Doc Drumheller is one of the poets featured in Te Purere/The Exodus: The Anthology of Expatriate New Zealand Poets, Edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and John Gallas, Cold Hub Press, 2025, which will have it’s Sydney launch on Saturday, 6 Dec from 3pm – 5pm at the Stanley Street Gallery, 1/52-54 Stanley St, Darlinghurst NSW 2010. Tickets are $15 and are available from https://events.humanitix.com/sydney-launch-te-purere-the-exodus

---

Hotel Theresa

I have strolled down the brownstones of Harlem

with a heart full of salt peanuts and jazz.

Looking for soul food and a place to eat

as I try to find the Hotel Theresa.

Right across the road from the Apollo

made famous for a walk on the wild side.

Where Louis Armstrong blew his golden horn

but was refused entry to hear his friends.

Where Castro stayed to be with the people

down on one hundred and twenty fifth street.

Where elderly ladies wear their Sunday best

dancing in the aisles of the Baptist Church.

In the place where Malcolm X was transformed

from a two-bit hustler into a saint.

**

Via Ferlinghetti

I dreamed that I met you down the back streets

on the corner of Jack Kerouac Alley.

You said to me, “Poetry is the shadow

cast by our streetlight imaginations.”

Years later, I saw you in San Francisco

sipping coffee at the Caffe Trieste.

Located in the birthplace of the Beats

between the Red Light District and Chinatown.

In the upstairs room at City Lights Bookstore

I overheard you asking your colleagues:

If the Red Sox could win the World Series,

while I flicked through Pictures of the Gone World.

Then you left your office and gave me a wink

in the year that Boston broke Babe Ruth’s curse.

---

Doc Drumheller has worked in award winning groups for theatre and music and has published 11 collections of poetry. His poems are translated into more than 20 languages. He is the editor and publisher of the New Zealand literary journal Catalyst, and is the editor in chief of the World Congress of Poets literary journal Fuego. In 2024 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree, Doctor of Literature (D. Litt.), from the World Academy of Arts and Culture (UNESCO), for his contributions to literature through poetry. His latest collection is: Hotel Theresa, 70 poems from 2011-2024, Cold Hub Press, 2024.