CRUMB #36

JULY 2025

THE WORD

INVITATION TO WINTER

When you are out on a winter’s night you can feel the crisp frost in the air. You breath ‘smoke’ from your mouth and you draw with your finger on the icy windows of the shop fronts. You wear Ugg boots and scarves and warm jackets through the tall trees of the season. Winter we love you but keep the rain to yourself!

Winter offers an invitation to rug up and get out to an open microphone event near you. Actually, they are all near you, for the traversing from one side of Golden Bay to the other can be covered in about an hour if you are of a mind to. So gather at the venues below for some good craic and bonhomie!

This  month we have events at the Mussel Inn, where Irish singer/songwriterDiana Ní hÍceadha will guest at Acid on The microphone. NgAng’s Gallery will host Moonshine on the Microphone and a potluck tea. The Possibilities Centre – Aroha Ahora will hold a weekly open microphone session. The Dangerous Kitchen of course will close for the winter break from 12 July until 3 September so no Dangerous Microphone from now until 3 September.

All the details on the following pages.

Peace
Mark Raffills
Golden Bay Live Poets Society

On Thin Ice

This silver coat of winter
Hanging from the naked tree
Offers little warmth or comfort
To one as lonesome as me

On this crackling grass carpet
Diamond white, clear and cold
I walk in feet bare and bleeding
My shoes they have been sold

In the thin ice on the window
A finger numb and freezing
Writes of love, an empty word
Broken and unbelieving

Mark Raffills

LIVE MIC ACTION

Moonshine and Feasting

Here we go with an explosive mix of pot luck feasting and moonshine on the microphone! It’s proved already that this is one kind of gathering we need! Come this Thursday, 4 September, we are dishing up a pot luck feast along with poems and songs, at NgAng’s Gallery. 

The POT LUCK FEAST will start at  6.00pm. Bring some food and drink and hang out together and remind ourselves just how lucky we are to be in such a gem of a community.

And then, starting around 7.30pm, there will be the very fabulous and very intimate Moonshine on the Microphone open mic session hosted by Mr  Mark Raffills.

Moonshine on the Microphone
Thursday 4 September 2025
NgAng’s Gallery
POT LUCK FEAST – 6.00pm
Open Mic – 7.30pm. Koha

Moonshine and Feasting

LIVE MIC ACTION

ACID in September

Singer, songwriter, poet Neal Bonner is our guest at September’s edition of ACID ON THE MICROPHONE presented by Golden Bay Live Poets Society.

Our regular open microphone session for poets and musicians will run from 7.30 to 8.30 pm.  The open mic always throws up some unexpected treats as new and established performers present their work.  Participants can put their names on the performance list on the night. Musician alanjahjah will kick the evening off from around 7.15pm with dinner music to dine to.

ACID ON THE MICROPHONE presents
Singer, songwriter, poet
Neal Bonner
Thursday 18 September
Open Mic from 7.30 pm.
Neal from 8.30 pm.
 $5 on the door.  Mussel Inn

ACID in September

LIVE POETS

Diana Ní hÍceadha

Songs of belonging and songs of becoming

Hailing from the rocky western wilds of Éire, via the lush, loamy headlands of the east, and led to Aotearoa by the bones of a story that whispered across oceans from Te Waipounamu, singer-songwriter Diana Ní hÍceadha offers songs that trace the pathways of migration, of people, seasons, memory, and meaning.

Her music charts the movement between places and seasons, marking thresholds of arrival and departure, holding on and letting go. These are songs of welcome and farewell, of belonging and becoming, rooted in close listening, to land, grief and change.
She sings for the seeds that landed before her and now grow alongside her, tentative locals on foreign soil. Immigrants all, still learning what it means to belong.

Her work holds space for the in-betweens, between cultures, between homes, between what’s been lost and what might still be found.

“D is a singer and apologises in advance if she makes you cry.”

Catch Diana performing her songs and music at Golden Bay Live Poets Society’s July gathering at the Mussel Inn.

Diana Ní hÍceadha
Thursday 24 July
Mussel Inn
$5 on the door

Diana Ní hÍceadha

COMMUNITY STRENGTH ON SHOW

July @ Aroha Ahora

July @ Aroha Ahora

LIVE AT THE MUSSEL INN

SEPT AT THE MUSSEL INN

Thurs 11th
QUIZ NIGHT – All welcome

Sat 13th
SHAUN KIRK
(pictured left)
supported by NICK HERBISON
8pm  tickets $25   door $30

Thurs 18th
ACID ON THE MICROPHONE
Open mic plus special guest singer, songwriter, poet
NEAL BONNER

Sat 20th
GENERAL KALA
8pm $20 door –

 Thurs 25th
QUIZ NIGHT – All welcome

Sat 27th
THE ORANGE BOX
Arts on Tour kids theatre show.
1pm. $10 tickets

SEPT AT THE MUSSEL INN

Make Use of CRUMB

subscribe to CRUMB

In CRUMB you will find all the events sponsored by Golden Bay Live Poets Society plus a few other gigs and community happenings.

If you would like to be kept up to date with open microphone events happening around the Bay, then subscribe to CRUMB here

And you can even submit a gig or event that you want us to know about.

 

 

 

 

 

GOT A GIG, EVENT, NEW BOOK or RECORDING COMING UP ??

Got events or gigs coming up that you’d like to let CRUMB readers know about, please email the details, jpeg pics and jpeg posters to: mark@drycrust.com  or use the link below:

submit a gig or event 

And if you have a new book of  poems, stories coming out, or a new recording of songs, let us know and we can let our small but dedicated readership in on the action.

LOCAL BODY ELECTIONS 2025

Standing up for Golden Bay

These are the people who are standing in the upcoming local body elections.

Golden Bay Community Board:

Mark Raffills, Henry Dixon, Clarissa Bruning, Sunshine Appleby, Grant Knowles, Rodney Ward and Axel Downard-Wilke.
These seven people are vying for four positions on the Community Board.

Golden Bay TDC Ward Councillor:

Mark Hume, Julian Hall, Axel Downard-Wilke, Celia Butler, Rod Barker.
These five people are vying for two Ward Councillor positions.

You can meet all these wonderful people at
MEET THE CANDIDATES
Sunday 7 September at Collingwood Area School 2.00pm
Sunday 7 September at Takaka Senior Citizens Hall. 7.00pm

Voting papers will be delivered week beginning 8 September.
The actual election date is Saturday 11 October 2025.

if you don’t vote, the whole thing becomes a joke

 

Standing up for Golden Bay