On the sermons of Tyrone Williams
A lay preacher, as well as the distinguished poet, critic, and English professor I had known him to be, Tyrone had delivered the sermons at the Winton Community Free Methodist Church in Cincinnati, where he worshipped from 1987, when he began teaching full time at Xavier, until he took his position as a distinguished chair in the English Department at Buffalo in Spring 2022.
Six months after Tyrone Williams died from cancer at age seventy on March 11, 2024, I accessed the texts of seventeen sermons he had composed and that were now housed in the “Theological, 2001-2021” section of his archive at SUNY Buffalo.
Looking at Aotearoa-New Zealand poetry — from afar
Looking at Aotearoa-New Zealand poetry — from afar
Kia ora ano (Hello again.)
Yunno, I've often wondered just how poetry in Aotearoa-New Zealand is viewed from abroad: not from Anglo-American-Australian vistas (for there is too much in common with their (post-)colonialist-imposed poetic striates here anyway) but from other countries. Countries that are steadily replacing the United Kingdom as fount for new arrivals here. Countries where the poetry is not necessarily in English language, is more empathetic to the tropes and styles of indigenous verse; where fancy footwork language manoeuvres are not the 'norm.'