On National Poetry Day 2017, please join us in celebrating the launch of Selina Tusitala Marsh’s new poetry collection, Tightrope.
Cat Ruka in collaboration with COVEN will activate ‘Tightrope’ – koha appreciated for these talented dancers!
Maori and Pasifika books sold on the night to celebrate Reading Brown! Teachers in particular are most welcome!
4.30 pm, Friday 25 August 2017
Fale Pasifika
University of Auckland
Auckland, 1010
From Poets to the People:
In July, Airini Beautrais and Maria McMillan complemented each other beautifully with their fabulous readings. Hightide was the last gig of their North Island tour promoting their new books, Flow: Whanganui River Poems (Airini) and The Ski Flier (Maria). Despite some sun dazzle during Open Mic we were gifted a stunning Kapiti sunset as a backdrop to their fine poetry.
Sunday August 27 we welcome Bob Orr as our guest. Bob has published seven books of poetry, most recently Odysseus in Woolloomooloo (Steele Roberts), and his work appears in numerous anthologies. Born in the Waikato, Bob has spent most of his adult life in Auckland where he works as a boatman on the Waitemata Harbour and the Hauraki Gulf. In 2016 he was the recipient of the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for Poetry, a prize given biennially in recognition of a distinguished contribution to New Zealand poetry. He is currently Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato.
Open Mic
This month, to celebrate National Poetry Day (August 25), we’re opening Open Mic to people reading a favourite poem by another poet. We’ll be giving priority to readers who don’t usually perform at Open Mic, those keen and supportive listeners who play a big part in the pleasure of our event. Of course you’re welcome to read your own poem if you prefer.
Here are the rules:
· One poem, no longer than 30 lines, no exceptions
· Maximum of 17 readers
· Cut-off time 4pm for getting your name on the board
So come and celebrate winter’s end with some favourite poems, and one of New Zealand’s most distinguished poets:
Sunday, 27 August, 4–6pm, Hightide Café, 43 Marine Parade, Paraparaumu Beach, $5 entry.
P2P dates for your diary
September 24: guest poet Tim Jones
October 29: guest poet Chris Tse
November 26: guest poet Mary Cresswell
We look forward to seeing you all there.
Bill Manhire Photo: supplied
‘Friday, August 25th is the 20th National Poetry Day – and there are plenty of opportunities for people of all ages to hear, read, write and collaborate on poetry of all styles around the country.
Making our mixtape today is Bill Manhire, one of our best known and acclaimed poets, and one of the most influential – he’s taught hundreds of successful fiction writers, playwrights and poets over the years he was at Victoria University.’
I love the new Christchurch poems that punctuated the interview. They are from the gorgeous book, In the Mirror and Dancing, that the National Library produced to mark the end of Karl’s Laureateship.
Listen here.
We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the 2017 WriteNow poetry competition. This annual competition for Dunedin secondary school students was judged this year by Lynley Edmeades. First place in the senior section went to Molly Crighton (Year 12, Columba College), for her poem “Headlights”, and the winner in the junior section is Mia Parsons (Year 9, Otago Girls High School), for “Morning”. Full results, winning poems, judge’s report and prizegiving details are here: http://writenow.nz/
From Lynley Edmeades’ judges report:
I was really intrigued to read what teenagers are writing about today. Whichever direction the poems took, I found myself being invited into the minds of these young people and was often impressed with the treatment of the subject matter. I don’t know what it is like being a teenager today, but I do know that the modern world is, for many of us, a difficult place to understand at the best of times. Some of these poems remind me that poetry offers us navigational skills for the complexities of life. That these young minds are turning to poetry in times like these gives me solace and optimism: solace that they are looking to the written word as a medium of expression, and optimism for a future that has the humanities at its core.
Headlights
We travel parallel to a queue of cars –
That sting-bright shine of a string of pearls
Around anonymity’s urban neck.
Waiting tastes like suet
And rush hour a fatty feast
For clogged one-ways
And no-exits like the fence at a football game.
In between each bracket of streetlight the stars open and close
As though they are some bioluminescent tropical flower
Releasing headlight spores
To scatter white hot and sting-bright
On the bone-stark road below.
Molly Crighton: First place, senior section, 2017 WriteNow poetry competition
The WriteNow prize ceremony will be held on Friday 25 August as part of the National Poetry Day public event:
When: 25 August 2017, 5:30pm-8:00pm
Where: Dunningham Suite, Dunedin City Library
Price: Tickets $5 (bookable in person, at your local library)
Special thanks to WriteNow sponsors: University Book Shop; University of Otago Department of English and Linguistics; Otago University Press.
On National Poetry Day (August 25th) young Dunedin poets will perform their original work to a live audience.
Rising Stars II runs alongside the ‘Profile of 20 Young Poets’ radio series and podcast airing on Otago Access Radio, where young Dunedin artists talk about their writing and inspiration.
You can hear full episodes from this series here
Join us on the ground floor of the Dunedin Public Library to celebrate these young Dunedin poets!
25th August 2017 – 4:30pm
Gig City Cube, Ground Floor, Dunedin Public Library
As you can imagine this article hits home sharply, especially as I am writing a book on New Zealand women’s poetry. My book aims to open multiple pathways into what was, at one point, viewed as a foreign country: women’s poems.
We have come so far, especially in view of Pākehā women – unbearably less so if you are not white-skinned – but I still find examples of gender bias and blindness, alongside the dynamic, fertile and eclectic visibility of women writing, critiquing, publishing, winning, speaking out, showcasing, connecting.
Thanks Vaughan, Sarah Jane Barnett and Pantograph Punch for provoking us to think and rethink.
Read the piece here.
A taste:
In a searing and articulate essay, Vaughan Rapatahana takes Aotearoa New Zealand literature to task for locker room schoolgirl-grooming, women-baiting, and sexism that arises from a violent and suppressed masculinity.
You, being a modern poet
Must write real he-man stuff
So you will take slabs of prose
And cuts it into chunks like this;
There need be no rhyme nor reason in it …
No top-notch New Zealand poet any longer
Writes ballads like Jessie Mackay
Or bird-songs like Eileen Duggan
Or lyricisms like Helena Henderson
Or tree-poems like Nellie Macleod …
And anyway they‘re only women
(‘Without Malice’ by Alien in O’Leary 179-180).
Yes, I have read all the books, all the pertinent material pertaining. New Zealand has always been a sexist society, a patriarchal panoply of male power, controlling and suppressing female prowess – as so well exemplified in its literary structures. Sexism in literature is a reflection of a wider societal sexism whereby a deliberately constructed literary masculinity ruled up until the 1970s or at least the 80s. Historian Jock Phillips pronounced in 1987 that ‘the traditional male stereotype is now weakening in New Zealand’ (289), while academic Kai Jensen pronounced, ‘…the mid 1960s…was the end of a thirty-year sequence of growth, dominance and decline in what we may call “high masculinism”’ (107). While the latter admitted to some continued sexism in New Zealand Letters from male writers after this time, it was now, ‘a tenuous residual presence’ (157).
This is the one event I am not going to miss on NZ Poetry Day!
From Selina:
‘Talofa Maori and Pasifika Writers – I’m using the launch to get teachers and writers kanohi-ki-te-kanohi, at least with your books! If you’re coming, please email Carole at the Women’s Bookshop to make sure they have your book in stock to sell on the night! books@womensbookshop.co.nz. If you’re not coming, but would like your book available on the night, please still email them! Let’s get Reading Brown on National Poetry Day!’
Launch details of Selina’s Tightrope
August 25th: 4.30 to 6 pm
Venue: Fale Pasifika
Location: Fale Pasifika, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1010
NZ Poetry Shelf 