National Poetry Day: Friday 30 July
Friday July 30 is New Zealand’s National Poetry Day and to celebrate the lead up to this event I’ve been doing an interview with a NZ poet every Saturday for Women on Air, Plains 96.9 FM. You can check out three of the interviews to date on podcast—just click on the poet’s name below and either press the “play” icon to start the interview, or download the mp3 version:
Sarah Broom: Tigers at Awhitu
Ingrid Horrocks: Mapping the Distance
Joanna Preston: winner of Australia’s prestigious Mary Gilmore Prize for her debut collection The Summer King
Next weekend I will be completing the poetry month series by interviewing Bernadette Hall, one of the 3 poetry finalists in this year’s NZ Post National Book Awards for her 2009 collection, The Lustre Jug (VUP). My colleague Ruth will be interviewing Selina Tusitala Marsh, as well, winner of the NZ Society of Authors’ Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry for her debut collection Fast Talking PI (AUP).
And today I interviewed National Poetry Day Coordinator, Siobhan Harvey, about events happening around the country next Friday–rather a lot as it happens. You can check out events in your area on the website, here.
But just in case you thought that was all that’s happening for National Poetry Day, the Tuesday Poem Blog (of which I am a member) will be featuring a special posting. The hub site will feature poems by all 3 Poetry finalists in the NZ Post Book Awards 2010: Bernadette Hall, Michael Harlow and Brian Turner, all on a theme of “New Zealand”. The contributing Tuesday Poets will also post a poem with “New Zealand” as the theme, although for those Tuesday Poets not from NZ poems may also be about the joys of poetry and the making of it. So be sure to drop by next Friday—as well as Tuesday—to check us out.