Life keeps hurtling forward, bursting forth. It’s spring in California, the jasmine’s come in and the streaky roses. It’s been raining hard all morning; just now it stopped abruptly. Lyn writes in My Life, “she observed that detail minutely, as if it were botanical. As if words could unite an ardent intellect with the external material world.” This is Lyn, vitally observing, drawing it all into relation, the mind and the world, botanical, passionate. Making words hold life, making words as life. “Such that art is inseparable from the search for reality,” she writes.
Ka Mate Ka Mate Ka Ora Ka Ora
Ka Mate Ka Ora - NZEPC and critical writing #2
Following on from the last post, what then is Ka Mate Ka Ora and where did the title of this free electronic resource come from?
The very first issue was December 2005. To quote from the website introduction, 'The journal is part of the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc) and is based at the University of Auckland. It will publish substantial essays (6,000 – 10,000 words), review articles, historical reappraisals, close readings, shorter notices and mixed genre criticism in the area of poetry and poetics. We intend to provide a site for discourse and debate about New Zealand poetry. We will not consider contributions of poems for publication nor will we publish short reviews of books of poems. All submissions will be sent to referees for assessment and comment. We welcome contributions from poets, academics, essayists, teachers and students from within New Zealand and overseas. ‘New Zealand’ is interpreted broadly in our journal to include expatriate and immigrant writers. New Zealand is seen as a particular locality, community, context or provocation for poetry, but within this site there is a diversity of poetic activities (the poetry discussed need not be explicitly ‘about’ New Zealand).