Poetry partnership reaches for the stars

Prominent Auckland poets are helping to lead an innovative community poetry project, which will start this week during Matariki, the Maori New Year.

Michele Leggott  (left) and Selina Tusitala Marsh,  (right), known as the rap poet, are involved in the project, which has been developed as a partnership between The University of Auckland, local communities and the Michael King Writers’ Centre in Devonport.

The project kicks off this week with a series of school poetry workshops around the theme of Matariki. The workshops, involving ten schools at primary, intermediate and secondary level, are being held in Otahuhu, Devonport and the North Shore. Students are challenged to write a million poems for Matariki.
Several posters have been designed to celebrate different aspects of Matariki, including stars, kite flying and harvesting. Students are able to choose the theme they like and write their poems on the posters, which will be gathered up and displayed in local communities. Adults are also welcome to write a poem.

As part of the project, a resource kit for teachers has been developed, along with a community kit and other resources.
Matariki will be only the first of a series of topics developed as part of the project that is designed to encourage creative writing as well as helping build to build local communities.
All of the resources, teaching and community materials, as well as samples from the community projects will be brought together in a major new feature on the nzepc (New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre) web site, which is supported by The University of Auckland.

A Million Poems for Matariki was initially developed by Devonport Community Coordinator Maire Vieth in 2009. The concept is now being extended to cover a wider range of community poetry activities.

The project has been funded by a grant from the North Shore City Council’s ARST fund, a fund established especially to support the arts across the Auckland region. The grant is being used to develop poetry posters, teaching material and community resource kits, as well as to develop the web site.