Poetry at the National Library

HEAD to HEAD

Poetry at the National Library

Wednesday 26^th June 2013, 12.15-1.15

Ground Floor, National Library, Molesworth Street, Wellington

Join New Zealand Poet Laureate, Ian Wedde, past-Laureate, Bill Manhire and Hera Lindsay Bird for this lunchtime reading.

The National Library is delighted to host this event that will round off Ian’s two-year tenure as Laureate. This will include Ian and Bill going head to head in the creation of a renga – a form of Japanese poetry with a succession of two-verse sections passed back and forth between the poets, resulting in a linked chain of verses – traditionally 100 sections long.

Former Laureate Cilla McQueen has contributed the line drawing of Ian and Bill, rapper-style at work, in the spirit of what Ian assures us will be a take on the rigorous renga art form, ‘less rigorous in every respect.’

The Library is equally delighted to have Dunedin-based poet Hera Lindsay Bird, taking part in this, her first reading at the National Library.

Funny, adroit, widely read, and stylish, Hera is one of the most striking poets to come through the IIML writing programme at Victoria University. In 2009 she was the winner of the Story! Inc. Prize for Poetry and the Maurice Gee Prize in Children’s Writing. In 2011 she won the prestigious Adam Foundation Prize.

This event is free, bring your lunch and get in early as seating is limited.