On this page: background to my life as a poet, ultra-friendly copyright details, and ways to contact me.

I’m Rachel McAlpine, a much-published New Zealand poet who went bad. Now after many years of running a business, I’m coming right again.

When smartphones first appeared, my first thought was that here was a perfect vehicle for poetry.

So I began writing tiny poems that would fit on tiny phone screens: I called them phone poems. In that pre-apps era, I begged our mobile phone company to offer a daily poem to customers, but no go.

Now I publish poems on this ultra-simple blog. Mostly fresh off the press.

Please do share or copy poems with my name attached — you’re welcome!

You have entered a wild-life sanctuary for poems. They have been microchipped and banded with a Creative Commons Licence CC BY 2.0, meaning you may copy and share them any way at all, provided you state that Rachel McAlpine is the writer. (Links to this blog are appreciated.) Thus tagged, the poems may roam freely within the internet.

Most photos were taken on my trusty iPhone

This blog is a place for photos too. Most were taken on the fly. Most photos are attached almost at random to a poem. If you spot any accidental symmetry, synchrony, sympathy or serendipity between poem and photo, that’s a bonus.

Four ways to contact me

1. Comment on a blog post on this site or Write Into Life
2. Follow me on Write into life  — my main website with poems, courses, books, and a blog, mainly about writing or ageing.
3. Email rachel [ at ] writing.co.nz

I’d love to hear from you! Your comments are always interesting and I try to answer every message.