightly written, focused explorations, nay elucidations, of a single topic (surely you’ve noticed), but today I’m gong to cheat and do three-in-one.

Lindsay Rabbitt at Poetry Society

The May meeting of the Poetry Society is this Monday, 19 May, at 7.30pm, in The Greta Fernie Room, Leuven Belgian Beer Cafe, cnr Featherston and Johnston Sts, Wellington (New Zealand, for my international readers).

Lindsay Rabbitt is the guest poet. According to his website, he is ‘a New Zealand writer and multi-media artist based on the Kapiti Coast. He has published poems, essays and short stories. His latest book is These Lives I Have Buried, which was published as part of the Montana essay series, edited by Lloyd Jones and published by his Four Winds Press.’

While researching him on the net, I found this kind of random interesting tidbit in an interview with Bill Manhire: ‘Nowadays, whenever I meet Lindsay Rabbit, another poet who lives in Wellington, I have an immediate rapport with him, because we both grew up in pubs in the bottom of the South Island. There are things we know about that no one else in Wellington does.’

JAAM 26 progress report

Tim Jones, guest editor of JAAM 26, has posted on his blog a wee report about where he’s up to with compiling the next issue.

Basically, he’s read through heaps and heaps of submissions, has found some treasures, and now has to make some tough decisions. He’ll be getting back to submitters soon, and then we’ll start getting it ready for publication.

Sounds like it will be (another) great issue, and I’m looking forward to it.

Congrats to Tim Jones

While we’re on the subject of Tim Jones, congratulations are in order. Tim’s soon-to-be released second short story collection Transported has been long-listed for the 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

This award, organised by the Munster Literature Centre, Ireland, goes to the author of the book judged to be the best collection of stories published in English for the first time anywhere in the world in the past year. Tim is one of four New Zealanders to be long list, along with Sue Orr, Elizabeth Smither and Witi Ihimaera. Congrats to all. Read more about it here.