And “what’s better to do than celebrate / the fact?” Ian Wedde turned 80 over the weekend and, last week, we were able to celebrate sixty years of poems at work. Ian came down from Auckland to read, and Jackson McCarthy, Sofia Drew and Anna Jackson all read poems of his alongside his own. There were lots of family members in the audience and lots of odes from the stage; it was joyous and fun, and gave me a chance to think on just how many of the poems have become a part of my soundscape (just as SYMMES HOLE still helps me think my way along the Waterfront towards Oriental Bay): when things are “earthly & difficult & full of doubt”; when it’s “lonely and afraid up here”; when Cambridge Terrace bustles with ‘good business’ and in “some ways I find hard to describe / I know it’s always been like this”; when recalling the “negligent mauve litter” of Auckland jacaranda; when driving into “the rainy architecture of the storm”.