University of AucklandFaculty of Arts

Inaugural Lecture

Professor Michele Leggott
English Department
Good Eyes: Poetry, People and New Media

A Million Poems for Matariki, Poetry off the Page and a trans-Tasman poetry symposium called Home & Away have filled my field of vision for most of this year.
Each is collaborative, exploratory and dedicated to making poetry go places it might not otherwise get to. The ‘good eyes’ that take me to such places belong to those whose attention I engage (colleagues, students, school children, other poets). Underpinning these real-world projects is the web base we have come to regard as indispensable to our teaching, research and community activity. The new models emerging for poetry and its transmissions are hybrid, flexible and resilient. With them we are working out how to conduct ourselves and our language in the early 21st century.

About the lecturer:
Michele Leggott (photo by Tim Page) teaches poetry at the University of Auckland and was the Inaugural New Zealand Poet Laureate 2008-09. She has published seven books of poetry, including Milk & Honey (2005, 2006), Journey to Portugal (2007) and Mirabile Dictu (2009).
She edited Robin Hyde’s long poem The Book of Nadath (1999) and Young Knowledge: The Poems of Robin Hyde (2003). A major project since 2001 has been the development of the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc) at the University of Auckland.
Michele was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in the 2009 New Year Honours for services to poetry. See also www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/leggott/index.asp

Wednesday 22 September, 6.30pm
Conference Centre, 22 Symonds Street
The University of Auckland