- Home Page
- Index
- Michael Steven – Blue Dream
- Jenny Powell – Biology Field Trip
- Riemke Ensing – Blue is a cracked vase in memory
- Peter Olds – Over the Road
- Roger Hickin – Minding his own poetry composing business
- Te Purere: The Exodus
- James K Baxter – A Branch Torn Down
- Doc Drumheller – Hotel Theresa
- Dunstan Ward – Departures
- Leonard Lambert – Slow Fires
- Peter Olds – The Glass Guitar
- Roger Hickin – Residual Gleam
- Pat White – Night Shifts
- John Allison – A Long Road Trip Home
- James K Baxter – The Selected Poems
- Peter Olds – Out of the Jaws of Wesley
- Roger Hickin –Roderick Finlayson A Man from Another World
- Michael Harlow – Renoir's Bicycle
- David Howard – Rawaho
- Doc Drumheller – Drinking with Li Bai
- John Gibb – Surprised by Hope
- Peter Olds – Sheep Truck
- John Weir – Sparks among the Stubble
- Alexander Blok – The Twelve
- Jenny Powell – Meeting Rita
- Owen Leeming – Latitudes
- Peter Hooper – Rejoice Instead
- Doc Drumheller– Election Day of the Dead
- John Allison – Near Distance
- A Roderick Finlayson Reader
- Joaquin Pasos – A Poem Goes About on Foot
- Ruth France – No Traveller Returns
- Robert Mclean – Enduring Love
- Tony Beyer – Friday Prayers
- Dunstan Ward – At This Distance
- Friedrich Voit – Karl Wolfskehl A Poet in Exile
- R A K Mason – Uncollected Poems
- John Allison – A Place To Return To
- Dan Davin – From Cairo to Cassino
- Victoria Broome – How We Talk to Each Other
- Ruth Hanover – Other
- Peter Olds – Under the Fuchsia Tree
- Dai Weina – Loving you at the speed of a snail
- Leonard Lambert – Winter Waves
- Heather Bauchop – Remembering a Place I've Never Been
- Robert McLean – Figure & Ground
- Owen Leeming – Through your eyes
- Pat White – Watching for the wingbeat
- Michael Morrissey – Poems from Hotel Middlemore
- Dan Davin – A Field Officer's Notebook
- Rogelio Guedea – Punctuation
- Erik Kennedy – Twenty-Six Factitions
- Jenny Powell – South D Poet Lorikeet
- Karl Wolfskehl – Poetry and Exile
- Tony Beyer – Anchor Stone
- Katharina Muller – The Homeland
- Ted Jenner – The arrow that missed
- Peter Olds – Taking my jacket for a walk
- John Gibb – Waking by a river of light
- Carlos Martinez Rivas – Threnody for Joaquin Pasos
- Blanca Castellon – Water for days of thirst
- Karl Wolfskehl – Three Worlds Drei Welten
- Michael Jackson – Walking to Pencarrow
- Diana Bridge – In the supplementary garden
- Agnar Artúvertin – The Lonesome Savior
- Sophia de Mello – The Perfect Hour
- Poems by Esenin
- Nikolai Baitov – Thirty-nine rooms
- Jenny Powell –Trouble
- Peter Olds – You fit the description
- Rogelio Guedea – If only you hadn't gone
- Ernesto Cardenal – 3 Poems
- John Gallas – Pacifictions
- David Howard – The Speak House
- Frank Koenegracht – Selected Poems
- John Gibb – The thin boy and other poems
- Michael Harlow – Sweeping the courtyard
- Blanca Castellon – Cactus body
- Elizabeth Smither – Ruby Duby Du
- Karl Wolfskehl – To the Germans
- Juan Cameron – So we lost paradise
- David Howard – The incomplete poems
- Jenny Powell – Ticket Home
- Robert McLean – A Graveyard by the Sea
- Sergio Badilla Castillo – Ghosts and shadows
- Sergio Badilla Castillo – The Medusa's head
- Claudia Serea – The System
- Genrikh Sapgir – Psalms
- Floarea Tutuianu – My Dog–the Soul
- Michael Morrissey – Memory Gene Pool
- Peter Olds – Journey to the Far South
- Aleksey Porvin – Live by Fire
- J. Kates – The Old Testament
- Juan Cameron – Invocations to Pincoya in the Country of Rain
- Wayne Seyb – Broken Shadows
- John Gallas – Fucking Poets
- Tatiana Shcherbina – An Offshoot of Sense
- Mikhail Aizenberg – Level with Us
- Gary Langford – Cafe Sonnets
- Stephen Oliver – Apocrypha
- Jeffrey Paparoa Holman – Autumn Waiata
- Jean-Pierre Rosnay – Secret Wars
- Forthcoming titles and Submissions
- Out of print titles
Publication date: 7 September 2026
Blue Dream
Michael Steven
ISBN: 978-0-473-79573-3
Softcover, 40pp, 210 x 148mm
Cold Hub Press ~ Michael Steven
Free post per copy – NZ$20.00
Ruawai
Two bodies of water join at this junction town
where the shops are closed or empty.
Sitting in his ute, the young cop
scrolls Facebook on his phone, dozes.
The fields have been stripped, dusted with urea.
The harvest is stored away in wooden boxes.
All of the atua are sitting in a line
drinking piss on the pack house roof.
A red-eyed pitbull chews rissoles
of roadkill straight off the blacktop.
Night chases daylight towards the coast.
I am not the same man I was this morning.
© Michael Steven 2026
A new chapbook collection by Michael Steven, a poet for whom ‘writing is a survival art’; ‘a score put down against oblivion’, dedicated to ‘best poet mate’ & mentor Peter Olds, ‘now a box of ashes’.
Michael Steven was born in 1977. He began teaching himself to write poems in Christchurch Prison, where he served a sentence for drug-related offending. He is the author of numerous chapbooks and three highly acclaimed collections. His honours include the 2018 Creative New Zealand Todd New Writers Bursary and the 2021 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award. He works as a tutor of electrical engineering and lives in rural West Auckland.