Socialist poet Victor Billot of Dunedin has returned fire on the misnamed “Taxpayers’ Union” who are now on the second year of their doomed campaign against him. Mr Billot says the Taxpayers’ Union have again attacked his poetry and Creative New Zealand for funding provided to the Newsroom website which publishes a weekly satirical poem …
Category Archives: Writing
National Flash Fiction Day 2021
Rage Virus infects 2020 Best New Zealand Poems
I’m honoured to have my poem Rage Virus find its way into the 2020 Best New Zealand Poems edited by David Eggleton.
The Sets reviewed by Reid’s Reader
A thorough and rigorous review of The Sets by Nicholas Reid on Reid’s Reader (an abridged version appeared in the Listener on 6 February 2021) The collection’s Prologue “The Sets” presents the sea as daunting and as the centre of Billot’s own personal mythology, the place to which he returns for many of his most …
The Sets reviewed in Kete Books
My friend and fellow writer Michael Steven has written a great review here on the Kete Books website.
On the radio: Write On with Vanda Symon
Interview with Vanda Symon on Write On, Otago Access Radio, 10 February 2021
The Sets out now
‘The Sets’ was published by Otago University Press in February 2021.
The mind virus of right wing conspiracies
The danger here is because we live in the ‘bubble of the present’ some will believe the confusion being sown by the far right and conspiracy theorists, who now appear to be merging in a bizarre new ideology. It is important to resist this wave of dangerous nonsense.
Showing promise: a poem for Hamish Walker
The MP for Clutha-Southland
did, it is true, post on Facebook that
he had been door knocking in Mataura
when he hadn’t.
Working Class Hero
As Minister of Social Development I went hard, I developed people out of houses into cars.
Ride the Dave Wave: a poem for David Clark
Hark! Hark! It’s Dave Clark, riding his unicycle round the bike park.
Green Eggs and Porridge: a poem for Prince Andrew
My name is Andy Wyndzor,
I’m aged 60 or so.
Occupation not stated,
of no fixed abode.
Go Big or Go Home: a poem for Donald Trump
Prezident Cheezel deletes lockdown,
deletes the World Health Organization,
deletes the memory of George Floyd,
then hunkers in his hunker bunker …
The Rise of Toad: or a verse marking the anointment of a new leader of the National Party, 22 May 2020
All hail! Glad tidings O countrymen and womyn! The battle for the soul of our green and pleasant land is joined again: the banners blue unfurled and proud, stamped by the novel emblem of a Toad! Now just wait a minute, interrupts Simon the Unfortunate, before Lord Toad steps up nimble and lops his head. …
The Conspiracy
One thing I have noticed really ramp up in recent times is the profusion of conspiracy theories on the internet.
Victor Billot 