Joshua Hetherington grew up in Auckland and is a poet and prose writer, songwriter, photographer, and DJ. He has completed an Arts degree in English and philosophy at the University of Auckland, and is doing his Master of Teaching and Education Leadership with the Ako Mātātupu / Teach First NZ programme. He lives on the Thames Coast with his wife, Cara, youngest daughter, Beth, and five cats.
His writing has appeared in The Spinoff, Newsroom, The Three Lamps online literary journal from UoA, and in the University's Interesting Journal 2019.
Poem notes
All the poems were written during Michele Leggott and Makyla Curtis's English 343 Writing Poetry paper at UoA in 2019.
'In the Company of a Cat' and 'Making a Bed' began as sensory experiments/explorations. 'Nihotupu' started as a sensory interpretation of Nihotupu Dam and spillway in the Waitakere Ranges. 'On a Red Cassette' begins as an exploration of a first house of memory, taking Tusiata Avia's 'This is a photo of my house' as a conceptual starting point. 'Sou'wester' is an exercise in writing with another, utilising excerpts from Socrates' arguments for the immortality of the soul, from Plato's Phaedo.
'25 Tinakori Road' is an exercise in writing with archives, pivoting out of excerpts from an audio interview with Katherine Mansfield's brother-in-law Richard Murray regarding some of his memories of her. 'Gate III' is an ekphrastic evocation of Colin McCahon's Gate III exhibited at Te Uru Gallery in Titirangi in 2019. 'Fresh History' is a polemical representation of the city, streets, and geography of Auckland as a living archive that inextricably links events connected by history's cycle and through the environment and the space in which they occur. 'The Island' evokes a ubiquitous presence in Tāmaki Makurau and sprung originally from an exercise in timing, sound and performance.
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