Poetry reading at Pt Chev Library 2pm Saturday

This is a page I’ve been playing around with from my Katherine Mansfield project. I was having fun going through my beautiful edition of Buller’s Birds, and thinking of Richard Bird in the Bush.

Of course I’m using this image as a foray into my public service announcement: This Saturday at 2pm I will be reading with some wonderful poets at the Pt Chev Library in Auckland. There will be complimentary tea and cake! The poets are Janet Charman, Bob Orr, Jo Emeney and Amanda Eason.

I’m a little bit nervous about this – I haven’t written any poetry since about 2002. My first literary success was a poem – I won my school poetry competition, and that gave me an inkling that I might be writer. In the late 90s and early 200s I had a run as a performance poet. But then I came to the realisation that I preferred to read novels, short stories and comics, and that’s what I ought to write. So I’m not entirely sure what I will be reading. A paragraph from my novels, with lots of pauses between the sentences so you might be fooled into thinking that it’s poetry? Or should I dig out the poems I wrote in my 20s? Perhaps I’ll just read poems by my friends. Please leave poetry suggestions in the comments!

Anyway, come along if you’re in the neighbourhood and support the arts. And read your own poems too – there’s an open mike session after the guest ‘poets’ read.