Debut poet Haro Lee’s Watching Television in a Love Motel takes on self, family, and past though the cultural lens of TV. Helen Rickerby’s genre-bending poetic memoir, My Bourgeois Apocalypse, is made with fragments from journals of the ‘weird years’, including the pandemic, while Airini Beautrais’s return to poetry finds her crafting a portrait of an uneasy time in The Salt Quilt, both sharp-witted and self-aware.

These three innovative poets are joined by Chris Tse for a conversation about bending poetic form to make past and future come alive.

Writers on Mondays is presented by the International Institute of Modern Letters and The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The 2026 series will run from 12.15—1.15 pm each Monday from 6 July to 28 September at Te Papa and Circa Theatre, with two special evening sessions at Meow. Admission is free and all are welcome. The series is supported by the Letteri family.

The full programme can be viewed here https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/moder…/about/events/writers-mondays

Come celebrate Aotearoa writers with us at Writers on Mondays – we look forward to seeing you there.