
Tuesday 13 September, 1-2pm
WT1501, City Campus
The Visiting Writers Programme connects you to experienced authors and publishers, giving you the opportunity to engage in discussions with them about the production of their work. The next session in the series features acclaimed poet, Helen Rickerby.
Helen Rickerby has published four collections of poetry, most recently Cinema (Mākaro, 2014), which took its inspiration from films and film-making. Previous collections include Heading North (Kilmog Press, 2010) a poem sequence that road-trips from Wellington to Cape Rēinga; My Iron Spine (Headworx, 2008), which features biographical poems about women from history; and Abstract Internal Furniture (HeadworX, 2001), in which the mythic and the everyday meet. She’s currently working on her next collection (working title: How to Live), in which she attempts to grapple with the big philosophical issues, but does not promise to answer them.
Helen is the managing editor of Seraph Press, a boutique poetry publisher she founded in 2004, which has to date published 16 books, with more on the way. She was one of the founders of JAAM literary magazine in 1995, and has been co-managing editor since 2005. She has been involved in organising many literary events, including Truth or Beauty, a conference about biographical poetry (2014), and the inaugural Ruapehu Writers Festival, held in Ohākune in March 2016.
She lives in Wellington’s Aro Valley in a cliff-top tower and works mainly as a web editor.