By Renee Liang

Last year, I explored the role of poetry in NZ with the Poet Laureate, Michele Leggott. Apart from fielding questions from persistent bloggers, the Poet Laureate has the rather heavy (but no less pleasurable) duty of being a ‘strong advocate for poetry’ in New Zealand.

  To that end, over the last eighteen months, Michele has been busy organizing readings, visiting schools, liaising, performing and of course writing.  She concludes her tenure at the end of this month.  One of her last tasks will be helping to select her successor. 

Renee:  What was your idea of being Poet Laureate at the start of your tenure?

Michele: A beautifully open template with a whole bunch of possibilities.

Renee:  What is your idea of being Poet Laureate now?

Michele: Lots more work needed in advocating poetry as an essential activity for anyone who loves hearing and seeing words in action.

Renee:  The National Library site suggests that the next appointed Poet Laureate will:
 - Have made an outstanding contribution to New Zealand poetry
 - Be an accomplished and highly regarded poet
 - Be able to adequately fulfil the public role required of a Poet Laureate
 - Be a strong advocate for poetry

What other qualities would you add?

Michele: That's plenty for one person to do in the job over two years.

Renee:  What's the best experience you had as Poet Laureate?

Michele: I'm still having them. Yesterday 350 children covered their school in poster poems and chalking for
Matariki. I heard a lot of poems from a lot of very good poets. That was pretty special. Pics are on the laureate blog!

Renee: What can we do to ensure poetry remains a part of our culture?

Michele: Keep reading to each other and write poems the way we talk on the phone, send texts or email or fall into deep conversation with someone when it matters. Poetry is a language like any other. Love it or lose it.

Renee: Tell us a bit about your collection, to be launched on June 24th. How did you conceive it?

Michele:  MIRABILE DICTU (means 'wonderful to relate') starts with the funeral of a poet and ends with a family wedding. It tracks across a year and a bit of writing, into which all kinds of things fall and are distributed as poetic fragments. Some of them are about walking into darkness, and some are about walking out of it again.

Michele would like everyone to help in the selection of the Laureate by filling in the nomination forms, downloadable from the National Library. 

And for those intrigued by the idea of a personal glimpse into the life of a poet laureate, MIRABILE DICTU will be launched on Wednesday 24th June at the Devonport Library, Victoria Road.

(RSVP (acceptances only) by 20 June to Auckland University Press: E: aup@auckland.ac.nz; T: 373 7528; F: 373 7465).