Hoopla and LitCrawling and Poetry Conferencing

I am going to have a crazy weekend of literariness this weekend, with the New Zealand Poetry Conference on Friday night, Saturday day and Sunday morning, and LitCrawl on Saturday night. Phew!

At LitCrawl I'm going to be reading with the other five Hoopla poets (ie we've had our poetry collections published as part of Mākaro Press's Hoopla poetry series): Michael Harlow, Stefanie Lash, Jennifer Compton, Bryan Walpert and Carolyn McCurdie. We're going to try to weave our readings together, have our poems talk to each other, rather than just be six individual poets. We're on at 8.30 at the Concerned Citizen's Collective on 17 Tory Street. Would be lovely to see you there - though there are soooo many amazing things on all at the same time that I have no idea how I am going to choose. I wish I could split myself into about three people... Anyway, check out the programme here: http://litcrawl.co.nz/.

And tomorrow afternoon at 3.15 at the New Zealand Poetry Conference at the National Library I'm going to be part of a panel about publishing with Mary McCallum (Mākaro Press) and Doc Drumheller (editor of Catalyst journal). We're going to talk about what we do and how we work with poets, and will answer questions. I think it's not too late to register to come to the conference, and I understand it's also possible to go to individual sessions and just particular days. More info here: http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/PoetryConference2015.

Tuesday poem over on the Tuesday Poem, and Hawke's Bay poetry conference

I'm the editor of the Tuesday Poem blog this week. I always enjoy having the opportunity to share a poem I love, and this time I've chosen a poem, 'No time like the ‘80s/ No future' by Airini Beautrais, from the latest issue of JAAM, which has just come back from the printers and is filling up a large area of my dining room. It's a great issue, guest edited by Harvey Molloy (poetry) and Clare Needham (prose), and I hope you will get yourself a copy. You could even subscribe and we will send it to your letterbox!

In other news, I'm just back from a poetry conference in the Hawke's Bay. It was organised to celebrate the 20th (or maybe 21st) anniversary of their Live Poets Society group. It was such a lovely conference with a really good, open, sharing feeling. There was such a variety of poets - different ages and levels of experience, and totally different styles of poetry. And very democratic. The only poet who got longer than anyone else to read was Vincent O'Sullivan as the poet laureate. All the rest of us invited readers only got 10 minutes - strictly enforced!

I got to read my poetry on Saturday night, and I was also involved in a panel discussion about what editors want (what don't we want!) yesterday morning. Due to poor time management and having too much to say, I think I only said about half of what I wanted to say. So I have an idea I might write it up as a blog post.