Yes, I know it’s not Friday but there’s a few gems for you…

1. Quarantine through art… just lovely…

2. New Zealand Poetry Shelf

If you’ve not come across the NZ Poetry Shelf, you’re in for a treat. Paula Green posts regularly from Aoetearoa poets including live readings, book launches and other nourishing treats. This morning’s gem…from poet Bernadette Hall ‘The Landscape of Longing‘ combining quotes from Vitruvius (Roman Architect) with wonderful imagery like this…

an object under the eye will appear very different  from the same object in an open space       
think of the shell as part of the architectural setting, a shallow canopy
over the Madonna who, with her child, has been gathering raspberries.

3. Simon Armitage on Poetry

British Poet and academic Simon Armitage has a fab set of lectures from his four year stint at Oxford. A droll witty tour through obscurity, Elizabeth Bishop, Bob Dylan, Jo Shapcott, predators, chivalry and much much more. Here’s his social isolation poem – reprinted in The Guardian.

I hope you enjoy these (and please let me know of any poetic favourites you’d like to share during these writing times).

Image: Coffs Harbour, the first fully equipped women’s surf life saving competition team in the world, 1931 / photographed by Sam Hood, c/- State Library of NSW.

And for your ears here’s Charles Mingus with Mingus Ah Um from 1959