What I'm Reading: Poet Richard Pamatatau on juggling three types of reading

Richard Pamatatau. Photo/ Louise Bockett

There are three types of reading before me and getting through it all requires discipline and focus to get to the joy that lies (at places) in each area.

My Year 3 journalism students at AUT are submitting essays that traverse identity and difference supported by their observations, practice, and theory; each requires close attention as they argue points that often illuminate in surprising and rewarding ways. Every submission carries surprises.

For my PhD research at Massey University I'm exploring place and poetry, or perhaps being place-adjacent. I'm running behind schedule and I'm reading poet after poet after poet. Three are noted here.

Serie Barford's Sleeping with Stones is deeply moving meditation on seasons, grief and emerging out the other side. Grief troubles many and Barford surfaces the complications of a relationship with grace and flair.

My primary supervisor Bryan Walpert's Brass Band to Follow is a nod to middle age, etc and while some darkness sits beneath the humour, the poems speak to concerns which many will relate to. Those whose friends are on their next marriage/relationship or more will find the wedding poem has resonance.

Lastly Jackson Nieuwland's Ockham Book Awards winner, I am a human being, is a fantastic read and his poems probe a span of matters each beginning with I am. Some are short – "I am an acupuncturist. I get on your nerves; I am a Russian doll. I am full of myself." The rest are longer and Nieuwland takes to task everything from eggs to goldfish and more.

On a serious note, I'm down in theory weeds, which is like being in a YouTube rabbit hole but not as much fun, moving from theorist to theorist and so on. This week it's been Jeff Malpas on Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World alongside Doreen Massey's Space, Place, and Gender.

On a personal note, following the death of my german shepherd Esther, I've been digging into Pet Library's German Shepherd Guide by Madeleine Pickup.

For escape, I'm about to dip into Amy McDaid's Fake Baby.

Poet Richard Pamatatau is taking part in Phantom National Poetry Day, August 27. For more information, go to www.poetryday.co.nz.