Poet Kaveh Akbar is no sheep in wolf’s clothing – WORD Christchurch

Kaveh Akbar is more of a shepherd than a wolf. The internationally acclaimed Iranian-American poet not only produces amazing thought-provoking poetry, but nurtures other poets to achieve their full potential too. So it was a perfect date for us to be hosting him at Tūranga, the flagship of the future. We are all about helping our citizens to access all they need to reach for the top.

Hosted by local poet Erik Kennedy, this event was held in the brand spanking new Tautoru / TSB Space, and brought to us by WORD Christchurch in association with LitCrawl Wellington. View photos of Kaveh Akbar and Erik Kennedy event.

Mr Akbar is a really nice guy. Humble and quietly spoken (though this changes when he reads) Kaveh kept thanking us for coming. When reading, Kaveh is animated, moving with the lilting rhythm of his words, his voice rising with the swell of emotion and experience.

An Iranian-American, he sees his poetry as:

“the membrane between myself and the divine…a new idiom for ancient binaries.”

Binaries such as solitude and community, decay and rebirth, literature and culture.

Kaveh has been posting interviews with poets making waves on DiveDapper; a website he created as a platform for exposure, promotion and connection. It has become a community, bringing poets and enthusiasts together worldwide. The list of poets on this website is impressive! Akbar sees this as a way to “push (his gratitude) outwards.” He further demonstrated this by reading two poems by New Zealand poet Helen Heath.

Kaveh’s book of poetry Calling a Wolf a Wolf was released to much acclaim this year. In it, Kaveh addresses difficult themes from addiction to desire; his poetry refreshing in a way that feels uplifting rather than downbeat.

Akbar’s work shares a sense of lessons learned and experience shared, as opposed to a self-indulgent train wreck. In all, there is a theme of hunger: for the physical sensation of being alive. Akbar’s poems grabbed me at first taste. Alliteration, onomatopoeia and themes of life, death and longing fill his poems. Addiction is portrayed as a kind of death; “a void to fill in wellness”. The poetry came from a need to fill the gap left after he became sober: “my entire life up to that point was predicated on the pursuit of this or that narcotic experience.” All this brings to mind a Persian poet who celebrated the wine and song of life, yet without the cautionary tale: Omar Khayyam.

In the light of current politics, Kaveh asserts that the ‘utility’ of poetry ‘forces us to slow down our metabolism of language’. A useful antidote to doublespeak, perhaps. He makes it sound like a science. And in fact it is.

Kaveh Akbar in conversation with Erik Kennedy. WORD Christchurch event. Tautoru / TSB Space, Hapori | Community, Level 1, Tūranga, Tuesday 6 November 2018. Flickr 2018-November-6-IMG_1984

Although he now only speaks a few words of Farsi these days, Akbar sees feeling as a ‘universal language,’ one that we all understand. The purpose of poetry, he says, is as Homer put it – to ‘delight and instruct.’  So often, we leave out the delight, loving to lecture others on the way of things. Pre-sobriety, Akbar the poet painted himself as the hero of his works; a ‘gloriously misunderstood scumbag.’ A way of being, he says, that’s insufferable (I’ve dated guys like that).

‘So you’re the sobriquet of the School of Delight?’ quips Eric Kennedy. Sobriquet. Oh clever. Thus begins a new Golden Age in Poetry. The interview website DiveDapper came from Kaveh’s hunger for dialogue with other poets while going through recovery. It’s a way to share experience with others – ‘a vast expanse of empathetic resources.’

The internet has meant that ‘the age of coy diminishment of one’s passions is over’…it is now an age of ‘unabashed zeal.’ Eric:  Zeal Land!”

Kaveh read a number of wonderful poems from Calling a Wolf a Wolf. I love the titles – so real but imaginative. He really does have a way with words:

• Portrait the an alcoholic floating in space wtih severed umbilicus
• Vines, a wow! of a poem, with very visual images opposing decay and rebirth,
• Do you speak Persian, in which he asserts that every drunk wants to die sober.

The last word goes to Mr Akbar:

“Poetry is the best thing that exists in the universe.”

More about Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh has been published by the New Yorker, The New York Times, Best American Poetry 2018 and The Guardian:

• Portrait of the artist floating in space with severed umbilicus
• Visit Kaveh Akbar’s website
• Read about Kaveh Akbar on the Poetry Foundation website
• Read Kaveh Akbar is Poetry’s Biggest Cheerleader, National Poetry Review, 14 January 2018

Poems

• Ways to harm a thing
• What seems like joy
• Against dying
• Persian Poets

Poet and Poetry Cheerleader in Chief: Kaveh Akbar – WORD Christchurch – Tuesday 6 November 6.30pm at Tūranga

… It’s exhausting, remaining /
humble amidst the vicissitudes of fortune. It’s difficult / to be anything at all
with the whole world right here for the having.

(from the poem Being in This World Makes Me Feel Like a Time Traveller)

Come along to Tūranga on Tuesday 6.30pm to hear Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar read some of his award-winning works and chat with Christchurch poet and editor Erik Kennedy. This event is proudly bought to you by WORD Christchurch, in association with LitCrawl Wellington. Tickets are $20 waged, and $15 unwaged (plus service fees). Buy tickets from Dash.

Kaveh has won awards, and his poems have appeared in heaps of prestigious publications like The New Yorker, The New York Times, Best American Poetry 2018, and The Guardian.

Check out Kaveh reading Max Ritvo’s “Touching the Floor” and his own poem “Portrait of an Alcoholic Frozen in Block of Ice”:

He founded DiveDapper, a poetry interview site. It is pretty much the poetry equivalent of Jerry Seinfeld’s show ‘Comedians in cars getting coffee’, but in DiveDapper you get two poets on top of their games in conversation. It features a stellar lineup of poets including:

• Jos Charles, “We must let our unknowabilities exist.”
• Sharon Olds, “I write as much crap as anyone.”
• Claudia Rankine, “I’m not investigating race as much as I’m investigating intimacy.”
• and slam poet Anis Mojgani (who many of you will remember from his previous visits to Christchurch, slaying us with his potent words).

It makes total sense that Jeevika Verma in NPR refers to him as “poetry’s biggest cheerleader”:

He believes that everyone should be reciting poems as they walk into a coffee shop, as they do the dishes, as they go on with their lives.
“The fact that poems exist is the load-bearing gratitude upon which I have built my life,” he explains. “And what do you do with gratitude when it piles up? You have to push it outwards.”
He says it’s sort of like eating a Snickers bar. “Not sharing your gratitude is like holding a Snickers bar in your mouth for a week. You’d just get cavities,” he laughs. “This is what I want to do with DiveDapper. As far as I’m concerned, poetry is the best thing that exists in the universe.”

The event will be followed by a book signing, with Scorpio Books will be selling copies of Kaveh’s book. There will be food and drink available for sale too.

Photo by Hieu Minh Nguyen. Image supplied.

• Visit Kaveh Akbar’s website (it includes many of his poems online and some have audio too).
• Read about Kaveh Akbar on the Poetry Foundation website.
• Read Kaveh Akbar Is Poetry’s Biggest Cheerleader, NPR, 14 January 2018

And in more Christchurch poetry news …

The New Zealand Poetry Slam Final Saturday 3 November

The New Zealand Poetry Slam national final is on this Saturday 3 November. It is the first time finals have been in the South Island.

The nation’s best poets will compete in a literary showdown on Saturday, November 3rd in Christchurch. Poets representing Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton, Hawkes Bay, Dunedin, Nelson and Southern Lakes will perform in a three-round poetry slam as selected members from the audience will judge to determine the winner. Can Christchurch defend their title or will a new city take the crown?
Featuring 2017 National Slam Champion, Christchurch’s own Daisy Lavea-Timo (DaisySpeaks), this is not a night to miss.

What: NZ National Poetry Slam Finals
When: Saturday November 3rd 2018
Time: Doors 7pm, Show 7:30pm
Where: Haeata Community Campus, 240 Breezes Rd.
Cost: $20 general, $15 students

Selina Tusitala Marsh and Tusiata Avia – Fast burning women: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

Selina Tusitala Marsh is impressive. Tall and exuding warmth with an open, smiley countenance topped by a mass of long dark curls, she enters carrying her tokotoko which is topped with long hair mirroring her own.

Selina Tusitala Marsh. Image supplied.

One immediately feels drawn to her and the packed audience settles down to be entertained. Selina is in conversation with her sister poet and friend, Tusiata Avia. They are obviously at ease with each other and enjoy talking together.

Selina is New Zealand’s current Poet Laureate, the fifth woman to hold this position and the first woman of colour. She feels she has an obligation and responsibility to make everyone feel included as well as showcasing her Pasifika heritage.

Her mission is to get the story of the tokotoko out there and she regularly invites people to come along and touch it. It is fitting that she is the 11^th Poet Laureate and the tokotoko breaks down into eleven pieces which is necessary for travel.

Paula Green, NZ poet, says “Hone Tuwhare and Sam Hunt are the two poets that are so beloved by our nation. I predict Selina is our third.”

One wonders how she manages to fit everything in in her extremely packed schedule. She has composed and performed for the Queen and welcomed Barack Obama to New Zealand. As well as travelling extensively both here and abroad, she is involved in the Writers in Schools Programme which is booked up for the next two years.

She feels women find it hard to value their self-worth and to ask for help. With the help of her friend Tusiata, she is learning to be more forthright. She equates life to four burners – Family, Health, Work and Friendship. For a long time the friendship burner was missing. She felt guilty about leaning on friends when she had so little time to reciprocate. She is definitely in the fast burning lane.

Tusiata meanwhile is recovering from burnout, suffering ill health from her fast pace of life. Whilst recuperating at home, they spent many hours on the phone talking. Selina was thrilled. She could now talk whilst running around Waiheke Island, where she lives and maintain two burners at once – exercising for health and friendship by being each other’s sounding board. She also advocates movement of mind and body for relaxation. This is achieved by running, yoga, writing and creating. Running is also where she has inspiration for her poetry. She has boundaries surrounding her family time and makes sure she spends weekends with them when she is in New Zealand, hence her 4pm flight back to Auckland following her appearance.

Tusiata Avia. Image supplied.

We were treated to Selina reading a poem from her latest book Tightrope titled ‘The Working Mother’s Guide to Reading Seventy Books a Year‘.

Where to now? Her latest project is a graphic mini memoir very aptly titled “Mophead to Poet Laureate” which is due out in 2019.

• Find works by Selina Tusitala Marsh in our collection
• Find works by Tusiata Avia in our collection
• Follow our coverage of WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

Colette Squire
Papanui Library

Hollie McNish and Hera Lindsay Bird – Poetry Stars: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

Kate Sylvester introduced the two poets and her assertion that poets were the antidote to a world out of kilter brought rousing applause.

Hollie McNish and Hera Lindsay Bird. Image supplied.

It’s not an easy thing to report on a poetry reading. You listen with different ears to poetry than you would to a speaker.

Being tagged with the epithet “poetry stars”, might bring with it an unfair burden of expectation and if Hera Lindsay Bird, who was first up, felt that she didn’t show it as she appeared quite at ease on the stage. The poems she read were generally dealing with love and sex, but often in a tangential and quirky way. She read the poems: Jealousy, Love is like laying down in a major intersection, Monica (about the character, Monica Geller, from the sitcom, Friends), Da Vinci Code, Six Seasons of the Nanny  and Pyramid Scheme.

Now, I confess, I’m a sucker for humour in poetry because poetry can often take itself very seriously. There was a strong vein of humour running through all the poems that Bird read and the audience chuckled a lot during her reading.

I’ve read that the poet, Lord Byron, was treated like a rock star in his day with people, mainly women, queueing for hours outside booksellers when Byron released a new book of poetry. He died a rock star’s kind of death too, dying at Missolonghi, aged 36,  while helping the Greeks battle the Turks for their independence.

Perhaps Hera Lindsay Bird will revive the “poet as rock star” phenomenon if the reception of her eponymous debut is anything to go by.

Hollie McNish came to poetry fame via that most 21st century medium, YouTube. A little older and a little more experienced than her reading companion, McNish read poems that traversed her life from childhood to pregnancy in her thirties. She read the poems: Yanking (a variation on what she claimed was a Kiwi-ism “giving a wristy”), Call On Me (about the nature of friendships changing as we get older), Hiccups (for her daughter), A Dead Pig I Mean (about a bizarre ritual David Cameron indulged in at private school), Wow (about her one-year old daughter admiring her naked body in a mirror), Sex (about not wanting sex for six-and-a-half months after her daughter was born, Bricks (talking with her 92-year-old grandmother about what turned Hollie on) and McNish ended with a poignant poem dedicated to her Grandad called Cherry Pie with its echoes of post-war trauma.

I’ll be first to put my hand up and say that I am all for the popularising of poetry (being a poet myself and wanting to get my books out there in the hands of poetry readers), but there are still ivory tower elements fiercely guarding poetry for the elitist few as evidenced by the poet, Rebecca Watts, refusing to review Plum, McNish’s latest poetry collection, for P. N. Review. Watts instead wrote a polemical article titled Cult of the Noble Amateur in which she wrote: “Plum is the product not of a poet but of a personality. I was supposed to be reviewing it, but to do so for a poetry journal would imply that it deserves to be taken seriously as poetry. Besides, I was too distracted by the pathological attitude of its faux-naïve author, and too offended by its editor’s exemplary bad faith, to ignore the broader questions it provokes.” Watts’ article subsequently received broad coverage in several English news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC.

• Find works by Hollie McNish in our collection
• Find works by Hera Lindsay Bird in our collection
• Follow our coverage of WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

National Poetry Day celebration at New Brighton Library

It was a day later than the official National Poetry Day on Friday 24th August, but we figured the Saturday would free the poets up for other engagements and bring in the biggest audience with the added attraction of the weekly New Brighton market.

The poets joked on arrival that they might be reading to each other if no one showed up, but, between myself and the good people at the Digital Library Web Team, we had drummed up as much free Facebook publicity as we could and it paid off.

An audience of twenty-one showed up to enjoy the poetry of Jeni Curtis, David Gregory, Heather McQuillan and Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, all distinguished poets locally, nationally and internationally.

The event was free, but, if it had been a paying event, it would have been sold-out. To paraphrase the late Frank Zappa, we proved that “poetry is not dead, it just smells funny”.

David Gregory reading to an appreciative audience at New Brighton Library.

Heather McQuillan reading.

Jeni Curtis reading.

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman reading.

There was lots of engagement after the reading between the poets and the members of the audience which was wonderful. New Brighton Library wishes to thank the four poets who gave so generously of their time.

Buy their books, or you can borrow them from Christchurch Libraries.

Find works in our collection by:

• David Gregory
• Heather McQuillan
• Jeffrey Paparoa Holman

Poetry on a winter’s night – Hell Fire Poetry: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

Spring has arrived at last, and the sun is shining! But the final day of winter here in Christchurch was a cold and wet one, so it was nice to be holed up in the warm and welcoming Hell Fire Club in Lyttelton last night for an evening of performance poetry as part of the WORD Christchurch Festival.

We heard from three poets at the top of their game, expertly hosted by local Ciáran Fox, who kept things moving along in tag-team fashion.

Dominic Hoey and Michael Pedersen. Image supplied.

First up was Michael Pedersen from Leith in Scotland, winner of a Robert Louis Stevenson award, amongst others, who kicked off with the title poem from his recent collection Oyster. Tall, wiry, and charismatic, with a mop-top haircut and mellifluous lilting Scottish brogue, he was the epitome of self-assured creativity and Celtic coolness. This was a tour de force in embodied performance. He was animated as he spoke, his body moving around to the rhythm of his poetry, bobbing up and down slightly, leaning forwards into the mic to emphasise certain syllables and cadences, as words tumbled out of him effortlessly.

After a short set, it was the turn of Dominic ‘Tourettes’ Hoey from Auckland to entertain us with his unique brand of kiwi slacker wordsmithing. He started with a few short poems written “in the car on the way here” read from scraps of paper that he tossed aside as if they were useless ephemera rather than carefully constructed one-liners from a literary master-craftsman. It wasn’t always clear where his conversational interjections ended and the poems began, as Hoey didn’t seem capable of saying anything that wasn’t charged with an undercurrent of unpretentious poetic meaning.

Before return sets from Pedersen and Hoey we heard all too briefly from a surprise guest, the incredible Omar Musa who gave us just one very powerful poem about his homeland re-imagined as “Un-Australia”.

Inevitably, one of the themes that emerged from all four poets who took the stage was the role of the arts in modern society, and the mood seemed gloomy and combative, but not without some upbeat moments. At one point, Ciáran invited us to imagine an empty stadium for a Crusaders game. “Where is everyone”, they would ask? “Down the road at the poetry reading” would come the reply. The audience loved it. We can only dream!

It’s a long time since I’ve been to see live poetry, but last night I was transfixed and entranced and based on the richness of the experience, I’m sure I will be going again very soon, and much more often. In fact, if the quality continues to remain this high, I can imagine becoming an obsessed regular.

Further reading

• Play With Me
• Iceland
• Here Come the Dogs
• Millefiori
• Parang

 

Follow our coverage of WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

Starry, starry night: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

It certainly was a rather star-studded affair on Friday night at the Isaac Theatre Royal for WORD Christchurch’s gala event. Everywhere a person turned there were famous faces about; Helen Clark striding past on the footpath out front, Michele A’Court queuing at the bar in the foyer, Georgina Beyer chatting in the row in front of me metres away from Ted Chiang in one direction and Juno Dawson in another. What fine company to be in of an evening.

Festival director Rachael King opened proceedings with a valiantly lengthy introduction in te reo Māori (with help, it turned out from Ngāi Tahu Māori language advocate and educator Hana O’Regan). She admitted that the programme she and her team and brought together was “unashamedly feminist” and challenging, exhorting the audience to “see one session a day that scares you”*.

From there MC John Campbell took the reins, confessing that he can be a difficult man to pin down, refusing as he does to reply to any kind of communications (phone calls, emails and the like), but that King is “as tenacious and unbowed as the city itself” and hence his appearance at this event.

I don’t know what John Campbell is like as a gift-giver (if his Christmas presents are rushed affairs or precisely wrapped and carefully considered) but his compliments… his compliments are like finely crafted jewels – cut and polished, thoroughly researched, and presented in a bespoke arrangement you’ll never have the like of again. Each writer, in their turn, was the recipient of John Campbell Compliments™ and I can’t imagine I’m the only one who felt jealous.

John Campbell compliments the heck out of everybody, Starry, starry night. WORD Christchurch Festival 2018.Friday 31 August 2018. File reference: 2018-08-31-IMG_0168

The usual pattern for these events is for each of seven writers to take seven minutes to read something or tell a story with the MC making introductions in between. But rather than disturb the flow like a “judderbar” in the evening, Campbell preferred to bring all the writers out in a line-up (like a literary beauty pageant), and introduce (and compliment) them in the beginning, making links and connections between them as he went on.

The overriding them between, he thought, was the shared struggle to be human. What I am and what I am not. The question we all ask.

First up was Ngāi Tahu storyteller Joseph Hullen who reflected on what it had been like growing up in Christchurch, and how his mother’s Ngāi Tahu whakapapa was barely visible in the city, with only a few places like Te Hepara Pai (Church of the Good Shepherd) on Ferry Road or Rehua Marae on Springfield Road that reflected any sense of a Māori presence or identity in the city. But things have changed and his hapu, Ngai Tuahūriri now have Matapopore, a organisation that is adding touches of his people’s identity into the fabric of Christchurch. The name of the new central library, Tūranga being a prime example of this, referencing as it does, the arrival place of Paikea the father of Ngāi Tahu’s eponymous ancestor, Tahu Pōtiki, and the knowledge he brought with him.

Scot, Robin Robertson took the stage next and brought a voice filled with menace and foreboding telling several dark tales in poem form, including one about a cat dying of cancer. His last piece, an invented Scots narrative about selkies, he dedicated to King, the author of Red Rocks, and children’s novel about the self-same mythic seal-creatures.

Robertson was followed by Yaba Badoe reading the opening chapter of her book A jigsaw of fire and stars. In it a baby is set adrift to escape a devastating event, bringing to mind mythic versions of the “floating foundling baby” like that of Moses, Maui, or even Superman.

Hollie McNish read some of her poetry and I found my eyes moistening as she spoke of her daughter in poems like “Wow”. The power of seeing a new, young person figuring out the world and their place in it conjures up powerful emotions for McNish, and secondhand, for me.

Wellingtonian novellist Rajorshi Chakraborti talked about the genesis of his book The man who would not see. It started out as what became “the book that could not be” – a nonfiction tale about the disappearance of his father’s sister. After hours and hours of research that led to a re-connection of estranged segments of his family it became apparent that publishing the book would damage that family connection. in the end, he says “the family member in me trumped the writer”. And so he repurposed and reshaped his research into a novel instead.

Whale-lover Philip Hoare read a couple of extracts from RisingTideFallingStar, stepping out from behind the podium and reading in a most kinetic way, gets his whole body into the reading, acting out certain actions and movements of the protagonist as he went. The language is sensuous and descriptive and you can nearly smell the salt air.

Finally Sonya Renee Taylor explains that there are two kinds of fear, fear of the unknown and fear of the dangerous. We should try not “the fog of the unknown” because there may well be nothing there to harm us. As the free-diver she met in the Bahamas, who dives down into the depths of the unknown, says “every metre is a tiny freedom”. Her poem about her mother’s belly made me cry again, but her “The body is not an apology” ends the night on a triumphant and defiant note.

Sonia Renee Taylor, WORD Christchurch Festival 2018. Friday 31 August 2018. File reference: 2018-08-31-IMG_0164

Find out more

• Our WORD Christchurch 2018 page
• WORD Christchurch festival programme

Find titles in the catalogue by:

• Robin Robertson
• Yaba Badoe
• Hollie McNish
• Rajorshi Chakraborti
• Philip Hoare
• Sonya Renee Taylor

*So that’ll be Robin Robertson in most cases. Terrifying.

You write funny!: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

What you really want from a session called “You write funny!” is for there to be writers and for them to be humorous. It’s pretty much right there in the title. You’re expecting to laugh a bit. And certainly this Friday night session at WORD Christcchurch Festival 2018 MCed by the affable Ray Shipley filled the bill.

The laughing, however, was expedited by Shipley’s careful, “kindly primary school teacher” style coaching, leading the audience through some “little titters” to start with, and eventually even, some good, old-fashioned cackling. “All laughs,” we were told “are valid and important“.

So that was a good place to start from.

The line-up of reading authors was largely unfamiliar to me but the feelings of amusement and genuine laughter (did the coaching and practice beforehand make for a better quality of chuckle?) weren’t. This is what funny sounds like.

First up was Erik Kennedy (author of poetry collection There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime) who read three poems all with a wry serve of humour, “You cannot teach creative writing”, “Get a pet with a longer live span than humans have”, and in between, a strange take on Christmas heavily influenced by the content of spam emails. I can’t really explain this poem except to say that it was simultaneously more AND less weird than it sounds.

Megan Dunn’s face. Image supplied.

Megan Dunn read excerpts from her book Tinderbox, about her time working at a Borders bookstore. Much of the time Dunn read with a sly, knowing smirk on her face… that was fully justified. Her tales of retail reminded me more than a little of my experiences working in libraries as well as the self-confessional style of David Sedaris, in particular the essay Santaland Diaries about his time working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s Department store.

It eventuates that I find both David Sedaris and Megan Dunn hilarious.

Dunn was followed by poet Chris Tse (author of poetry collection He’s so MASC) and his poem, Wasted, was a hit with the audience. Wasted is a treatise on the sort of men who don’t get drinks thrown in their faces nearly as often as they deserve. Though he admits there are few workable alternatives,

Only a monster would throw a bowl of chips in this economy.

Lastly Annaleese Jochems took the stage reading, from her book Baby, an exquisitely awkward scene of backyard fitness instruction that made me feel more squirmy than amused, but many people in the audience let loose their best cackles in response, so I might have been alone in that.

All in all, You write funny! gave my laughing muscles a good, solid workout.

Find out more

• Our WORD Christchurch 2018 page
• WORD Christchurch festival programme

Find titles by

• Annaleese Jochems
• Megan Dunn
• Erik Kennedy
• Chris Tse

New Regent Street Pop-up Festival: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

The New Regent Street Pop-up Festival is like the whole of WORD Christchurch distilled into an hour and twenty minutes, and if that sounds intense well, yes, that would be an accurate assessment.

In some ways it’s like trying to pick something off a menu – how do you know what you’ll like the best? What if you choose and don’t enjoy your choice? And just to extend the dining out metaphor, the pop-up festival offers three “sets” of readings in much the same manner as restaurant courses, allowing you to mix and match.

For my pop-up dinner I chose the following:

Entrée: Gory Bits at Crate Escape

Main: Science Fiction Triple Feature at Rollickin’ Gelato

Dessert: FIKA and Friends at Fiksate Gallery

So how did I do choosing a great meal?

Entrée

Robin Robertson about to make everyone feel uneasy. Crate Escape. New Regent Street Pop Up Festival. WORD Christchurch Festival 2018. Thursday 30 August 2018. File reference: 2018-08-30-IMG_0109

Meaty, blood-soaked and best served cold, this was a very enjoyable way to start. True, it’s rather a full-bodied choice for an entree, but if you’re going to have tales of death and fear read to you in the confines of a strange, wooden Antarctic hut fashioned from a shipping container you may as well do it early so it’s still daylight when you leave.

WORD Christchurch Festival director, Rachael King read a suitably gothic, Wuthering Heights inspired passage from her book Magpie Hall, and Brindi Joy’s flash fiction story of the dead that don’t necessarily stay buried had a pleasing rhythm and exotic (for Christchurch) US locale.

But certainly the standout of this “course” was Robin Robertson‘s readings of gruesome death and murder, his voice dragging on certain words, and fairly growling others – at one point his hands held out in the pose of a man strangling his beloved and… well, lovely man though I’m sure he is, should I bump into him in a dark alley while he’s here in Christchurch I’ll probably squeal and run the other way, so affecting was his performance. And I fancied as I left, to the screams of children playing at the Margaret Mahy Playground across the road, that they might not all be squeals of delight…

Mains

After that kind of darkness what you need is something different, distracting and refreshing. Science Fiction Triple Feature offered a trio of writers of different flavours reading stories and excerpts.

A. J. Fitzwater, a local writer of Spec-Fic (Speculative Fiction) opened with a really interesting take on post-apocalyptic tales, telling the story of a trans vlogger and traveller making their way across Europe in the wake of some catastrophic outbreak. They are on the hunt for… tampons. Which is an amusing twist on the usual dystopian scavenging one usually expects from tales like this, and one that I have always wondered about myself. Sure, the characters in The Walking Dead always look sufficiently unwashed and grimey… but they still seem to be able to find their colour of hair dye and everyone’s top lip is still getting waxed so how post-apocalyptic is it really? Yes, I do have tampons in my emergency kit, and yes, so should you.

Another local sci-fi/fantasy writer, Karen Healey then took the mic (in a Thor-themed dress that I am most covetous of) and read from her version of Beauty and the Beast in which Beauty’s quest involves dark, spooky creatures who have possessed her beloved father, a malady that only a strapping magical beast might be able to cure. And American author Ted Chiang read a strange and perplexing story of science used to support fiction – a comment on the nature of faith and truth, perhaps.

Ted Chiang with A. J Fitzwater and Karen Healey. New Regent Street Pop-up Festival. WORD Christchurch Festival 2018. Thursday 30 August 2018. File reference: 2018-08-30-IMG_0119

Dessert

A small sorbet of something completely different was on offer at Fiksate Gallery (a place that I would very much like to go back to) in the form of touching, poignant poetry. Personal tales of a loved one’s dementia, or legendary tales of some guy called “Maui”. Short and bittersweet. The perfect ending course to this pop-up adventure.

New Regent Street Pop Up Festival, WORD Christchurch Festival 2018. Thursday 30 August 2018. File reference: 2018-08-30-IMG_0096

Find out more

• Our WORD Christchurch 2018 page
• WORD Christchurch festival programme

National Poetry Day Picks

Despite the beauty of timeless poetry, there is nothing quite as likely to get blood boiling and teeth gnashing, as a conversation about favourite poets. There is a Daumier lithograph called ‘A Literary discussion in the second balcony’ depicting a group of men brawling in an opera box upon such a ‘discussion’. However, National Poetry Day on Friday 24 August, is calling for a good ‘literary brawl’, and below is a list of my ten favourite poetry volumes to add to the furore.

The Poems of Tennyson

If you are wanting to dapple in sheer sunlit perfection, you couldn’t do any better than read a volume of poetry by Alfred Lord Tennyson. From ‘The Lady of Shalott’ to ‘Idylls of the King’, each poem in this collection is word perfect, cementing Tennyson’s reputation as perhaps the most-loved poet of the Victorian era

Eugene Onegin

If you can’t see yourself getting though a daunting looking volume of poetry in its entirety, why not try this beautiful novel in verse by ‘Russia’s Shakespeare’, Alexander Pushkin. Through exquisite prose, Pushkin relates the timeless love story between Eugene Onegin, a world weary dandy, and Tatayana a diffident but passionate young woman. This fine translation manages to capture both the rhythm and beauty of Pushkin’s novel in verse, making it a sheer joy to read.

W.B. Yeats

You would be hard pressed to find a list of greatest poets that doesn’t include W.B. Yeats. Reading this wonderful collection of his work, it isn’t hard to see why. A prolific poet who is dearly loved for his moving poems about Ireland, as well as his perceptive meditations on life and death, Yeats is certainly justified in being regarded as one of the most important poets of the twentieth century.

Selected Poems

This selection of Byron’s works includes the beautiful Hebrew melodies and the complete text of lengthier works such as Childe Harolde, an enduring classic. Mad, bad and gloriously dangerous to know, who could not love this selection of his works (and, lets face it, the mad, bad man himself).

Collected

This beautiful selection of Auden’s works includes such loved poems as ‘Funeral Blues’ and ‘In Praise of Limestone’ (who knew limestone could so inspire readers, such is the power of Auden). This selection showcases the amazing diversity of Auden’s writing and its incredible beauty. Mention must be made here of Tom Hiddlestone’s beautiful recital of ‘As I walked One Evening’. If you do nothing else this National Poetry Day, please listen to this and you will be inspired to read this volume of Auden in its entirety.

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is one of the most beloved, and influential poets of the nineteenth century. Little of Dickinson’s vast work are known to have been published during her lifetime, due to their astonishing originality, but this collection brings together 1775 of her poems, doing justice to a truly unique and insightful  American voice.

Rubāʻīyāt of Omar Khayyam

Perhaps the most celebrated meditation on the brevity of life, this 101 verse narrative known as the ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’ is filled with perception, wit, and beauty. Over two hundred years old, this narrative pieced together from Khayyam’s quatrains by Edward Fitzgerald, caused a storm upon its publication for the sheer distinctiveness of its voice. Today it remains an accessible yet incredibly profound mediation on human existence.

The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë

You may know the Brontes better for their incredible contributions to English literature in the form of novels (i.e ‘Wuthering Heights, ‘Jane Eyre’, ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’) but Bronte fans would be truly missing out if they were to pass up on their poetry. This volume contains the complete works of Emily Bronte’s poetry, and it is every bit as accomplished as her only published novel, Wuthering Heights.

Christina Rossetti

Popular for her effervescent ballads, and incisive poems on love, Christina Rossetti is a poet who seems to become more and more celebrated as time moves on. This beautiful collection contains her complete works including perhaps her most famous poem, ‘Goblin Market’, some terrifying childrens verses, beautiful sonnets, and romantic verses.

Selected Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love Elizabeth Barret Browning – let me count the ways… This would actually take far too long so I will just say that this volume of her selected poetry will say it all. Including her much loved ‘Sonnets from The Portuguese’, this beautiful volume of her poetry perfectly showcases the perfection of her work, with every line a sheer pleasure to read.

The Complete Nonsense and Other Verse

Okay, I did say ten picks, but including a light, humorous poet, who doesn’t write with brooding intensity but rather of gentleman and ladies from various parts of the country, did seem too brave a step for me. Edward Lear is my ‘additional’ pick, a fun and fantastical poet whose writing is always sheer fun and joyous to read.

Agree or disagree, there really is a poet out there for everyone. If you have never been convinced of this fact before and have always thought that poetry is strictly for the somewhat soppy, over sentimental birds, please think again. There are poems for literally every taste and every situation-death, war, love, childhood, loss, grief, the list goes on, and with all good poems, the words live on, capturing human emotions in a way that no other art form quite can.

If reading poetry is not your thing and you are more of a listener, there are some great poetry events on at WORD Christchurch Festival 2018 to help celebrate National Poetry Day. These include a lunchtime reading with celebrated NZ poet and winner of Te Mata Poet Laureate (2002), Elizabeth Smither, as well as the 2018 Christchurch Poetry Slam. You can also see Ray’s super helpful blog detailing many other poetry workshops and events in Christchurch.