Saturday, July 31, 2010

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!

2 comments:

Mary McCallum said...

Sounds wonderful Vanda... lovely to know you're enjoying Tuesday Poem, it's bloomed in a way I hadn't expected ... if you ever change your mind about poetry, flick me a line, we'll pop you on the TP waitlist. Hmm, crime poetry - now that's an idea...

TK Roxborogh said...

I loved the event. So sorry I had to leave at interval (the organises should have stated the time and we would have made other arrangements!). Sorry to have missed Diane. She is an exceptionally accessible writer.

do try your hand at poetry. That's my little side exercise to hone my writing skills.