Thursday, August 4, 2016

Cartoon briefs - there was an old woman who lived in a shoe


  • A large octopus with the words "Housing Crisis" written on its body has one arm wrapped around John Key, Bill English, Nick Smith, Stephen Joyce and Paula Bennett. Bill's speech bubble says "Just wait, it has to let go eventually." The others have expressions ranging from terror to astonishment on their faces. The arm wrapped around the cabinet ministers has "political fallout" written on it. The remaining flailing arms each have one of the following sets of words on them: homelessness, first home ownership, street beggars, garage dwellers, slum landlords, unhealthy houses, land bankers.
  • The cartoon is divided in two diagonally. In the bottom left, there is a multi-level building with a sign on it - "Housing Crisis Casino". Glitter, fireworks, and stars surround the top of the building. On the ground outside, a small group of people with bows are firing arrows at the top storey. The words "Government Measures to Stop Crisis" are written above four or five arrows in flight. In the top right half of the cartoon, a group of cigar-smoking, opulently-dressed gamblers are sitting around a card table in a room. The dealer has dealt four cards - the words on the back of each card read: buy and hold, buy and do-up, buy and on-sell, buy and build, joker. A window behind the card-players has on its outside an arrow with a sucker head stuck to the glass and the word "thud" above it. The dealer is saying "Don't worry, they're not serious".
  • A group of four cabinet ministers wearing casual clothing is sitting around a table. They are wearing name tags - John, Bill, Nick, Paula. A sign on a door to the room reads "Potty Shed Retreat - Ideas Room". There is a whiteboard behind the table with the heading "Strategies for fixing the housing crisis". There is no other writing on the whiteboard. At the head of the table sits a woman wearing the name tag "Facilitator". A newspaper with the heading "WINZ implicated in garage housing scheme" lies on the table. The facilitator's speech bubble says "So Paula, this was your idea?". Bill is thinking "That's clever - it frees up cars for sleeping in". Nick's thought bubble reads "What about storage container houses?" John's thought bubble has a flag with a garage on it.

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Cartoon briefs - hey diddle diddle

  • John Key, with a perplexed look on his face, and dressed in a frock and wearing rubber gloves, is standing in a kitchen with a large, half-empty plastic milk bottle in one hand. The milk bottle has a hole in one corner and is leaking a stream of milk onto the floor. An assortment of burnt cakes, spilt ingredients and torn up recipes litter the bench and floor. In his other hand, he is holding open a book. The title of the book is "NZ Economy Cookbook (Chinese Edition)".


  • The cartoon is divided in two diagonally. In the top left, a thin, black-singleted cow-cockey with his back to us is walking out a farm gate. He is carrying a suitcase with a label which says "Fonterra's Get Rich Poor Quickly Dairy Farm Package". A fat bankster dressed in a waist-coated suit is standing by the gate grinning from ear to ear. A "Farm Certificate of Title" document protrudes from his pocket. In the bottom right half of the cartoon, Bill English is speaking on the phone - "Don't worry John, they'll still vote for us." A book with the title "Great Political Con Tricks" sits on a coffee table next to Bill. 


  • A group of four cabinet ministers wearing casual clothing is sitting around a table. They are wearing name tags - John, Bill, Stephen, Murray. A sign on a door to the room reads "Green Brown Fields Retreat - Ideas Room". There is a whiteboard behind the table with the heading "Strategies for fixing the dairy downturn". There is no other writing on the whiteboard. At the head of the table sits a woman wearing the name tag "Paula Rebstock - Facilitator". A newspaper with the heading "Tourism overtakes Dairy in export earnings" lies on the table. Paula's speech bubble says "No Stephen, we can't make every tourist buy a can of milk powder as an entry tax". Murray's thought bubble reads "How about a sheep farm then?" Bill is thinking "We should make it 2 cans". John's thought bubble has a flag with a cow on it. Stephen looks as though he is sulking.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Guest Poet at the Fringe, Sunday 21 February

I will be reading from my latest collection, Felt Intensity, on Sunday 21 February. Come if you can. Location and other details are in this poster:

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

A Post-Tuesday Poem Post: Conception

something almost always
follows a full stop

a hiatus
silence which is nothing

if not unrealised sound
there is present always

nature's abhorrence of nothing
the fragrance of latency

clefs prefacing
unborn sonatas

elemental matter
surfing the grandstands

of the universe
searching for seats

to the last Big Bang
or the birth of

the first letter of
the next sentence




Alas, Tuesday Poem as we knew is no more. The last post was played on the blog on 15 December last year, One of the founders of the blog - I am not sure whether it was Mary McCallum or Claire Beynon, wrote in the farewell post that "Something almost always follows a full stop". I liked this so much, I wrote the poem above.
 

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