Friday, 7 December 2018

Poetry NZ Yearbook Student Poetry Competition (2018)




Inaugural Poetry New Zealand Yearbook
student poetry competition:

Winners 2018 - announced on Poetry Day, 24th August 2018


We are thrilled to announce the winners of the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook Student Poetry Competition.

Year 11 category winners:

1st: ‘275 Love Letters to Southside’ by Aigagalefili Fepulea‘i-Tapua‘i, Aorere College
2nd: ‘Madras’ by E Wen WongBurnside High School
3rd: ‘An Acrostic Poem About Money’ by Leila Barber, Samuel Marsden Collegiate School
4th: ‘Just Passing Through’ by Sophie Newton, Glendowie College

Year 12 category winners:

1st: ‘Earth is a Star to Someone’ by Kathryn Briggs, Baradene College of the Sacred Heart
2nd: ‘a thank you letter to my therapist’ by Fiona HoangAuckland International College
3rd: ‘Empty Boxes’ by Sophie Mance, Wellington High School
4th: ‘My Cotton Skin’ by Jessica Tibbs, Motueka High School

Year 13 category winners:

1st: ‘Snake’s Tongue’ by Amberleigh Rose, Kuranui College
2nd: ‘To the boy who will eventually fall in love with me’ by Katriana TaufaleleMcAuley High School
3rd: ‘Untitled’ by Phillip Toriente, Dilworth School
4th: ‘Unfinished Poems’ by Mele Toleafoa, McAuley High School

To read all the winning entries, click here.

To listen to the judge's remarks on the winning entries, click here.

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone who entered!

The first-prize winners in each category will be included on pp.214-19 of the upcoming edition of Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, published in March 2019.


For further comments and details, please consult the following online links and articles:

  1. Anna Bowbyes, Poetry New Zealand Student Poetry Competition Winners. Massey University Press (24/8/18):

    We are thrilled to announce the winners of the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook Student Poetry Competition, judged by Jack Ross.

    To read all the winning entries, click here.

    Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone who entered!

    The first-prize winners in each category will be published in next year’s edition of Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, publishing in March 2019.”



  2. Aorere College Facebook Page (13/9/18):

    A huge congratulations to Fili Fepulea'i-Tapua'i who has won the Year 11 category of the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook Competition.

    Described as “hard-hitting,... from the heart" by competition Judge Jack Ross, Fili's winning poem- "275 Love Letters to Southside" will be published in the 2019 edition of the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook. What an awesome achievement!.



  3. Amberleigh's winning way with words. Kuranui College Online Newsletter (19/9/18):

    Kuranui Deputy Head Girl, Amberleigh Rose, has won first place in the high school section of the Massey University Press Poetry Yearbook competition, designed to foster a love of words.

    Amberleigh’s poem entitled Snake’s Tongue is an unconventional poem about love, causing one of the judges to comment in their feedback that they liked it because “It was a bit different and showed wisdom beyond her years”.

    “It’s what I call my weirdo poem,” explained Amberleigh. “It’s not straightforward and it twists and flicks, keeping you guessing.”

    The poem is going to be in next year’s edition of the yearbook and someday she would like to write a book of poems herself. For Amberleigh, poetry is a passion, especially slam poetry. “I love the way the words feel and their sound, the meaning behind how you speak and what message you’re trying to send.”

    Growth, another one of Amberleigh’s poems, was chosen to be a part of Christine Daniell’s ‘Poems Around Town’. The street art project focuses on fostering a love of words. A panel chose poems from Wairarapa to hang up around the community and Amberleigh’s poem has pride of place on the side of the Trust Lands Trust building in Masterton.

    Writing comes naturally to Amberleigh, but it wasn’t until she experienced poetry that her creative side really took off. “It was like a key had turned inside me and there was no going back.”

    Kuranui’s Head of English, Kathryn Holmes, said her work ethic and natural ability has meant that she has excelled at the college. “However, it is her heart that makes her very special; this adds depth to her poetry which means her message can resonate with the reader.”

    Apart from writing poetry, Amberleigh also excels in the sciences and her love of environment and communities has seen her enrol in Canterbury University, where she will study Natural Resource Engineering. “I am interested in making our world a cleaner, better place.”





  4. Baradene College of the Sacred Heart Business Page (1/11/18):

    Congratulations to Year 12 student and creative writing club member Kathryn Briggs. Kathryn's poem “Forgetting” has been chosen for publication in the Young Writers Programme journal Signals 2018 for secondary schools and libraries in Auckland. Her poem "Earth is a star to someone" is also to be published in next year’s edition of Poetry New Zealand Yearbook:
    Published Poems
    Congratulations Kathryn Briggs
    2018 10 31 K Last Day Baradene

    Year 12 student, Kathryn Brigg's poem “Forgetting” has been chosen for publication in the Young Writers Programme journal Signals 2018 for secondary schools and libraries in Auckland. The Young Writers Programme is based at the Michael King Writers’ Centre, The National Library, Auckland and publishes Signals, a literary journal that showcases a selection of work students have produced during the year. These pieces may be poetry, prose, comic-art or journalistic writing.

    In Term 3, Kathryn's poem "Earth is a star to someone" received 1st place for the Year 12 category of the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook competition run by Massey University. This poem will be published in next year’s edition of Poetry New Zealand Yearbook.

    Click here to read 'Earth is a star to someone'.”






Sunday, 5 August 2018

Upcoming events: Massey University Poetry Day Reading [24/8/18]





Title: Massey University Reading for National Poetry Day!
Description: Come hear an hour of poetry from emerging, up and coming local poets.
Entry details: Free and open to the public
Time/Date: 12-1.30 p.m, Friday 24 August 2018
Location: AT2, Atrium Building, Massey University Albany Campus
Contact: Bryan Walpert (b.walpert@massey.ac.nz) or Jack Ross (j.r.ross@massey.ac.nz)
Further info: For further information, please contact Bryan or Jack.


Wednesday, 1 August 2018

Submissions closed for Poetry New Zealand 53



Poetry New Zealand on Fouras beach, côte Atlantique
[photographs: Michael Dean]


Yes, I'm afraid that time has come again: time to fold up your towels and come in out of the sun - submissions for Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018, issue no. 53, due out in early 2019, are now officially closed.



Fold up that towel!


I'll continue to add various commissioned reviews and other bits and pieces to the text, but any unsolicited work that's sent to me from now on will have to be sent back. You're welcome to start preparing your material for Yearbook 2020 [Issue 54], but it might be better to hold off on that until mid-2019. Once again, we'll be following the convention of accepting entries from Mayday until the end of July.

Some of you may have been feeling a bit uneasy about the lack of a reply to the work you've sent. It's not really practical to acknowledge each submission as it arrives. I do hope that only a very few of you will be kept waiting more than three months from the date of receipt, however.

So please do rest assured that we're working through them all, and that each of you will receive a reply in the very near future.




Tuesday, 10 April 2018

Paula Green's Review on NZ Poetry Shelf [10/4/18]




What I want from a poetry journal

More and more I witness clusters of poetry communities in New Zealand – families almost – that might be linked by geography, personal connections, associations with specific institutions or publishers. How often do we read reviews of, or poems by, people with whom we don’t share these links? Poetry families aren’t a bad thing, just the opposite, but I wonder whether the conversations that circulate across borders might grow less and less.

I want a poetry journal to offer diversity, whichever way you look, and we have been guilty of all manner of biases. This is slowly changing.

When I pick up a journal I am on alert for the poet that makes me hungry for more, that I want a whole book from.

I am also happy by a surprising little diversion, a poem that holds me for that extra reading. Ah, this is what a poem can do!


Editor Jack Ross has achieved degrees of diversity within the 2018 issue and I also see a poetry family evolving. How many of these poets have appeared in Landfall or Sport, for example? A number of the poets have a history of publication but few with the university presses.

This feels like a good thing. We need organic communities that are embracing different voices and resisting poetry hierarchies.

Poetry NZ Yearbook Annual offers a generous serving of poems (poets in alphabetical order so you get random juxtapositions), reviews and a featured poet (this time Alistair Paterson). It has stuck to this formula for decades and it works.

What I enjoyed about the latest issue is the list of poets I began to assemble that I want a book from. Some I have never heard of and some are old favourites.

Some poets I am keen to see a book from:



Our rented flat in Parnell
Those rooms of high ceilings and sash windows
Our second city
after Sydney
Robert Creeley trying to chat you up
at a Russell Haley party
when our marriage
was sweet

from Bob Orr’s ‘A Woman in Red Slacks’


Bob Orr’s heartbreak poem, with flair and economy, reminds me that we need a new book please.

There is ‘Distant Ophir’, a standout poem from David Eggleton that evokes time and place with characteristic detail. Yet the sumptuous rendering is slightly uncanny, ghostly almost, as past and present coincide in the imagined and the seen.  Gosh I love this poem.

The hard-edged portrait Johanna Emeney paints in ‘Favoured Exception’ demands a spot in book of its own.

I haven’t read anything by Fardowsa Mohamed but I want more. She is studying medicine at Otago and has written poetry since she was a child. Her poem’ Us’, dedicated to her sisters, catches the dislocation of moving to where trees are strange, : ‘This ground does not taste/ of the iron you once knew.’

Mark Young’s exquisite short poem, ‘Wittgenstein to Heidegger’, is a surprising loop between difficulty and easy. Again I hungered for another poem.

Alastair Clarke, another poet unfamiliar to me, shows the way poetry can catch the brightness of place (and travel) in ‘Wairarapa, Distance’. Landscape is never redundant in poetry –  like so many things that flit in and out of poem fashion. I would read a whole book of this.

Another unknown: Harold Coutt’s ‘there isn’t a manual on when you’re writing someone a love poem and they break up with you’ is as much about writing as it is breaking up and I love it. Yes, I want more!

Two poets that caught my attention at The Starling reading at the Wellington Writers Festival are here: Emma Shi and Essa Ranapiri. Their poems are as good on the page as they are in the ear. I have posted a poem from Essa on the blog.

I loved the audacity of Paula Harris filling in the gaps after seeing a photo of Michael Harlow in ‘The poet is bearded and wearing his watch around the wrong way’. Light footed, witty writing with sharp detail. More please!

I am a big fan of Jennifer Compton’s poetry and her ‘a rose, and then another’ is inventive, sound-exuberant play. I can’t wait for the next book.

I am also a fan of the linguistic agility of Lisa Samuels; ‘Let me be clear’ takes sheer delight in electric connections between words.

Finally, and on a sad note, there is Jill Chan’s poem, ‘Poetry’. I wrote about her on this blog to mark her untimely death. It is the perfect way to conclude this review. Poetry is everywhere – it is in all our poetry families.


Most poetry is unwritten,
denied and supposed.
Don’t go to write it.
Go where you’ve never been.
Go.
And it may come.
Behind you,
love rests.
And where is poetry?
What is it you seek?

Jill Chan, from ‘Poetry’
Poetry NZ Yearbook page







Paula Green: NZ Poetry Shelf (10/4/18)


Friday, 23 March 2018

Laine Moger's Review in Stuff [22/3/18]

Poetry alive and in progress: Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018 published

Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018 is officially launched at an event in Devonport, with special guest Alistair Paterson.

Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018 is officially launched at an event in Devonport, with special guest Alistair Paterson. [photos: Laine Moger]


A collection of new poetry has been metaphorically launched into the "literary waters" of New Zealand for the 52nd year in a row.

Distinguished poet and Massey creative writing teacher Bryan Walpert officially declared the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018 launched, at an event at Auckland's Devonport Library on March 20.

Walpert noted the word "launch" was a metaphor, used first by Mark Twain in 1870 and, as poets deal in metaphor, it was fitting to begin such an event with such a word.

Some of the poetry readings elicited a few giggles from the crowd.

Some of the poetry readings elicited a few giggles from the crowd.


The theme of the book was "traditions", and the diversity of poems in it had Walpert describing it as "moving through an interesting and vivacious cocktail party".

READ MORE:
Devonport Library launches Poetry New Zealand Yearbook with a slam
Online poetry collection reflects ethnic diversity of New Zealand


The book is filled with image, connotation, figure and form - a variety of poetry, he said.

Alistair Paterson's presence at the event was somewhat of a treat for the poets, many of whom owe him their first ...

Alistair Paterson's presence at the event was somewhat of a treat for the poets, many of whom owe him their first published poem.

"The life of poetry in progress," he said of the book.

Alistair Paterson was the featured poet of the book, and esteemed guest at the launch. For many poets reading at the event, it was Paterson who gave them their first published poem.

He was the previous editor before Massey University Press, for 20 years from 1994 to 2014, and one of his poems was published in the very first publication in 1951.

Poet Devon Webb was asked to return to the event to deliver her slam poetry, a hit at last year's launch.

Poet Devon Webb was asked to return to the event to deliver her slam poetry, a hit at last year's launch.

But Paterson said he was humbled by the poets and flattered Ross had published his poetry in the book.

"I am still learning my craft and learning it from the poets of today," Paterson said.

The privilege was not given by the poet, rather it was the reader who privileges the poet, he added.

Editor Jack Ross said he has been a fan of Richard von Sturmer for as long as he has been interested in poetry.

Editor Jack Ross said he has been a fan of Richard von Sturmer for as long as he has been interested in poetry.

Paterson said the poetry in this book was as good as any one could find overseas in US or Britain.

Editor Jack Ross said the variety and diversity of form in the book was a way to "gauge the temperature" of poetry.

Issue 52 of the yearbook features 130 new poems by 87 poets. The poetry yearbook has been continuously published since 1951.

The yearbook is now available for purchase.

The yearbook is now available for purchase.

Callum Gentleman read two of his poems.

Callum Gentleman read two of his poems.


A selection of poets, including the three winners of the Poetry New Zealand competition, were invited to read at the event in celebration of their craft.

The winners for 2018: 
  • 1st Prize: Fardowsa Mohamed
  • 2nd Prize: Semira Davis
  • 3rd Prize: Henry Ludbrook

Wednesday, 21 March 2018

Images from the Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018 Launch



Poetry New Zealand Yearbook in Spain (8/3/18)
[photo: Lilian Pallares Campo]




The Crowd at Devonport Public Library (20/3/18)
[photo: Bronwyn Lloyd]



Order of Events:

Introduction:
Paul Beachman (Devonport Library Associates)

MC:
Jack Ross (Editor: Poetry New Zealand)

Publisher (Massey University Press):
Nicola Legat

Launch speech:
Bryan Walpert

Featured Poet:
Alistair Paterson

PNZ Poetry Prize winners:
Fardowsa Mohamed - 1st prize for ‘Us,’ (p.126)
[sent her apologies, but her poem is available online here]
Semira Davis - 2nd prize for 'Hiding' (p.89)
Henry Ludbrook - 3rd prize for 'The Bar Girl' (p. 117)
[sent his apologies]

Other poets from the issue:
Iain Britton
Johanna Emeney
Callum Gentleman
Elizabeth Morton
Richard von Sturmer
Devon Webb
Albert Wendt [had to send his apologies, alas]

Conclusion:
Jack reads out Henry Ludbrook's poem




Crowd shot
[photo: Nicola Legat]




Paul Beachman [photo: BL]




Nicola Legat [photo: BL]




Bryan Walpert [photo: BL]




Alistair Paterson [photo: BL]




Alistair Paterson [photo: NL]




Semira Davis [photo: BL]




Iain Britton [photo: BL]




Jo Emeney [photo: BL]




Jo Emeney [photo: NL]




Callum Gentleman [photo: BL]




Callum Gentleman [photo: NL]




Liz Morton [photo: BL]




Richard von Sturmer [photo: BL]




Devon Webb [photo: BL]




Jack Ross [photo: BL]




Poetry New Zealand Yearbook in Spain II (19/3/18)
[photo: Charles Olsen]





Monday, 19 March 2018

10 Questions with Jack Ross [19/3/18]



photograph: Mary Paul

10 Questions with Jack Ross
Editor of Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018


This interview appeared on the Massey University Press website on 19th March 2018:

  1. Now that it’s published, what pleases you most about New Zealand Poetry Yearbook 2018?

  2. I’m happy with the feature: the poems, interview and essay about the poet we’ve selected, Alistair Paterson. It’s the newer voices we’ve been able to include which please me most, though. I love it that people of all ages, from all walks of life, feel able simply to send in poems, and that so much of what they send is of such high quality. We really do seem to be a nation of poets. The evidence speaks for itself on that one, I think.

  3. How many submissions were there?

  4. Well, it’s an interesting question. 116 poets made it to the long list, each having sent 5 or 6 poems. At least twice that many didn’t make it to the list, so I’d say that I must have read at least 1500 poems to end up with the present count of 90 (not including the 21 we’ve included by our featured poet).

  5. And how did you sift through them?

  6. I read through them in blocks. Any I felt the slightest doubt about I set aside for further reflection. Then I compiled a long file with all the ones which seemed possible, and gradually whittled it down until I was left with only those I feel absolutely sure of. This time the longlist went down from 200 to 100 pages in the course of this rather protracted process. I like to see them all more than once, in different moods. As for what makes one striking and another not, I try to be as open as possible to the potential of each individual poem and poet.

  7. This is edition #52. No small number. What’s the spirit behind the Yearbook that you endeavour to defend and maintain as editor?

  8. I feel that there’s definitely a need for a journal such as this. It’s attracted many supporters over the years, but it’s the fact that it’s still here, and still publishing new and innovative work that (I hope) makes it a vital part of our culture rather than a mere museum piece.

  9. Can Poetry New Zealand’s heritage sometimes feel a burden?

  10. I guess there’s a certain eccentricity about this particular magazine’s history that makes it amount to more of a useful set of precedents than an oppressive burden of expectations. Its long-term editors – Louis Johnson, Frank McKay, Alistair Paterson – have mostly been contrarians, fighting to retrieve suppressed voices, critical of the received versions of official Kiwi culture. That's the heritage I’m trying to uphold.



  11. Your featured poet is Alistair Paterson, longtime Poetry New Zealand editor and your predecessor. What is distinctive about his work?

  12. As a critic, Alistair has always been a fierce defender of experimental and innovative poetics. As a writer, however, he seems to me to have worked his way through to a strange, pellucid gentleness. To be still writing poems of such quality in your late eighties is an unusual achievement, but the fact that we’ve been able to include so comprehensive an interview, and that he’s just this year published a memoir, Passant, shows an admirable dedication to the craft of writing in all its facets, I think.

  13. As with previous editions, the Yearbook's reviews of other volumes of poetry are very comprehensive. Why is this important?

  14. You can’t have a lively literary field without a robust critical culture. I don’t mean ‘critical’ in a denigratory sense, but in terms of contextualisation and explanation. Even exceptionally strong work often needs exposition before it can have its full effect on the reader. New Zealand is full of writers and literary experts, and the quality of the reviewing here is high – when it’s allowed to be. Poetry New Zealand aspires to be a place where informed opinion is welcome: not something to be dumbed down or apologised for.

  15. Tell us about the poetry competition winners announced in this edition.



  16. I just happened to glance at one of the many emailed submissions that had come in one day, in the process of shifting them to the correct folder, caught sight of a couple of lines, and started to read. What I found there was so haunting and powerful that I knew I’d hit on a winner. The poem was ‘Us’, by Fardowsa Mohamed. Its effect on me grows the more I think about it. It is, on the one hand, about the experience of being an immigrant to New Zealand, but on the other also about the personal implications of carrying such a weight of expectation on your shoulders.



    Semira Davis (2014)


    The second poem, ‘Hiding’ by Semira Davis, is short and to the point. It’s funny and painful at the same time. It’s a coming-out poem and a poem of farewell. It will speak to younger readers, certainly, but also to the rest of us. ‘To live your life is not so easy as to cross a field,’ as Pasternak put it in Doctor Zhivago. Life is hard enough without the need to hide who you truly are from those you should be closest to.



    Edouard Manet: Le Bar des Folies-bergere (1881)


    The third poem, Henry Ludbrook's ‘The Bar Girl’, speaks to a kind of male longing which is, I think, very real, however absurd it may seem to those on the outside. Fantasy can be all that keeps us going sometimes, and this poem pulls out all the stops to convey just how it can feel to be lonely and full of impossible desires.

  17. Last year we discussed the rude good health of poetry publishing in New Zealand. Has that continued to be the case in the last 12 months?

  18. Yes, I think so. Certainly there’s been no shortage of wonderful books appearing over the past year in New Zealand. I recently attended the 3rd biannual Poetry Conference & Festival in Auckland, and it seemed a pretty lively gathering to me. To be sure, the field is certainly changing: the Phantom Billstickers’ programme of poetry posters, the poetry slams and live poetry events — not to mention online videos — are certainly complicating the ways in which we see poetry. Long-term, I think that can’t fail to be a good thing. I don’t think poetry publishing, or print journals, are going to become obsolete any time soon. They may have to expand the range and nature of their multimedia engagement, though.

  19. What are you reading at the moment?

  20. Well, I’m reading the revised, complete translation of Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914. I liked the novel when it first came out in the 1970s, but there’s far more of it to pore over now, and it’s also become clearer just how it fits into The Red Wheel, his massive history of the Russian Revolution and its origins.

    I’m also trying to read Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet. There are numerous overlapping English translations of this work, no two of which seem to see it the same way. Partly this is because he died young, without having the chance to finish, let alone revise it, but also due to his habit of creating distinct authorial alter egos — or heteronyms, as he called them — to create quite distinct bodies of work. At least two heteronyms appear to have been at work on the Book of Disquiet, at different times, so it’s very hard to know just who to attribute it to, which also makes a difference to how you interpret it.







Wednesday, 14 March 2018

Radio NZ: Jesse Mulligan 1-4 [14/3/18]

2018 New Zealand Poetry Yearbook





From Jesse Mulligan, 1–4pm, 1:31 pm today

The upcoming 2018 Poetry Yearbook includes 130 new poems from 87 poets. It has a skew for 2018 towards younger writers including those who are still in their teens. It also features the 2018 Poetry Prize Winner's work. That was won by an Otago University Medical student, Fardowsa Mohamed. The Yearbook's editor Jack Ross talks to Jesse about the quality of this year's book and the talent of the country's younger poets.

Jack Ross







Short Story Club



Every Thursday after 3pm Jesse and a guest discuss a New Zealand short story, and read feedback from listeners.

On Thursday 15th March we will discuss the poem Us, by Fardowsa Mohamed.

We brought in an overseas expert to discuss her poem. Poet, editor and fan of New Zealand, Matthew Zapruder.

He has an excellent book called Why Poetry, which is a great place to start for somebody wanting to enjoy poetry more.

Fardowsa Mohamed

Us
for my sisters

i.

Mother, you did not expect to find yourself
in this forest of strange trees.
This ground does not taste
of the iron your tongue knew.
in the velvet of the night we heard you sob
in the room next door, our ears pressed to the peeling paper.
we locked fingers and prayed. someone next door
saw braided-head girls in a circle
praying to a peculiar god
and snapped their curtains shut.

ii.

Everyone congratulates me
on the scholarship. Your parents
who have suffered can finally exhale

said the white man at the ceremony.
But I think I hate this degree.
I want to do good and make a difference
but I have no idea
how to be in this foreign land.

iii.

the world broke & crumbled today
— there you go — trying to tape her back
into a perfect sphere,
trying to spit water
on the raging fire.

iv.

know that this earth is your body. your words are
the Pacific Ocean tides that wash & purify
your legs are the Mountains that anchor, your heart —
the Land that gives. every where you stand is your home.
Earth is the African Woman
who gave birth to the first Man.

v.

We were watching late night Al Jazeera, shaking our heads,
when uncle called. A pregnant cousin we have never met has died.
The TV breaks to a Red Cross appeal.
You hold me on the sinking couch
as we mourn those whom we never knew.





Thursday, 22 February 2018

Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018 Launch Details



Where:Devonport Library, 2 Victoria Road, Devonport
When:Tuesday 20 March, 7.00 till 9.00 pm
Cost:Koha appreciated

A Devonport Library Associates Event

Please RSVP here

The poets are assembling at Devonport Library to celebrate the publication of the New Zealand Poetry Yearbook 2018, edited by Jack Ross and published by Massey University Press.


The book will be launched by distinguished poet and Massey creative writing teacher Bryan Walpert, and the evening will include readings by ten of the poets included in the issue, including Yearbook 2018’s featured poet Alistair Paterson.



Here's the complete line-up of speakers:


MC: Jack Ross

Chair of the Devonport Library Associates: Jan Mason

Massey University Press Publisher: Nicola Legat

Launch Speech: Bryan Walpert

Featured Poet: Alistair Paterson

Poetry NZ Ist Prize-winner: Fardowsa Mohamed

Poetry NZ 2nd Prize winner: Semira Davis

Iain Britton

Johanna Emeney

Callum Gentleman

Elizabeth Morton

Richard von Sturmer

Devon Webb

Albert Wendt





Please do come along - you'll be very welcome, and with that set of readers, we can definitely guarantee a good show!