Finally, some good fucking news.

The Friday Poem is back!

Last year, The Spinoff leveled with its audience about the financial reality it faced and called for support from its audience. Some tough decisions were made at the time including cuts to our commissioning budget and the discontinuation of The Friday Poem.

This was sad news, but possibly not surprising. While poetry is less niche than it has ever been, it’s still fairly niche, and it’s nicher still to find people willing to pay for it. I privately hoped that some real estate magnate, who had once read and loved Keats, would swoop in and sponsor us.

While poetry might not be well funded, it is well read, which surely has something to do with the disproportionate number of poets in this country. You’re more likely to run into a poet at the supermarket in New Zealand than almost any other country on earth, with the possible exception of Lithuania. And yet outside of niche periodicals and literary journals, it’s becoming hard to find places to read poetry, or literary coverage in general. It’s even rarer to find a place where poetry and journalism can peacefully coexist. Poetry is usually locked away in an attic of its own making. 

This is a shame, because we’re currently in a golden age of New Zealand poetry. The Friday Poem, founded by Steve Braunias in 2015, and later edited by Ashleigh Young and Chris Tse has published over a decade’s worth of work from some of the most exciting established and emerging poets in the country. The Friday Poem was one of the first places to publish my work, and it’s been a joy to return to the format in an editorial capacity. Every week I am humbled and delighted by the depth of talent in my inbox. One day someone’s going to have to print the whole website off as one long ass PDF and send it to the National Library as a work of national literary significance. Because I was a reader long before I was an editor, I think I can boldly claim that The Friday Poem has done an enormous amount for diversifying the readership of poetry, and sharing that work with the wider world. 

In the end it wasn’t a real estate magnate that heeded our call for support, but a writer. Steff Green, a local romance author (writing under the name Steffanie Holmes) and founder of Nevermore Bookshop heard our plea, and generously agreed to sponsor the Friday Poem for a whole year! In a thrilling and unexpected turn of events, Steff increased the fee we are able to pay writers, from $100 to $150 per poem.

We asked her for a few words about her decision. Here is what she had to say: 

The Friday Poem is one of my favourite columns on the Spinoff, and I was so sad to hear it might go away. I couldn’t believe we might not get to see any brilliant pieces like Ya-Wen Ho’s “TODAY I’M GOING TO WRITE A POEM” (every writer feels this one in their bones), or everything from the pen of Tusiata Avia, or get to read the work of up-and-coming poets like 2024’s Robert Lord Writers CottageYoung Writer In Residence Sherry Zhang’s “Beige Thoughts.”

Then I thought, “I can do something about that.” 

With arts funding shrinking in all directions and a government that’s demonstrated outright disdain for the mahi of our artists and writers, it’s more important than ever to raise our voices and speak our truth. 

The literary community in New Zealand has been so kind and wonderful to me. I wanted to give something back. Working poets have precious few paid opportunities and too few spaces to get their words in front of a wider audience, so I’m thrilled we’re able to keep The Friday Poem running throughout 2025. 

I hope all of the poets (in this country of poets) will join me in extending a massive fucking thank you for this beautiful and unexpected act of literary solidarity and heartfelt generosity. Thank you Steff! You are a legend. 

Submissions for the Friday Poem are still closed, as we work through the previously commissioned work, but will open again shortly!

The Friday Poem is brought to you by Nevermore Bookshop, home of kooky, spooky romance novels and special edition book boxes. Visit Nevermore Bookshop today.

Alex Casey reviews the first and possibly last ever musical biopic to star a CGI ape. 

Sometime over the fuzzy holiday break, I watched a Subway Take on Instagram which stuck with me. “Musician biopics should be illegal,” opined guest Charlene Kaye. “I’m so sick of the trope of the trauma porn-y Oscar bait-y biopic that depicts musicians as these tortured geniuses.” She argued that all musician biopics follow the same four beats: I’ve come from nothing, now I’m famous, now I’m destroyed by drugs, now I’m going to die on the toilet. 

Salient points for sure, but Kaye clearly hadn’t considered this: what if chimp instead? 

It’s a pretty weird question that absolutely nobody asked, but Better Man has answered all the same. Telling the story of Robbie Williams by way of simian simulacrum, the biopic shakes off the cliches of its predecessors by throwing a cat among the pigeons, aka a big old chimp in a denim vest among Take That. “I don’t see myself how others see me,” Williams says in voiceover over his chimp likeness. “To be honest, I’ve always been a little less… evolved.” 

This isn’t the first buzzy swing in a biopic – just last year Pharrell Williams rendered his life story via Lego in Piece by Piece, and Vera Drew took her journey of self-acceptance into Gotham in The People’s Joker. Hell, it looks like they’ve even roped in a meerkat with a moustache to play Bob Dylan. But there’s something especially effective about choosing a chimp – dangerous and violent one moment, vulnerable and “just like us” the next. 

Rendered by our own Wētā FX (likely why all the comments below the trailer are making the exact same Planet of the Apes joke), the fact you are watching a CGI chimp barely registers once Williams’ remarkable story starts to unfurl. I had definitely forgotten how absurd it was by the time I was sobbing into my sweet and salty popcorn as a young forlorn (chimp) Williams sang ‘Feel’ on the bleak streets of Stoke-on-Trent because his (human) father left him.

Also yes, surprise, Better Man is a jukebox musical. Directed by Matthew Gracey, best known for The Greatest Showman, the film’s musical numbers are spectacularly deployed, be it thousands of lads storming the streets of London to ‘Rock DJ’ when Take That get famous (a Christopher Nolan-style timeline rip not to be dwelled upon), or the soaring waltz to ‘She’s the One’ when (chimp) Williams first meets (human) love interest Nicole Appleton.

While Jonno Davies does a remarkable job as the Serkis to Williams’ Gollum, there are also some excellent human performances. Raechelle Banno as All Saints star Appleton probably deserves her own movie given the quiet hell she went through (record company forcing her to have an abortion, chimp smashing up her crockery), and Taskmaster favourite Steve Pemberton casts a perfectly tragic figure as Robbie’s poor old washed-up showman father.

(To be honest, about the only humans in the movie that jarred for me was the poor chaps roped into play the most costumey versions of Gallaghers ever committed to the silver screen. Liam’s wig looked closer to Brett McKenzie’s hairmet than actual human hair.)

But I must return once more to the deeply affecting chimp, whose surreal presence allows the film to enter vivid, devastating and terrifying sequences that simply wouldn’t work if the film had taken the usual route (Barry Keoghan in temporary tats). Instead, depression looks like hundreds of past selves threatening to slit your throat, fame looks like being drowned by ghoulish sirens, and confronting your demons looks exactly like a Game of Thrones battle.

Just like Williams’ mawkish music, Better Man wears its chimp heart on its chimp sleeve, and not everyone will be a fan. But this chimp behind a keyboard loved it and cried more times than they are willing to admit in a public forum. It is audacious and weird, sinking its teeth deep into mental illness, ambition, loss and addiction, while also delivering some of the most memorable pop hits of the early 2000s, while also giving… Cocaine Chimp.

I’m just sad the film ends before Williams gets really into aliens, but maybe they’re saving that for the sequel. 

Better Man is in cinemas now.