{"id":164,"date":"2010-06-19T19:44:25","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T07:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=164"},"modified":"2010-06-19T19:44:25","modified_gmt":"2010-06-19T07:44:25","slug":"catalyst-open-mic-poetry-nights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/06\/19\/catalyst-open-mic-poetry-nights\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalyst Open Mic Poetry Nights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catalyst <\/strong><\/a>is a literary journal published out of Lyttelton (the port town on the other side of the hills from Christchurch) with a focus on poetry, prose, experimental works, song lyrics, script\/screenplay excerpts as well as visual art and spoken word. I personally think it is one of the more interesting literary journals currently being published in New Zealand: not only are a diverse range of “voices” represented, especially in poetry, but you can also expect to find poetry by Cuban or West African poets\u2014amongst others\u2014as well as New Zealanders. Expect the unexpected, in other words.<\/p>\n

The editors are Ciaran Fox and Doc Drumheller, and besides producing Catalyst they have run several very successful poetry idol competitons as part of the biennial Christchurch Writers’ festival<\/a><\/strong>\u2014as well as keeping the Catalyst Open Mic poetry nights running once a month for several years now.\u00a0 The current venue is Al’s Bar<\/strong><\/a> on Dundas Street, on the fringe of downtown Christchurch (no, that isn’t<\/span> an oxymoron) and the evenings are a little like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates\u2014you never know what you’re going to get. From rap to ballads, straight-out storytelling to sonnets, pub poetry to post-modern offerings, actual haiku to “just very short poems”, there’s always an array of poetic fare on offer in that most egalitarian of environments: the pub. Elitist, the Catalyst open mic evenings are not; fun, they usually always are.<\/p>\n

So if you’re a poet\u2014or just enjoy hearing poetry\u2014and are in Christchurch (that’s South Island, New Zealand) on the first Wednesday of any month, Al’s Bar on Dundas Street, from 8 pm until the joint stops jumpin’, is the place to be.<\/p>\n

And just a whisper in advance\u2014there’s changes ahead on the Catalyst blog and as part of those changes I’ll be posting a guest blog on their site on the 1st of every month, starting 1 July.\u00a0 And just to get further into the giveaway spirit started here this week, I’ll be giving away some free poetry collections (ie books) as part of the opening salvo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catalyst is a literary journal published out of Lyttelton (the port town on the other side of the hills from Christchurch) with a focus on poetry, prose, experimental works, song lyrics, script\/screenplay excerpts as well as visual art and spoken word. I personally think it is one of the more interesting literary journals currently being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}