One of my favourite festivals as both attendee and participant has a great 2026 programme under its new director, Jordan Hamel.
This year’s festival has some terrific poetry events along with a feast of fiction and nonfiction.
Go here for programme details.
Would love to be in the audience for this one for a start:
And then again would so love to be in the audience for these . . . and do Claire Mabey’s nature trail!
Terrier, Worrier A Poem in Five Parts, Anna Jackson
Auckland University Press, 2025
“Anna Jackson’s glorious new collection, Terrier, Worrier A Poem in Five Parts, gets sunlight slipping through the loops of my thinking, reading, dreaming. The collection is offered as a seasonal loop as we move through summer, autumn, winter, spring, summer, and in this temporal movement, the loop regenerates, absorbing and delivering rhythms of living . . . mind and body . . . rhythms of writing . . . nouns, verbs, conjunctions . . . rhythms of thinking . . . and little by little . . . the compounding ideas, the feelings. It’s poetry as looptrack: overloop, underloop, throughloop.”
Paula Green, Poetry Shelf
To celebrate placement on The Ockham NZ Book Awards poetry shortlist, I invited the four poets to choose some favourite things. First up Anna Jackson.
Anna Jackson chooses favourites
Four photos
(a favourite object, place, book cover, album)
my mix-tape cd collection is a favourite thing!
my favourite place would be, in bed, with the cat
Thee sets of three
3 Words? I don’t really have favourite words. I could say Lorna, Lucy and Peggy, the names of my three hens.
3 things that matter to me in poetry: I like surprise, a twist that goes somewhere unexpected but not random. I like repetition, the way it builds memory into a poem. And voice, I love it when I hear emotion in the way something is said.
3 poets who have inspired me: Catullus, obviously, but not counting Catullus, Frank O’Hara, Wislawa Symborska, Helen Rickerby.
One question
Why does Terrier, Worrier matter to me?
Terrier, Worrier is made up of thoughts I was thinking during the Covid lockdowns and at the time I felt some urgency to write them down and not forget them, which was a very temporary impulse. I don’t write down thoughts any more. But then I had what felt like raw material, that I wanted to work with the way you might want to work with clay or with fabric samples you’d collected. I felt like using them up. And I like what I made out of them.
An extract from Terrier, Worrier
I remember sitting in the car after work, not wanting to turn on the windshield wipers because I felt like I needed the rain on the windshield to do the work of crying for me.
I thought, every body is a memory palace.
I dreamed I was in conversation with a photographer who had been photographing a series of traumatic scenes, a series of photographs both terrible and beautiful. But, before he could exhibit them, before he could even print them, he exposed all the film, and all the images were lost. Now, he wondered, did he have to go through everything again, re-enact the scenes, in order to recreate the images?
I thought, I don’t know why I translate Catullus over and over again, but it happens and I feel it, I feel like I am split in two.
I thought, when I am Catullus, writing as Sappho, as Ariadne, as Attis, as Procne, am I bird or birdsong? The journey, or the backwards glance?
I sat in the car with my daughter, tears running down our faces. Then I laughed, and turned the windscreen wipers off.
Anna Jackson
from Terrrier, Worrier
Anna Jackson is the author of seven collections of poetry as well as Diary Poetics: Form and Style in Writers’ Diaries 1915–1962 (Routledge, 2010) and Actions & Travels: How Poetry Works (Auckland University Press, 2022). She lives in Island Bay, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and is professor in English literature at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington.
Anna Jackson’s website
Auckland University Press page
Poetry Shelf review
Anna and Paula in conversation on Poetry Shelf
Anna chooses an extract from Terrier, Worrier (longlist feature)
Submissions close 14th April
Details here
Katherine Mansfield House & Garden
We had such a good time last year, we’re doing it again! Join us at Poetry in the Garden on Sunday 22 March at 2pm for readings by Anna Jackson, Leah Dodd, Gregory Kan, Freya Turnbull, James Brown, Helen Rickerby and Hinemoana Baker.
We’re crossing everything for fine weather like last year which saw people arrive with parasols, hats, picnics and drinks!
New Days for Old: prose poems, James Brown
Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2026
To celebrate the publication of his new poetry book, New Days for Old, James Brown talks poetry and reads from the collection.
‘How does James Brown do it? Every page in this book is my favourite.’
Bill Manhire
“First up, I love the feel, shape and look of James Brown’s new poetry collection. Secondly, I love the title: New Days for Old. Thirdly, I love the choice of genre: a sequence of prose poems. And finally I love the opening quotation: ‘Much of the greatest art, I find, seeks to remind us of the obvious.’ (Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World: A Museum Guide’s Adventures in Life, Loss and Art).
I tip the quotation on its heels, borrow the word beauty, and get caught in a thinking whirlpool of beauty and wonder, the obvious and the ordinary. I am sidetrailed into musing on the small in the large as much as the large in the small. Nothing like a glorious poetry eddy to get your senses tingling.”
Paula Green (from forthcoming review)
James reads from New Days for Old
James Brown describes himself as ‘a Sunday poet who fell in with the wrong crowd’. His poetry collections are New Days for Old (2026), Slim Volume (2024), The Tip Shop (2022), Selected Poems (2020), Floods Another Chamber (2017), Warm Auditorium (2012), The Year of the Bicycle (2006), which was a finalist in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2007, Favourite Monsters (2002), Lemon (1999), and Go Round Power Please (1996), which won the Best First Book Award for Poetry.
James has been the recipient of several writing fellowships and residencies, including the 1994 Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary (1994) and a share of the 2000 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, the Canterbury University Writer in Residence (2001). He edited The Nature of Things: Poems from the New Zealand Landscape (Craig Potton, 2005), the literary magazine Sport from 1993 to 2000, and Best New Zealand Poems 2008. In 2002, as Dr Ernest M. Bluespire, he published the useful booklet Instructions for Poetry Readings (Braunias University Press). In 2018, James created what he calls ‘a transcribed poem’ out of Herbert Morrison’s famous radio commentary of the Hindenburg disaster: ‘Hindenburg: A transcribed poem’, and also produced the small booklet Songs of the Humpback Whale. In 2019, Alan Gregg, formerly of the band the Mutton Birds, turned two of James’s poems (‘Shrinking Violet’ and ‘Peculiar Julia’) into songs.
James works as an editor and teaches the Poetry Workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
Te Herenga Waka University page
Here are five poetry events on offer at AWF 2026 along with The Ockham Book Awards event where the poetry winner will be announced.
Check full programme here
Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry: Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupa‘itea, Faleālupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu); Sophie van Waardenberg; Erik Kennedy; Anna Jackson
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2026 Honoured Writer Bill Manhire
A short programme blurb can’t do justice to Bill Manhire’s immense contribution to the country’s literary landscape.
He was Aotearoa New Zealand’s inaugural poet laureate, has won the Ockham NZ Book Award for Poetry five times, and founded and directed the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington, from which countless of the nation’s finest writers have emerged.
We are thrilled to be recognising Manhire as the Festival’s 2026 Honoured Writer, and have him join a list of luminaries including Witi Ihimaera, CK Stead, Patricia Grace, Joy Cowley, Fiona Kidman, Anne Salmond and Gavin Bishop.
While Manhire is unable to attend, Fergus Barrowman will lead a wide-ranging session about Bill’s extraordinary life in letters and his major new collection, Lyrical Ballads.
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Masterclass
Emma Neale is one of our most celebrated poets. She was awarded the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a Distinguished Contribution to New Zealand Poetry in 2020 and her sixth collection Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2025 Ockham NZ Book Awards.
In this practical and engaging workshop, Neale will help you find your way into a poem – and how to stay on course once you’ve begun.
Through guided writing exercises, you’ll generate first drafts, before turning to the art of self-editing, learning about common pitfalls that Neale encounters as an editor.
You’ll gain insights into how to craft poems that truly lift – and truly land.
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Dreaming for the Ocean in Us: Tangata Moana Writers and Desire
A bold, intimate conversation exploring Pacific writing beyond expectation and what writers are reaching for when they choose desire as a compass. Tusiata Avia, Amber Esau, and Danielle Kionasina Dilys Thomson with Ruby Macomber.
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Hot Takes, Sharp Lines: A Spoken Word Round Table
Poetry, mischief and unforgettable storytelling featuring poet baddies Dominic Hoey, Mr Meaty Boy (Ngāti Porou, Ngāpuhi), Liam Jacobson (Kāi Tahu), Amber Esau (Ngāpuhi, Manase) and Michael Pedersen.
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Love Won, Love Lost, Love Burned Up in Flames
Hearts soaring, hearts broken and everything in between. Seven writers tell intimate, passionate, uplifting, devastating stories of love. Including Matariki Bennett and Michael Bennett.
Big Night In with the NZ Poet Laureate is our chance to celebrate the new Laureate, hear some of Aotearoa’s strongest poetic voices and enjoy a relaxed, powerful night of live performance here in Heretaunga Hastings.
Join us for a wonderful evening of words with New Zealand Poet Laureate Robert Sullivan and his guests Amber Esau, Kiri Piahana-Wong and Ariana Tikao.
An evening not to be missed!
We’re thrilled to welcome 2026 Ockham finalist and local poet Nafanua Purcell Kersel as MC for the evening.
Tickets are a mere $10 (plus fees) from Eventfinda or Hastings i-site
19/3 BLUES AND POETRY with Ron Riddell and friends – info here
20/3 ¡ HAIKU ! – a workshop in English and Spanish with Ron Riddell and Saray Torres de Riddell – info here
21/3 HUMANKIND – a gathering of several poets and activists, including Adham Harash, a Palestinian–New Zealander activist from the Galilee in Palestine.
Marilyn Garson and Rick Sahar will speak on Palestine. Poet-peace activist Ron Riddell will speak and read, and Saray Torres de Riddell too.
HUMANKIND will also feature Adrienne Jansen of Landing Press with their latest book: POTLUCK – Poems about Food – we’ll have contributor Robin Peace and others.
Info here
I take the two pins and stick them in my eyes and yet I can still see you and I hid in the cave unable to eat until I became dust and only a voice and I can’t keep compromising myself like this and I want to be reborn from the foam of the Moana roughing the shore and from the blood of my beheaded mother and I wanted you to soften the ground from the heights that I fall from but instead my body became an island and in the middle is a mountain where you push a rock up until it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and you repeat ia rā ia rā.
Hana Pera Aoake
from Act 3 in Some helpful models of grief
Compound Press, 2025
I want to share a poem from one of my favourite writers and encourage you to read their book. The poem itself is the second page of Act 3 in Some helpful models of grief by Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Tainui/Waikato) Artist, poet, writer, and curator; author of A bathful of kawakawa and hot water (Compound Press, 2020), Blame it on the rain (No More Poetry, 2025) and Some helpful models of grief (2025). Hana lives in Kawerau in the shadow of Pūtauaki maunga, and is a PhD candidate at Auckland University of Technology.
I picked this book up in a week when I was finding the world quite a lot, as it is at the moment. I have loved Hana’s work for a while. Their first book was one I enjoyed and have returned to regularly so I had purchased this one and set it aside waiting for the moment I would need it. Many of the things I like about Hana’s work are some of the things I’m often trying to do in my own work, perhaps best described as getting a lot of really big ideas into small spaces. I think we’re all connected as writers and although Hana and I are different in many ways there are also many ways we’re connected and I like seeing that in our poems and books.
In the poem I’m sharing the central piece of it reset my brain on reading, the mesmerising rhythm of the flow of the poem. I have read it out loud to multiple people because it is such a fish hook in my thumb, in a soothing way, as some pains are. The rhythm continues all the way to a beautiful subversion of itself and the release of the ending. I think Hana’s books don’t feel like individual poems to me so it’s not entirely fair to drag this one poem out and separate it from its context. Their work is work I always read start to finish first because there is a shape to it in its context. Here, in isolation, you are missing many words and ideas that lead into this poem. So, I encourage you to head to your local bookseller and get a copy or go straight to Compound Press and order it. This book comforted me. It reminded me I’m not alone in this messy work of being humans together. And perhaps even more so, being humans together in this messy work of art. A very big thank you to Hana for this poem, this book and their continued mahi and existence.
Emma Barnes
Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Waikato/Tainui) is an artist, writer, educator and curator based in Aotearoa. Hana is a current PhD candidate at Auckland University of Technology where their research explores industrial poisoning, sovereignty, place making and the role of art and cultural production in Māori social and political movements. Hana has published three books: A bathful of kawakawa and hot water (Compound Press, 2020), Blame it on the rain (no more poetry, 2025) and Some helpful modes of grief (Compound Press, 2025). In 2027 A bathful of kawakawa and hot water will be republished with Broken sleep books in the UK. Compound Press page
Emma Barnes (Pākehā, they/them) studied at the University of Canterbury and lives in Aro Valley, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington. Their poetry has been published in journals including Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau, Cordite and Best New Zealand Poems (2008, 2010, 2021). They performed in Show Ponies in 2022 and 2023. They are the author of the poetry collection I Am in Bed with You (AUP, 2021) and co-editor with Chris Tse of Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (AUP, 2021). They work in tech and spend a lot of time picking up heavy things and putting them back down again.
What makes a poem a narrative poem — whether long or short? In this masterclass, Anne Kennedy explores how character, story, and voice can shape narratives within poetry. Through close reading and discussion of selected poems, participants will see how narrative poems are built, before experimenting with guided writing prompts to develop narrative in their own work.
Event details
Sunday 22 March
1:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Shadbolt House, 8 Arapito Road, Titirangi
$30 / $25 (students, seniors, unwaged)
Find out more at goingwestfest.co.nz
Anne Kennedy is a Tāmaki Makaurau poet, fiction writer and teacher. Recent books are The Sea Walks into a Wall and The Ice Shelf and, as editor, Remember Me: Poems to Learn by Heart from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the current editor of AUP’s New Poets series. Awards include the Montana Book Award for Poetry and the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry.
NZ Poetry Shelf 