Poetry in Paekākāriki

Press Statement
For immediate release
4/09/2014

Poetry in Paekākāriki

Three Paekākāriki women Therese Lloyd, Rachel O’Neill, and Maria McMillan are coming together next Sunday for an evening chaired by fellow Paekākāriki poet Helen Heath. They’ll be reading in their local hall from their books and chatting about their work. All three poets have had first collections published in the last two years.

Their poems deal with wide ranging subjects from egg and spoon races, to vast imagined mathematical terrains, from love affairs to compost, from paintings to aerial performance.

“Even we’re not quite sure what will happen on the night,” said Ms McMillan.

“We’ve never read all together before so it’ll be fun to see what themes emerge and whether there are similarities in our work we hadn’t thought of. Sometimes one poet’s poem can prompt a response from another poet. We’ll just go with it.”

In 2007 Lloyd was awarded the Schaeffer Fellowship to spend a year attending the acclaimed Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her collection Other Animals was published by Victoria University Press (VUP) last year. McMillan’s chap book The Rope Walk, with a letter-press cover produced in Paekākāriki was published by Seraph Press last year. Her first full length collection Tree Space was published in June this year by VUP. Artist, film-maker and writer O’Neill, who has appeared in the annual Best New Zealand Poems, had her first book One Human in Height published last year by Hue and Cry Press. Chair Helen Heath won the 2013 Best First Book of Poetry NZ Post Book Awards with Graft.

“It’ll be a lovely relaxed evening. Come and have a cup of tea and a listen,” says McMillan.
All proceeds will be donated to Kia Ora Gaza.

Poetry, 7pm, Sunday 14th September 2014, St Peter’s Hall, Beach Road, Paekākāriki, $4-$10.

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