Hawke’s Bay’s Dad Gods offer poetry with free toasties at Paisley Stage

Neill Gordon (left), Ricky Day and Jeremy Roberts will be sizzling at Paisley Stage.

The only thing that beats a good toasted sandwich on a cool night is a free toasted sandwich. Hawke’s Bay poetry trio Dad Gods plan on drawing in a crowd by offering free toasted sandwiches to the audience at their August 31 gig at Napier’s Paisley Stage.

Billed as Father, Son and Cheese on Toast, the fast-paced night starts with live music before Dad Gods Ricky Day, Jeremy Roberts and Neill Gordon take to the stage.

Gordon explained the idea is that people will come for toasted sammies and stay for the love, the joy and the soulful howls the Dad Gods will offer to the audience and the super blue moon happening that night.

“You’ll laugh your shorts off but you’ll also weep – not only at the tragedy of our urban lives but at your own world rendered like a mutton carcass into poetic dog roll,” Gordon said.

The gig precedes Father’s Day on Sunday, September 3 and the poets will each incorporate a nod to the glories of procreation and its aftermath in their readings.

Guitarist Laughton Maitai will open the evening with a stripped-back set of tunes from 7pm and Day, Roberts and Gordon will do a 10-minute set each, take a short break and then return with more visionary verse in the second half, with the show wrapping up about 9pm.

The three poets will bring something different to Paisley Stage, for example, Day writes poems that start small, get big, and end up small again. A regular at the Common Poets’ Society in Hastings, he has performed at the Fringe in the ‘Stings Festival, and for the Hawke’s Bay Readers and Writers’ Trust Progression of Poets.

Roberts is a mainstay of poetry in Hawke’s Bay, he MCs at Napier Live Poets, interviews poets on Radio Hawke’s Bay and is poetry editor for the Vines journal.

His work has been published widely – including NZ Listener, Landfall, Takahē, JAAM, Poetry NZ and by Phantom Billstickers. Jeremy has performed and recorded poems with musicians in Aotearoa, Austin, Saigon and Jakarta.

His first poetry collection was Idiot Dawn (poems 1981-87). Cards on the Table was published in 2015 and The Dark Cracks of Kemang: The Bajaj Boys in Indonesia was published in 2022, by IP Australia. He was awarded the Earl of Seacliff Poetry Prize in 2019.

Last but not least, volunteer event organiser Gordon gained the nicest sort of notoriety recently for arranging for the entire Napier-Hastings shoreline to be set on fire to celebrate Matariki on July 15.

In between setting things ablaze he, like Ricky and Jeremy, writes poetry ranging from the domestic to the sublime. Gordon won the adult section of the 2022 Wardini Books Poetry Competition for his reflection on raising children entitled Wondering Why the Sun Rises.

Father, Son and Cheese on Toast will be held at 7pm on Thursday, August 31 at Paisley Stage, 17 Carlyle St, Napier. Tickets can be brought at the door for $5.