Monday Jack Ross has edited the latest issue of Landfall. He considers the trend towards “themed” issues from three points of view: the editor (who loves them), the writer (who loathes them) and the reader (who is indifferent). He called his issue “Open House.”

I don’t mind either way. I can fall for a good theme, but I like the unpredictable friend-and-stranger mix of a great open house.

It got me thinking about my own writing. For some reason I like to carry something big in my head made up of little parts. I love having this LARGE counterpoint to the laundry, cooking, weeding, taxi service, and emotional and physical needs of the family.

So I spend a year or so writing little and sometimes-longer poems to form something large. There is usually a theme (focus), but it still feels open to unexpected guests. I just can’t picture myself writing one-off poems to satisfy the domestic gaps.

Tuesday I went to the Random House Christmas drinks tonight and enjoyed a lovely toast to the world of books. Hard to believe my first storybook will be out with them next year.

I kept bumping into people I know, including people who wrote the books in that leaning tower beside my bed. I am halfway through Charlotte Grimshaw’s short story collection, and I am finding it compulsive reading. Once I start her stories, I don’t want anything to get in the way of it. So those private thoughts I had as reader slipped out to the writer herself.

Got to tell Karl Stead how much I loved his poems in Black River, loved the tenderness, could really identify with the stroke poems (no! I have not had a stroke, just concussion).

Every now and then I read something and want to send a card to the author to say how much I loved the book. It is all to do with lift off: the way a novel or short fiction or poetry lifts off the page beyond the sum of its parts. Beyond technique, beyond musicality, beyond voice, beyond content lifting into some kind of transcendental X factor. An afterglow.

Must write to Laurence Fearnley and tell her how Edwin + Matilda enthralled me; how that gorgeous rendition of Central Otago and the human relationships held my attention.

Must write to Johanna Aitchison and tell her how I keep picking up A Long Girl Ago to reread a poem. Love the look of the book. Love the way the poems sound in my ear.

(this could turn into a long list)

Wednesday I have just found out that Random House will publish my children’s story “Aunt Concertina and her Niece Evalina.” This is a red-letter day, but I am too tired to celebrate.

Thursday Last Sunday I went with a Slow Food group out to Crescent Farm in Albany to taste some stunning goat’s cheese. Someone asked Jan and John whether they had taken a course on making cheese. They said they had got a book. I don’t want to get into a tedious argybargy over the merits of courses, but I liked their reply.

I have learnt more about poetry by reading poems than from any other quarter.

Friday A good poetry book will clear the cobwebs; a good poem will get me feeling this immensely satisfying goodwill towards the world.

I have just picked up Sol and reread Andrew Johnston’s terrific poem “The Sunflower.” He salutes an old form (the sestina), and an old hand (John Ashbery via Swinburne), takes what he wants, and invests it in the finest weave of grief, reflection, celebration, and anecdote. I sit back and put the poem on replay.

However, sometimes music is the only thing that will do. LOUD. LOUD. LOUD. When your skin starts tingling, your body starts shifting and turning to the beat (this morning it’s an old favourite, “Three Little Birds”), and your mind and heart just want to write. WRITE. WRITE. WRITE. (blogs aside)