Auckland Joins Largest Poetry Event in History

15-9-11...Printable Reality press release.



The power of the word - Auckland Joins Largest Poetry Event in History.


Auckland poets and musicians will link with poets and audiences across the planet on September 24 as part of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, the largest poetry event in history.

On that day, poets will take part in demonstrations and celebrations of poetry to promote change; environmental,
social or political change - 600 events in 450 cities and 95 countries towards peace and sustainability.

Around Auckland other poets under the project You & The Guerrilla Poets Join 100 Thousand Poets for Change will be taking to the streets with poetry banners, flags and chalk to create a poetic ruckus as they move from Meyers Park to Albert Park for a guerrilla-style poetry sharing afternoon. September 24, 12- 3 PM.

The Pah Homestead in Hillsborough’s In VOICE + Music performance also links on the day. “This was a way to bring New Zealand poets into a worldwide event and that's why we joined up, as we were already performing on the day,” says co-ordinator Kirsten Warner from Printable Reality which organises the monthly poetry and music performances at The Pah. “Some of our guest poets may bring their own social and political concerns to their performance, but our event at The Pah is about connecting people through poetry.”

Going West 2011 Poetry Slam winner Brad McCormick, poets Murray Edmond, Kirsten Warner, Callum Gentleman, Penny Somervaille and harpist Cathie Harrop are part of an eclectic line-up at In VOICE + Music, 2-4 PM, Saturday, September 24, at The TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre – The Pah Homestead in Hillsborough.

Immediately following September 24 all documentation on the 100TPC.org website will be preserved by Stanford University in California, which has recognized 100 Thousand Poets for Change as an historical event and will archive the complete contents of the website, 100TPC.org, as part of their digital archiving program LOCKSS.

CONTACT: printable@printablereality.com

PERFORMERS:

Poet essayist, playwright, dramaturge Murray Edmond, is Associate-Professor
in Drama at the University of Auckland. His latest volume of poetry,
Walls to Kick and Hills to Sing from: A Comedy with Interruptions (AUP). He was dramaturge for Indian Ink Theatre Company, whose latest play,
The Guru of Chai won best play of the year at the Chapman Tripp awards in 2011. Murray is editor of the on-line journal Ka Mate Ka Ora:
A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics.

This year’s Going West Poetry Slam winner is Brad McCormick. He made his performance poetry debut at Poetry Idol in 2009 where he had a solid top four finish. What followed was two years overseas where he didn't write a single thing. But the 2011 Going West Poetry Slam broke the writing drought and despite forgetting a huge chunk of one of his pieces at the heats (and even telling the audience this fact while on stage), he made it into the final and won. He lives in Kingsland with Nancy, his lovely girlfriend/muse/poetry-guinea-pig.

Acclaimed harpist, singer, actor, broadcaster and story-teller Cathie Harrop plays and joins poet Kirsten Warner in performance
Kirsten Warner's poetry has been published in Landfall, Takahe, Bravado, JAAM and in the collections Our Own Kind, poems about animals, and Just Another Fantastic Anthology, Auckland in Poetry. She was joint-winner of the Landfall Essay Competition in 2008 with creative non-fiction concerning history, colonisation and creativity. She has worked widely in journalism, television, written television drama and non-fiction books and published, broadcast and won prizes for poetry and short fiction. She is currently finishing her first novel. A founder member of Printable Reality, she has co-ordinated and MCed monthly performances at The Pah Homestead in 2011


Penny Somervaille is one of four MCs at Auckland’s long-running weekly Poetry Live open mic. She graduated with a BA in English in 2009, has been writing for a long time and is learning to enjoy reading her work to an audience. She has been published in various ‘zines and is contemplating publishing some of her own work any year soon.

“I write words, I set most of them to music, I plug my strat into a fender amp, put on a hat & I hit the road.” Mr Callum Gentleman is a writer, performer and promoter, and host of the Cafe One 2 One open mic. He has been plotting and playing gigs at The Wine Cellar, Whammy Bar, Wellington's Happy, One 2 One, The Bunker, the sadly demised London Bar and many others. He also created, curated and performed gigs at The George in Mile End (the real London).

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