Phantom Billstickers

Phantom Billstickers: Poetry on Posters Programme (2014)

Sorry for the long delays between posts on this site. I guess it's not much of an excuse, but I have been rather busy setting up a Poetry NZ blog for "views, reviews, interviews, and other news" about the magazine.

In the meantime, though, I did get quite a kick from seeing my very first poetry poster, from the Phantom Billstickers, "New Zealand's largest and finest street poster and street media company."

The plan is that they're going to produce a poster for each of the readers at "Poetry Central," the Auckland Central Library celebration of Poetry Day (which falls on Friday 22nd August - 5.30 for 6 pm - this year), and plaster them up all around the event. The above is my contribution to the festivities.

Here's the list of readers:

1. Michele Leggott
2. Makyla Curtis
3. Murray Edmond
4. Ya-Wen Ho
5. Selina Tusitala Marsh
6. Alice Miller
7. John Newton
8. Jack Ross
9. Robert Sullivan

Auckland Central Library

•


Poets and Posters (Central Library, 22/8/14)

165 Richmond Rd, Ponsonby

474 Karangahape Rd, Auckland Central

Wallace Stevens Meets the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang

Bill Direen, ed.: The Ultimate Reader of Love for the Book (2021)

This poem - under the title "Library Dreaming: Wallace Stevens Meets the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang" - is now available in the freely downloadable anthology The Ultimate Reader of Love for the Book: An Anthology of Writers Deeply Concerned about Massive Book Disposals occurring at the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa (the wellsprings of knowledge). Ed. William (Bill) Direen. ISSN 1953-1427. NZ: Phantom Billstickers, 2021: 34.

•


Wallace Stevens: Saved by Florida Cowboys (1931)



Let be be finale of seem
– 'The Emperor of Ice-Cream'

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Who’s to say it couldn’t have happened?
the young Wallace Stevens
born in 1879
in Reading, Pennsylvania
might well have travelled out west
sometime before going to Harvard
in the Fall of ’97

Butch Cassidy (1866-1908)

It wasn’t till 1896
on his release
from Wyoming State Prison
that Butch Cassidy
put together the Wild Bunch
(Stevens was 17)

The Wild Bunch (Fort Worth, Texas, 1900)
l-to-r: : Harry A. Longabaugh, aka the Sundance Kid; Will Carver; Ben Kilpatrick, aka the Tall Texan; Harvey Logan, aka Kid Curry; & Robert Leroy Parker, aka Butch Cassidy.

It wasn’t till 1901
that he and Etta Place & the Sundance Kid
left for South America
(Stevens was 22)

Harry A. Longabaugh & his wife Etta Place (New York, 1901)

Elsie Viola Stevens - née Kachel (1886–1963)
& their daughter Holly (1924- )

It wasn’t till 1908
he was shot down
in San Vicente, Bolivia
(Stevens was 29)

Butch Cassidy's grave

It wasn’t till 1916
that he moved to Hartford
becoming Vice President
of the Hartford Accident & Indemnity Company
in 1934

Wallace Stevens' grave