Performance poetry launches Writers Read series

Fresh from winning the Jesse Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry at the New Zealand Book Awards, poet Lynn Jenner will speak at Massey’s Wellington campus on Thursday as part of the Writers Read series.

Auckland-based poet Selina Tusitala Marsh, who won the same prize last year, will join her.

The event will be chaired by Dr Ingrid Horrocks, from the School of English and Media Studies.

The reading will include music and performance poetry from the women.

Jenner’s first collection of poetry, Dear Sweet Harry, which is partly homage to escapologist Harry Houdini, has been put to live music treatment via a collaboration between the poet and three musicians from the band Klezmer Rebs.

She calls this process Klezmerising Houdini. “Klezmer music,” she writes, “does not suffer from any Anglo-Saxon repression – it is music to get drunk to, or dance to, and definitely music to cry to.”

Similarly, Auckland-based Pacific poet Tusitala Marsh’s first book of collected poems Fast talking PI was also presented in a different medium, being sold with an accompanying CD. From Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent, Tusitala Marsh established and coordinates Pasifika Poetry, an online hub celebrating the poetry of the people of the Pacific.

The first Massey Writers Read 2011, will be held at 6pm on Thursday August 4, in the Theatrette of the Museum Building, Entrance D, Buckle St, Wellington.