Ōtautahi Tiny Fest - a feast of art - Two stand-out shows featuring poetry

Ōtautahi Tiny Fest is a remarkable two day festival of epic proportions - 45 artists and 21 shows over two intense days - featuring theatre, poetry, dance, story-telling and intersectional forms showcasing the cutting edge of performative practice in Ōtautahi/Christchurch.

 

Here's a couple of shows that we think you might want to check out from two of Ōtautahi's most electric performance poets and theatre practitioners.

 

Gay Death Stock Take

Ōtautahi and NZ Poetry Slam Champion Nathan Joe presents a 'theatrical performance essay (with poetry elements)!' Kind of part TED-talk, part performance poem, part museum of personal history. Where birthday party meets mourning ritual. A brand new work by Nathan Joe, made in collaboration with Daniel Goodwin.

Nathan Joe is an award-winning theatre-maker and performance poet based between Tāmaki Makaurau and Ōtautahi. Recent work includes curating BIPOC spoken word event DIRTY PASSPORTS at Basement Theatre, a staged reading of his play Scenes from a Yellow Peril at Auckland Arts Festival, co-creating Slay the Dragon or Save the Dragon or Neither with A Slightly Isolated Dog, and directing Yang/Young/杨 for Auckland Theatre Company. He is also the current National Slam Champion.

Saturday 27th November, 10am

Ron Ball Studio, Christchurch Town Hall

Book Tickets 

 

 

 

Notes on a Migration

‘I think of my mother and father, standing by sunflowers
the plane tilts 
in a slow motion leapfrog 
to limboland
tucked knees under my chin 
the lights dim 
leaving, heading 
with both feet in’

'an imaginative journey traversing the entire world in this intimate, electric, political, part-memoir, part-story dreamscape drawn from Ullyart’s poetic journaling since leaving Heathrow and stepping foot in Ōtautahi in late 2017. She is supported on stage by experimental music maker Admiral Drowsy in a new collaboration especially for Tiny Fest.'

 

Hester Ullyart is an award-winning multi-disciplinary maker- writer, actor, visual and spoken word artist based between England and Ōhinehou since 2017. Original plays include; ‘The Ballad of Paragon Station’ (Stellar Original Content NZFringe, Ed Fest) ‘Paragon Dreams’ (Hull Truck, LAF). Original film includes ‘I am all the rooms of the house’ (Best Poetry Short DoDFest2020). Other Ōtautati work includes ‘How Dare You’ (Free Theatre), ‘Ship of Dreams’(Delaney Davidson). Directing includes ‘Our Town, Gladys and Alfie, Gladys and Daphne’ (LAF) and Robin Judkins’ ‘Free Bus to God’. Aotearoa screen work includes One Lane Bridge S2 (TVNZ/Great Southern). She is a National Poetry Slam 2020 finalist. 

Saturday 27th November, 5.30pm

Ron Ball Studio, Christchurch Town Hall

Book Tickets

 

Chop. The. Mop! Close shave for a good cause

 

Thursday 11th November, 7pm

Victoria Park Band Rotunda, Rangiora

Tonight as part of WORD Christchurch, Catalyst's own Doc Drumheller goes under the clippers for the Cancer Society.

Supported by guest poets, waiata, and poetry from several workshops facilitated for the Cancer Society, Doc will perform live while being shorn of his trademark beard and locks. The effort is in support of a call for donations to Doc's fundraising page for the Cancer Society.

This event is operating under Covid Alert Level 2 restrictions (please wear masks, respect physical distancing and capacity limit is 100 people). If the Alert Level is increased, attendance will be cancelled and the event will be live-streamed via Facebook.

Guest poets include: Bernadette Hall, Ben Brown, John Allison and Ciaran Fox.

It'll be a brave, new Doc come tomorrow morning.

 

https://www.youcanforcancer.org.nz/jason-clements https://www.youcanforcancer.org.nz/jason-clements

https://www.youcanforcancer.org.nz/jason-clements

Christchurch Poetry Slam 2021 - we have a winner!

 

Congratulations to 2021 Christchurch Poetry Slam Champ Nathan Joe!

Runner-up - Ray Shipley

3rd place - RiktheMost 

On a balmy night in Foundation Cafe at Tūranga the top 10 poets from the preliminary heat in August slugged it out across 3 rounds. It was the 10th anniversary of the Christchurch Slam being part of the national network of slams (for the pre-history, look up Poetry Idol here).

To mark the occasion, poet and artist Melanie McKerchar created a stunning trophy (the first since Poetry Idol) and lifted for the first time by Nathan at the end of a challenging and fierce three rounds.

The field of 10 were mighty and diverse - half of them were previous Slam winners (including international Slams) or runners-up, and the other half included first-timers this year.

The top 3 will go forward to the 2021 NZ Poetry Slam (to be held February 2022).

Thank you to WORD Christchurch for once again incorporating the Slam into the festival and for pulling off a postponed festival in very challenging and uncertain times.

Thank you UBS Books for sponsoring prize vouchers for our winners.

Thank you to Foundation Cafe at Tūranga for being brilliant hosts and problem solvers.

Christchurch Poetry Slam - it's on (again!)

 

After holding our breath through this latest Covid outbreak, we're excited to let it all out in the 10th edition of the Christchurch Poetry Slam Final on Wednesday 10th November.

Get ready!

Note: the event is going ahead under Level 2 restrictions - that means wear a mask and venue capacity is limited to allow spacing so get along early if you want to get in and grab a seat. We apologise in advance if you cannot gain entry due to the venue capacity limit. (Obviously that doesn't apply to the Slammers!)

If Christchurch is moved to Alert Level 3 or 4, the event will be cancelled. 

Christchurch Poetry Slam Final

Wednesday 10th November, 7pm (doors open 6pm)

Foundation Cafe, Tūranga, Cathedral Square.

Door charge: $10 cash only

Catalyst volume 18 book launch!

 

Catalyst volume 18 book launch (& open mic!)

Wednesday 3rd November, 7pm

Space Academy, 371 St Asaph St, Christchurch

It's been a helluva ride to get here (do we just say that every year now?) but we're delighted to announce the release of the latest issue of Catalyst into the world. Volume 18, edited by Doc Drumheller marks eighteen years of indie journal Catalyst and eight years under the imprint Republic of Oma Rāpeti Press. Join us to celebrate another outstanding collection of local and international poetry (the best way is by buying a copy, and one for your lover/enemy/whatever)! There'll be a little bit of speechifying, some readings by various contributors and we'll even make time for an open mic - because after all: Catalyst!

Chop the Mop! New date: Weds 11th November

 

Wednesday 11th November, 6.30pm entry by koha

Rangiora Library

Doc's chopping the mop!

Our very own Doc Drumheller, aka Jason Clements is taking the big cut to his lustrous locks and beard for the Cancer Society as part of WORD Christchurch 2021.

Join us for some excellent poetry readings and of course the main event - chopping the iconic beard and hair! Even if you can't join us on the night, we encourage anyone keen to support the work of the Cancer Society to dig deep and contribute to the fundraising effort by visiting:

youcanforcancer.org.nz/jason-clements

Thank you for donating - and good luck spotting Doc in a crowd after this!

Christchurch Poetry Slam 2021 - Get Ready!

 

Christchurch Poetry Slam 2021 - preliminary heat & grand final - THE RULES!

 

To compete in the Grand Final, poets must make the top 10 in the preliminary heat on Wednesday 4th August at Space Academy.

 

Here are the official rules of the Christchurch Poetry Slam as per the NZ Poetry Slam.

Sign-up is on the night only - places are limited so get there early.

Rules for NZ Poetry Slam

• 3 minutes or less with no minimum time (10 second grace period before points deduction)

• Time starts when poet speaks, however while poets can have time to settle and adjust microphone etc, this time is not limitless; ideally a poet should start before 10 seconds.

• Original (i.e. your own) poems only

• No props no music no costumes (i.e. clothing related to the content of your poem)

• In the case of a tie a slam-off will be required

• Random draw, for performance order.

 
Judging and scoring:

• 5 Audience Judges (chosen by MC and/or organiser) display score cards 0-10 (Decimal points allowed)

• Top and bottom scores drop off and total of remaining 3 scores is the total

• If Poet goes over grace period MC or Timekeeper to ask scorer to mark down points after the judges score… (Half a point penalty for every 10 seconds over time)

• After 4 minutes the MC can shut down the poet

• 'Sacrificial Poet' (non-competing) to start the night, to help calibrate scores.

• Slams are equally about writing, performance and audience response.

• Slammers should have at least 3 poems, as there will be three rounds for the Regionals and NZ Slam
  …

As always, remember: the point is the poetry not the points!

Cold Hub Press presents a double book launch - Peter Hooper & Owen Leeming

 

We're proud to support Cold Hub Press a fellow Canterbury-based small press publisher.

In conjunction with that fine emporium of printed wonder, Scorpio Books, Cold Hub Press presents a double book launch of poetry with special guests the editors of both collections.

Book Launch at Scorpio Books, BNZ Centre, Christchurch

Thursday 17th June

Refreshments from 5.30pm, event start 6.00pm

From the Cold Hub Press blurbs: 

PETER HOOPER

West Coast poet, novelist, teacher, bookseller and conservationist, Peter Hooper (1919–1991) was described by Colin McCahon, who used his poems in a number of art works, as a ‘poet of grace and truth’. Rejoice Instead,edited and introduced by Pat White, includes most of the poems from the slim volumes of poetry that were published in Hooper’s lifetime and are no longer easily accessible, along with thirty-nine previously unpublished poems written in the last years of his life. It is the first comprehensive collection of the work of a poet whose voice on behalf of nature and the environment, and whose clear insight into where our treatment of the environment was heading, has only deepened in its relevance to the inhabitants of Aotearoa in the 21st century. Peter Hooper’s published poetry included A Map of Morning (1964), Journey Towards an Elegy & other poems (1969), and Earth Marriage (1972)––a selection of previously published and new work with photographs of the West Coast which sold two thousand copies within a year. A rather meagre Selected Poems was published by John McIndoe in 1977. Between then and his death in 1991 Hooper published a trilogy of novels: A Song in the Forest (1979); People of the Long Water (1985); and Time and the Forest (1986) which won the New Zealand Book Award for fiction. A collection of short stories, The Goat Paddock and other stories appeared in 1981. Hooper also wrote and published extensively on conservation and environmental subjects. Gregory O’Brien has called Rejoice Instead “a world-sized, world-shaped book, a ‘tremendous room’ in its generosity and breadth”.

OWEN LEEMING

Owen Leeming’s 1972 collection Venus is Setting, with its centrepiece ‘The Priests of Serrabonne’, was marked for praise by Kendrick Smithyman, Vincent O’Sullivan and James K. Baxter, but it would take the best part of five decades until his next collection was published. Latitudes: New & Selected Poems, edited with an introduction by Robert McLean, contains selections from Venus is Setting and 2018’s Through Your Eyes, which comprised poems from the 1960s and 70s along with others written in more recent years. It also includes a section of hitherto uncollected earlier poems and another of new work offered for the first time. Leeming’s early poems remain fresh and energetic, marked by their rare reconciliation of the playful and the serious. The recent poems sparkle with intensified brio and rumbustiousness, by which readers are offered the world freshly rendered in words with an utterly uncommon intelligence and sensuousness.Charting a course from youthful disillusionment to celebratory old-age (Leeming who lives in France is now in his nineties) Latitudes: New & Selected Poems will surprise, delight and challenge readers of poetry with its open-eyed love of life and language.

 

Catalyst Open Mic meets Seaweek 2021!

 

Catalyst is proud to help celebrate Seaweek 2021 by adopting the theme for the March open mic.

NZAEE (NZ Association for Environmental Education) Seaweek is New Zealand's annual, national week celebrating the sea.  Funded entirely through sponsorship and in-kind support, Seaweek is  co-ordinated by Sir Peter Blake MERC since 2020 in partnership with NZAEE.

The theme for 2021 is 'connecting with our seas - toi moana, toi tangata'.

Catalyst invites poets to bring and read a poem that marks this theme in any way. 

We're excited to present our special themed open mic in association with Christchurch Envirohub and NZAEE.

Catalyst Open Mic - Seaweek - Connecting with our Seas

Wednesday 3rd March, 7pm

Space Academy, 371 St Asaph St, Christchurch

Catalyst Poetry Open Mic returns! Plus special guest poet Jess Fiebig

 

Wednesday 3rd February is our first open mic session for 2021 and we're delighted to announce our special guest will be Jess Fiebig celebrating the release of her first collection of poetry by Auckland University Press. Picking up where we left off in December with a book celebration!

Jess Fiebig is a Christchurch-based poet whose work has featured in Best New Zealand Poems 2018, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018 and 2019, Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau and takahē. She was runner-up in the 2019 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize.

About this collection My Honest Poem, Fiona Farrell has written:

‘These poems are undeniably personal and often deeply painful: childhood neglect, abuse, alcoholism, physical hurt, depression and self-harm are their subject matter. But – through linguistic skill and sheer intelligence – Fiebig crafts a lyrical beauty from unpromising material. You finish reading her work feeling uplifted by the writer’s courage and honesty.’

My Honest Poem is a moving and powerful poetry collection that follows recovery from a life fractured by family violence and addiction. It is a coming-of-age story of a young New Zealand woman rebuilding strength and hope in the spaces left by trauma.

Come join us to celebrate this excellent achievement by Jess and revel in the newly upgraded Space Academy complete with new stage, outdoor area and pizza oven!

Catalyst Poetry Open Mic + special guest Jess Fiebig

Wednesday 3rd February, 7pm

Space Academy 371 St Asaph St