The Choice of a Cover Image for Yearbook 2

Cover image: Karl Chitham / Cover design: Anna Brown

The cover image for Poetry NZ Yearbook 2 comes from a series of maquettes by artist Karl Chitham (Ngāpuhi). At the time he made the models in question he was working as a curator at the Rotorua Museum, which may explain why this one appears to recall the famous pink and white terraces. Karl, however, has transformed them into congealed pools of white and sulphur-coloured paint, with a wharenui standing proudly on top.

Image: Karl Chitham

If you want to know more about Karl, currently employed as the new director of the Tauranga Art Gallery, do read the article here:

Karl Chitham, pictured with some of his maquettes in Rotorua

Given our choice of Robert Sullivan as our feature poet for this issue, Karl seemed the ideal choice for a cover artist. Especially as the two of us collaborated on the exhibition Fallen Empire (Dunedin: Blue Oyster Gallery) in 2012 (for which see more info here).

Robert Sullivan (2015)

There are many other people I would like to celebrate for their work on this issue: our administrator, Bronwyn Lloyd; our new social media guru, fiction and screen writer Matthew Harris; but our cover designer Anna Brown, of the Design Studio at Massey, deserves extra high praise for working to the narrowest of deadlines to come up with this wonderful cover for us:

Thanks, then, to one and all! The issue is now with the printers, and should be winging your way by the end of the month.