Join us to celebrate the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for Poetry for 2022. We are thrilled to announce that the award is going to poet, Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi and Kāi Tahu) who has won awards for his poetry, editing, and writing for children. Tunui Comet is his eighth collection of poetry. His book Star Waka has been reprinted many times. Robert's an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Massey University. He is a great fan of all kinds of decolonisation.

Robert will be joined by guests, Arihia Latham and Ruby Solly.

Supported by The Lauris Edmond Literary Estate and the Friends of the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for Poetry with sponsorship from The NZ Poetry Society, Victoria University Press and the Todd Trust.

Three experts of the craft talk about how they wrangle the pacing beast to tell their tales. With Christine Leunens, Rachael Herron and Jennifer Lane.

Join poet/editor Ash Davida Jane as she chats to veteran poets Anna Jackson and Sudha Rao about what makes a poem good, how to read poetry and how poems work on the page. 

Can a text become extinct? Is ‘natural selection’ the key to textual survival or are there other genetic processes at work? Marco Sonzogni and Sydney Shep discuss evolutionary translation and how it reconfigures our understanding of what constitutes a ‘text’.

Help us unleash the ninth issue of our hot-blooded little journal. Dress to the nines, and join editors Nikki-Lee Birdsey and Rebecca Hawkes to celebrate a surprise (but always bewitching) coven of contributors from the brand new Sweet Mammalian. Curated by Rebecca Hawkes

Join Brannavan Gnanalingam (Slow Down, You’re Here) as he talks to Kirsten McDougall (She’s A Killer), Whiti Hereaka (Kurangaituku, Legacy) and Sascha Stronach (The Dawnhounds) about the fickle nature of genre demarcations. [Venue is not wheelchair accessible].

Let Cadence Chung transport you to 600BC with her original lyre compositions inspired by Sappho’s fragments. Played on an authentic 7-string lyre and accompanied by fellow young musicians, these songs are full of ancient and modern yearning.