“MAN! I LOVE THIS!” - Ray Shipley, 2025
As a regular to this wonderful collaboration between Little Andromeda and fantastic Ōtautahi poet Ray Shipley, the WORD Christchurch Festival edition is always a wonderful treat to attend. The audience is buzzing happily in the bar space outside the theatre, catching up with friends and grabbing a drink before the show begins. Every time I come along to Late Night Poetry, I’m quickly pulled into the open atmosphere and crowd. It’s a remarkable vibe that Little Andromeda and Ray Shipley have created, and our city is so lucky to have it.
Our open mic is split today, to accommodate two more feature poets than usual, but the split makes it no less a wonderful line up. Bleu, Marianne, Melanie, Hayley, Annabel, Pip, John, Ariana, Ross, Florence and Gray are our open mic poets. This wonderful group of regulars and first timers warm us up beautifully, bringing us a wide range of moods and musings.
They discuss mothers, landscapes that have seen harsh things, light stretching, men that are spiders, girls who are everything, digital hīkoi, therapeutic blasphemy, searching for whenua, defiant existence, submissive genuflection, and whether a beetle is god's chosen child.
I heavily recommend anyone interested in reading or listening to poetry head to Late Night Poetry. Little Andromeda was the first space I read poems in, and it’s hard to imagine a more welcoming space to give poetry a go – but if you can’t make a late-night poetry hour, Catalyst and Common Ground are also excellent events that Ōtautahi can boast of.
Tonight our featured poets are Kate Camp, Dominic Guerrera (Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri), Gabrielle Huria (Ngāi Tahu), and Erik Kennedy, in a fantastic mix of the comedic, the earnest, and the painful. I’ve read the work of Erik and Kate, but I’m new to Dominic and Gabrielle, so I look forward to both familiar and unfamiliar poetry.
Gabrielle Huria (Ngāi Tahu) is the first and entirely new to me, and I’m so glad to have been introduced! She starts her reading with a brief note on how her debut collection Pakiaka was born through “creativity in rage”, and it’s beautiful to see how that rage is transformed into beautiful, tender works about whānau, identity, island birds, and eating everything with eyes. Her wonderful piece How to be a good Ngāi Tahu, is both reverent and cheeky, listing rules to live by in a world that picks apart that identity:
Have rights to a tītī island.
If you don’t have rights, marry someone who has.
On the island if you have rights, you have a say.
If you married into the rights, keep your mouth shut –
just do the work.Don’t be a slacker ever anywhere, especially not on
the island.
Gabrielle’s poem Tūranga struck me the most, tender and full of love for whānau that have not had the chance to know their home. Gabrielle’s writing is full of that compounded loss and love, and she speaks directly to her loved ones in this piece:
“leave the chaos
of outside
find shelter
through my limbs
seek solace between my ribs
recite your story on my wallsweep for me
in your final place
your house – your tūranga
you are still welcome here”
It was a beautiful introduction to Gabrielle’s work, and I look forward to adding Pakiaka to my poetry collection soon – until then, I’ll place the library copy on hold!
Erik Kennedy is our second poet, and reading a selection of new material from his recent release Sick Power Trip. I’ve been a fan of Erik’s since I picked up Another Beautiful Day Indoors a few years ago, but I love particularly the dynamism in his reading. He is LOUD, unforgiving about his chosen poems, and encouraging of us all to examine what made us uncomfortable, dig into what put us on the back foot. His poems are funny, piercing, and wordy, but those words are never wasted. The Summer We All Called Cigarettes ‘Snargers’ is a favourite, reeking of nicotine and friendship;
“...We used our words.
We learned from each other
like people who were about to become
bad at learning from anyone, learning full stop.
A lot of things that were about to happen
hadn’t happened yet, Dave declared.”
I’ve heard Erik read his piece Bystander poemorGaza poem several times, inspired by the work of Palestinian poet and activist, Sara Qasem and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. It doesn’t fail to hit you with its direct statements – you need to listen, you need to engage, you need to care:
“...you’re deranged from fatigue and soreness,
which has brought you to this condition
of thinking you’re not involved in
what you’re already involved in.”
Erik finishes by reminding us that gathering as we all are, is part of what we can do. Finding a community and caring for them is one of the bravest things you can do.
Kate Camp is a name well known to all library staff, but as I’d never seen her read before I was really pleased to get the opportunity at such a stacked event. And it was a joy! Kate speaks with cool assurance and is very funny, informing us all that we’d just missed her demonstration of how to get changed while swimming, in the previous WORD event Cabinet of Curiosities. Kate read Panic Button for us, one of those beautiful poems that you are almost too familiar with on a first listen, too true to life:
“Tusiata tells me that the Bedouin
hardly drink any water.
They bury onions in the desert
she says, though I’m not sure
if the two are connected.So many things can go wrong
inside a human life, it’s almost comical.
You find yourself inside a house,
in a night, with everyone you love,
breathing in and out somewhere
and if you thought about it properly
you’d just throw up in terror.Instead I have this button in my pocket
not like a panic button
that’s come loose, and it fits
into the curve of my thumb and finger
as I turn it over and over.
I keep it in my pocket
like you keep a pebble in your mouth
in the desert, to make saliva flow.”
Seeing Kate perform was wonderful, so I’d recommend you all get behind me in the holds queue for her newest release Makeshift Seasons and pick up another of her titles in the meantime - How to Be Happy Though Human and You Probably Think This Song Is About You are both great collections.
Dominic Guerrera (Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri) is our next poet, and listening to him read is fantastic. I’m blown away by Dominic Guerrera’s work, which is entirely new to me. My WORD notebook met with a leaky drink bottle before this write up and none of my notes on Dominic’s work survived, but I was really lucky to find a video of Dominic performing his poem Unwelcome to Country, about experiencing request to provide an indigenous welcome and land acknowledgement in a space that doesn’t necessarily respect or care to understand the suffering of these indigenous artists as more than tokenism;
“If we all bleed the same colour
then why is it us who are always the ones bleeding?
How about instead of country
we welcome you to the poverty
the disparity of wealth
the instability that echoes through our daily lives because of your disruption.
I wholeheartedly welcome you to dying 10 years younger.”
I can only hope my favourite of Dominic’s poems, Them Boys is included in his upcoming collection Native Rage, but to the best of my memory Them Boys is simple, and grief soaked, as Dominic tells us what them boys deserved; education, love, land, bikes, joy, breath in their lungs, and life free of fear. The things Dominic calls for the boys to have are ordinary to the point of uninteresting for many. But they’re not the lived experience Dominic and “them boys” have had. I’m feeling grateful to have met with Dominic’s work after this event and will be first on the holds list for Native Rage. Tautoko Dominic!
A note on Ray Shipley – Ray is such a wonderful and warm host, incredibly talented and great behind the microphone. Often Ray will read us one of their poems between sets, and this evening is no exception, this time a funny and familiar piece about attempting to write a nature poem. Ray transplants us to the stagnant hot water of a spa pool, looking out into the sky and declaring “All I really want is to be inspired by foliage.” Same here, Ray. If you get a chance to head along to Late Night Poetry, you will probably be lucky enough to hear Ray read their work, but if you don’t get a chance, their upcoming collection My Body is a Horror Film will be the perfect opportunity to delve into Ray’s absurd and excellent poetry.
Thank you as always to WORD Christchurch Festival for the wonderful event, and to Ray and Little Andromeda for hosting!
Poppia Marriott
He Hononga, Tūranga
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