Slight travelogue
Members of the Otago Poetry Collective in attendance included Richard Reeve, Jeanne Bernhardt, Kay McKenzie Cooke, Emma Neale, David Howard, Michael Harlow, Jenny Powell and Peter Olds, in no particular order. They're all practised poetry readers/performers and for me it was a nice introduction to the work of Peter Olds and Michael Harlow who are both very established but whom I hadn't had a chance to read before. Michael in particular is a lovely reader and his work is mellifluous, simple but never predictable. A highlight was Richard Reeve's reading of a work-in-progress about a relationship between a wilding horse and sheep, possibly a treatise on what it is for two humans to be together. I was also rather enarmoured of Emma Neale's launch speech for Incontinence which was generous and incisive in its appreciation of Richard's incredible skill with form - which is, according to Emma, and in my comparatively uninformed opinion, unequalled in contemporary New Zealand poetry. The panel discussion about Otago/Southland poets concluded that poetic voices in the South are more distinctive than those in the North, possibly because of the influence of the two main writing schools (Vic's International Institute Modern Letters, and the Auckland University Master of Creative Writing) which tend to produce poets with similar flavours.
I read three of my own pieces at an open-mic event for Southland poets (I think I still count - being from Southland is not something one escapes) and received generous and thoughtful feedback from David Howard and Jeanne Bernhardt. All in all it was a great surprise experience. I remain hopeful that the week will continue kindly.
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