The Summer Stickleback is here! Continuing with Seasons in Poetry, Hedgehog Poetry Press has released its Summer Stickleback as a free download. It is the second anthology in a series of four. My poem Spring Day featured in the first of Seasons in Poetry.
The poem Inflorescent is among my favourites and graces the Summer edition. Never before published, it features among a select gathering of works from stellar poets worldwide. The Collection contains nine works from authors to create a shoal of poetic outpourings about all aspects of Summer. It initially appeared on Hedgehog Poetry’s website at the Solstice, in our midwinter when I was dreaming or busy creating elsewhere. For the reader who wants to feast their eyes, here it is.
The Inspiration for Inflorescent
The poem came after spending time in the Coromandel, when, on our last day, I saw a lone pohutukawa on a hillside still ablaze with flowers when all other trees had faded in the dry, parched summer. The pohutukawa is an iconic tree native to New Zealand and flourishes along the Coromandel coastlines. Many cheap reproductions of pohutukawa trees crowd the walls of beach baches for the delight of visitors. Naturally, one might shy away from an overused subject, but there is no escaping the unique beauty of the flame-red trees edging turquoise blue coastlines in high summer. I have composed a number of poems after visiting the magical wilds of Coromandel, and the mood and atmosphere linger in the words whenever I read them. Two of them, Relic and Orchard Vignette, haunt the collection in All Revolutions Begin This Way.
The Poet’s Hideaway
The Coromandel is rich in history and legend and was the centre of New Zealand’s Gold Rush in the 1860s. The real attractions are the Waitaha Dream Paths which lace vast tracts of hill and valley. As a poet, I have discovered two of them. But their secret remains with me!