Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Slam o'clock






By now feeling right back at home in Auckland after a hectic "weekend" of performance. Last in the lineup was the Poetry Slam @ Poetry Live, which I am again running three monthly this year. The winner was Jess Mariglio who comes from the US of A (and hates having that held against her). Jess is fascinating - she's on a fellowship from her (enlightened) university to travel around the world for a year and make a documentary about performance poetry. And she said the Auckland Poetry scene compares very favourably to other cities... we're friendly, inclusive, there's no diva behaviour (well, very little), and the quality of our best poets is right up there. But she says it so much more gracefully than me - check out her blog, it's wonderful reading for anyone who's feeling the least bit cynical about being a writer (and we all do, don't we, when the little spaces we inhabit in our minds get claustrophobic after so many hours?). Thanks, Jess, for your words. And your generosity in coming to visit us.

Thanks to Gus yet again for the photos....

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