National Poetry Day Do

Poetry isn't really my thing, it's something I've only come to appreciate later in life due to interviewing some wonderful poets on the Write On radio show and discovering that I can enjoy it. I think I was tarnished early on in life by having the war poets inflicted upon me at high school. That is my only memory of poetry, well, besides Pam Ayers (who I loved) so I thought all serious poetry was, well, serious. And depressing.

Thankfully I have been cured of that somewhat, and I have to say I'm enjoying the Tuesday Poem phenomenon that has flourished in the blogosphere.

I also enjoyed the National Poetry Day event held in Dunedin last night at the City Library. It was a very civilised affair with wine and nibbles and a full house. The event was organised and MC'd by Cy Matthews and the poets reading were Jenny Powell, Sarah Paterson, Michael Harlow, Rogelio Guedea, Amos Mann and Diane Brown.

Rogelio Guedia is Mexican and one of the highlights for me was him reading his poems in Spanish and the Cy Matthews reading them in English. It gave a lovely taste of what the Festival Internacional de Poesia in Nicaragua would be like.

My other highlight was Diane Brown - I always love her work, but her readings this evening were especially poignant as she read poems of her parents, and dealing with their advancing age and mortality.

So it was a great evening, and a lovely place to catch up with some writery friends I hadn't seen in a while.

No, it won't induce me to try my hand at it!