Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The Place of Poetry - Former UK Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion joins current NZ Poet Laureate Ian Wedde, Bill Manhire and Bernadette Hall in an evening of poetry



Former United Kingdom Poet Laureate, Sir Andrew Motion (left - Photo by David Rose) joins current New Zealand Poet Laureate Ian Wedde, Bill Manhire and Bernadette Hall for an evening of poetry on the subject of place.

Ian Wedde reflects on the topic thus:

‘Poetry is often associated with places; and it occupies a place in cultures and societies. Are these kinds of location related, and if so how?

Aboriginal song-lines, Horace’s Sabine farm, Wordsworth’s Lake District, Robert Burns’ Ayrshire, the burnt-off country of Blanche Baughan’s ‘Bush Section’, Elizabeth Bishop’s Brazil, Pablo Neruda’s Chile, Judith Wright’s Australian ‘Blood Country’, Robin Hyde’s Island Bay, the Gallipoli of Paraire Tomoana’s ‘E pari rā’, Allen Curnow’s Lone Kauri Road, Kendrick Smithyman’s Tomarata, Mahmoud Darwish’s Galilee, the ‘my country’ of A.R. Ammons’s The Snow Poems, Ted Berrigan’s New York City, the place of exile in Bei Dao’s poems, the view from Jenny Bornholdt’s work-shed window, the ‘environs of the goat’ in Sophie Loizeau’s poems ... 

All these lead to another sense in which poetry is placed: how and where is it placed in culture, what role and significance does it have? Is it an object of delectation in the literary salon, the anthem of popular uprising, the etherised patient of academic forensics, the repository of community memory, the lyric downloaded from iTunes, the challenge at a poetry slam? What kind of esteem does poetry command in the cultures of different societies? And how does this esteem – this cultural location – relate (or not) to that other meaning of ‘place’, to physical location?’

Venue: Te Wharewaka o Poneke, Wellington waterfront. Thursday 30 August, 7.30 for 8pm start.

No comments: