Category Archives: NZ poetry event
National Poetry Day 2018: We are the persistance
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Christchurch Feminist Poets presents an evening of spoken word poetry that will move you, inspire you and make you think about society today and the ongoing struggle for equality. Bringing together a stellar group of Christchurch’s most powerful and thought provoking poets, this event is a unique opportunity to hear a cross section of voices, all driven to make the world a better place. Featuring Tusiata Avia, Ray Shipley, Alice Anderson, Rebecca Nash and Isla Martin, this event will immerse the audience in poetry that is as diverse as it is uplifting.
Poetry Day event: where the wild words are
Poetry Day: Best NZ Poems event at Te Papa
Once again Wellington pulls out the stops on Poetry Day – this for a tasty start!
A feast of poetry at Going West
Serie Barford: The Curnow Reader
Going West always dedicates a significant part of its programme to poetry and this year is no exception.
‘New Zealand’s leading authors, poets, playwrights and musicians offer audiences a fortnight of fresh ideas, future-thinking, language and laughter at the 23rd Going West Writers Festival 1-16 September.’ Good location & food!
8 September Going West Poetry Slam. Glen Eden Playhouse
14-16 September Going West Writers Festival weekend. Titirangi War Memorial Hall
Full programme here
Word Up! is an exciting performance competition which gives 13–21 year-olds the opportunity to present their original work
If you think poetry is all about fields of daffodils and iambic pentameters, think again. Here, at the Going West Poetry Slam, poets lay it on the line to see who’s got the chops to rise to the top.
The weekend poetry events (14th -16th September):
Poet Serie Barford is the Opening Night’s Curnow Reader
Does a city a writer make? Three visiting Wellington poets – Chris Tse, Helen Heath and Anna Jackson – explore what it’s like to live, work and write in the windy city with Paula Green.
Going West is honoured to partner with Auckland University Press to host the launch of a new collection of poetry from C.K. Stead, That Derrida Whom I Derided Died: Poems 2013-2017.
As we incorporate artificial intelligence, automation and robotics into our lives and even our bodies, we continue to wrestle with what it all means for us as humans. Helen Heath and Dr Jo Cribb are joined by Vincent Heeringa to discuss these issues.
Kerrin P Sharpe and Erik Kennedy launch poetry books
Victoria University Press warmly invites you to this double launch for
There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime
by Erik Kennedy
&
Louder
by Kerrin P. Sharpe
5.30pm-7.00pm on Wednesday 29 August
at Scorpio Books, 120 Hereford St, Christchurch central.
All welcome.
Refreshments will be served.
The Given Words Poetry Day Competition
‘The Spanish Connection’ for National Poetry Day
What would you write if I gave you five words? The Given Words poetry competition returns for the third year running with a new challenge for New Zealand’s Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day 2018.
This year the New Zealand poet Charles Olsen, who was recently awarded the III Poetry Award SxS Antonio Machado in Spain, has chosen five words from his translation of one of Spanish poet Antonio Machado’s poems, The Hospice. To participate you have to write a poem including all five words and send it in before midnight on 24 August, National Poetry Day.
The Given Words competition is free to enter and is open to all New Zealand citizens. Prizes will be awarded for the Best Poem and Best Poem by Under-16s. The winner of Best Poem will receive a copy of the New Zealand Poetry Yearbook 2018, courtesy of Massey University Press and the winner of the Under-16 category will receive a copy of Slice of Heaven by Des O’Leary (due out in September) courtesy of Mākaro Press. The winning poems will also be translated into Spanish.
You will find the five words and full details of how to participate here where you can also read entries from previous editions. For teachers there is a creative lesson plan available to inspire pupils.
Charles Olsen, who will also judge the entries, says: ‘It is fun to see how the same five words can inspire such a diverse range of poems. Take the words for a walk, mull them over and see what they say to you. I look forward to reading all the entries!’
Further Info:
NZ Given Words blog
Facebook events
NZ Poetry Day
All Tomorrow’s Poets 2018
NEW VOICES – Emerging Poets Competition 2018
New Judge. Our judges have previously come from the publishing world, or been established poets. This year Elizabeth Morton will be judge and we are delighted to have someone at the helm who has experience of what it means to win the competition and the value of it to the career of emerging authors.
Elizabeth won first prize at NEW VOICES 2013. She has been published in both locally and internationally and had her work included in the Best Small Fictions 2016 anthology published by Queen’s Ferry Press. 2015 she was shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Award and has twice come 2nd place in the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition (2015, 2016).
The competition is open only to writers considered ‘emerging’ i.e. have not published one or more books (fiction, poetry, nonfiction) with a New Zealand or overseas publisher, and is a current or former undergraduate (BA, Hons, BSc, BComm etc) or Masters student. Initially entries were invited from Auckland University then, AUT in 2013 and we are delighted to now have extended the entry to MIT and Massey’s Albany campus students and in 2018 to students of Blue Haven Writer’s Workshop.
Entries close on 1st August 2018.
The winners will be announced at the Divine Muses Evening of Poetry held on National Poetry Day, 24th August 2018.
Unity Books is again generously donating the prizes – $200 worth of book tokens for the winner and $100 worth book tokens for the runner up.
The full details are available on the attached entry form or via this link from which you can also read about previous winners.
The inaugural Blackball Readers and Writers Festival
Exciting! full details here
The inaugural Blackball Readers and Writers Festival, to be held at Labour Weekend, will bring established writers to the Coast to read from their work and to have conversations before the audience of Coasters and those from afar. The festival will be modelled on the underground coal mine and will therefore seek work ‘from the underground’ which can be interpreted in many different ways e.g. that which has been forgotten, or that which has become for a time, marginal, or that which has deep roots in the earth or the past.
The festival is organised by the Bathhouse Co-operative, a subsidiary of Te Puawai Co-operative Society, a co-op set up to incubate projects on the Coast (http://www.tepuawai.co.nz). The members of the co-op are: Catherine Woollett who runs the Shades of Jade shop in Greymouth; Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, London born but Blackball bred and one of NZ’s major poets; and Paul Maunder, a playwright, theatre director, filmmaker and author who lives in Blackball. Support comes from Creative Communities and the Department of Internal Affairs. The Festival could lead to the creation of a boutique publishing house on the Coast. As well, with the establishing of the Paparoa Great Walk, the festival could become part of a wider package.
The guests:
- Jean Devanny
- Carol Dawber
- Kathleen Gallagher
- Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
- Tusiata Avia
- Neil Silverwood
- Paddy Richardson
NZ Poetry Shelf 