POETRYDAY.CO.NZ |
If you want to be the first to know please subscribe to our newsletter here.
You can also follow us on Instagram @givenwords and Twitter @givenwords
For further enquiries you can contact us at nzgivenwords@gmail.com
POETRYDAY.CO.NZ |
And the five words are…
pō / dusk
hau / breath
tūpuna / ancestors
hiki / raise
karoro / black-backed gull
We invite you to write a poem which includes the five words and send it to us before midnight on 27 August, National Poetry Day. Poems can be written in English, te reo Māori, or a mixture of the two, as long as the five words are included in either language. Please see the full rules below.
We will award prizes for the Best Poem and the Best Poem by Under-16s. The winners will receive books courtesy of Mākaro Press and The Cuba Press (see below).
We invite you to watch Noho Mai:
‘Mō koutou e noho tāwhiti ana i te kainga, mō koutou anō te ahi kā.’
The rules:
Mikaela Nyman is a Kiwi Finn born on the Åland Islands in Finland and living in New Zealand. Four years in Vanuatu, a sister’s death and a cyclone (TC Pam in 2015) changed her life. Her PhD research focuses on creative writing, rhetorical alliance and Ni-Vanuatu women’s voices. Her first novel Sado (2020) is set in Vanuatu. Her first poetry collection, När vändkrets läggs mot vändkrets, was published in Finland in 2019 and was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2020. It connects the islands of her heart: the Åland Islands, Vanuatu and New Zealand. She collaborated with Ni-Vanuatu writers and edited, alongside Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen, Sista Stanap Strong: A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (2021) to commemorate Vanuatu’s 40th independence anniversary.
Michael (Meeka) Todd is a second-year MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at Colorado State University where they teach composition and rhetoric, as well as work as an editorial assistant for Colorado Review. Their recent words have appeared in Hippocampus and Foglifter Press’s anthology Home is Where You Queer Your Heart.
Peta-Maria Tunui is an Aotearoa poet and creative who writes to express the beauty and pain of discovering and re-discovering her identity and connection as a proud wahine Māori. She has published poetry in Eat Your Words (2010), performed with In*ter*is*land Collective in the Mana Moana/Mana Wāhine exhibition, and performed collaborative works for Musee du Quai Branley during the Oceania exhibition.
Charles Olsen (Nelson, 1969) has published two collections of poetry, Sr Citizen and Antípodas. In 2017 he was awarded the XIII distinction Poetas de Otros Mundos by the Fondo Poético Internacional, in Spain, in recognition of the high quality of his poetic oeuvre. His poetry films have been featured in Moving Poems, Poetry Film Live, Atticus Review, Blackmail Press and at international poetry film festivals. In 2018 he was awarded the III Antonio Machado Poetry Residency in Segovia and Soria and together with the Colombian writer Lilián Pallares he has recently completed a Visual Artists Residency in the Matadero Centre for Contemporary Creation, Madrid, in 2020-21. He has contributed essays to The Poetics of Poetry Film, Bristol: Intellect Books, S. Tremlett (ed).
About the prizes: The winner of Best Poem will receive Auē by Becky Manawatu and Fragments from an Infinite Catalogue by John Tāne Christeller, courtesy of Mākaro Press and The Cuba Press respectively. |
The winner of Best Poem by Under-16s will receive Des O'Leary's Slice of Heaven from Mākaro Press and the sequel, Under the Radar, just published by The Cuba Press. |