On 16 February 2018, I was invited to be part this amazing event organised by poet and librarian Hannah Mettner to celebrate The Next Word exhibition which is on until 24 March at the Tunrnbull Library at the National Library.

It was great to chat with Hera Lindsay Bird, Freya Daly Sadgrove and Tayi Tibble about revealing poetry and how much information is too much.

Hera Lindsay Bird’s debut self-titled book of verse was published in 2016 to immediate and vast acclaim, and won best first book of poetry at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her poems have been referred to as nihilistic, provocative, offensive, fearless, flamboyant. Naturally, much of the discussion has centred around her free disclosures around sex. “I think people more than ever now are interested in hearing other people talk really candidly about their lives,” she says. She has a new chapbookm, Pamper me to Hell & back, due out February 2018.

Freya Daly Sadgrove is a writer and performer in Wellington. She is co-founder of punk band-cum-performance collective The Great Danger. Her poems have been described as “eclectic and lively”, dealing honestly with chaotic relationships and mental health. She works at The Children’s Bookshop.

Tayi Tibble is a Wellington based poet of Maori descent (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui/Ngāti Porou). She was awarded the 2017 Adam Prize for her work In a Fish Tank Filled with Pink Light, a collection which explores the lives of four generations of Māori women, written as part of her 2017 Master of Arts at the IIML. Her writing has been called “powerful, restrained but unafraid”.

Thank you so much to the National Library of New Zealand :: Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa for holding this event and also for all their help with this recording.

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Episode 55: Personal Poetry – How much is too much?