Spoken Poetry Showcase

With Carrie Rudzinski, Michael Moore, Wanda Barker and Maris O’Rourke.

Friday 30 June, 7:30pm.

Free community event.

Join us for an evening of spoken poetry to celebrate the opening of Word Café Ragan 2017.

The Spoken Poetry Showcase will be an oral tribute to the joy and power of words. Four diverse poets from throughout New Zealand will share their poetic view of the universe, be that sad, challenging, uplifting or just plain odd. Whatever the message, poetry is the vehicle. Join us and prepare to be swept away.

The Poets

Carrie Rudzinski ranked fourth in the world at the 2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam and was named Best Female Poet in 2008 at her first national poetry competition. Featured in Bustle, the Huffington Post, and Teen Vogue, she has performed her work over the past 12 years in five countries and in almost all 50 of the United States. A published author, Carrie is currently a lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Creative Arts teaching performing arts and creative writing.

Michael Moore
Information coming soon.

Wanda Barker is a Raglan poet, writer, artist and therapist. She has been writing and performing poetry for many years, and has poems and short stories published in national magazines. She studied in the auspicious creative writing programme at Victoria University, and was a past recipient of a Creative New Zealand new writers grant. Wanda will be launching her latest book at Word Café on Sunday 2 July at 1:30pm. All Her Dark Pretty Thoughts (2017) is a verse novella chronicling one woman’s growing defiance against the hurts and constraints of her failing marriage. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Maris O’Rourke began writing in 2008. Since then, she has been well placed in a number of competitions and published in a wide range of journals and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas. Her first poetry collection, Singing With Both Throats, was published by David Ling in 2013 to good reviews. In 2015, she won the coveted IWW’s Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems. Maris has also had three children’s books published by Duck Creek Press. She is currently working on a memoir Zigzags and Leapfrogs.

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See next event: In Conversation: Local Books in the Making with local authors Bernadette Gavin, Jacquie McRae and Stephanie Philp.