National Poetry Day 2016: All Tomorrow's Poets

As the sun went down on National Poetry Day, the wind rose and settled in for a stormy night. This did not affect the audience for the third annual All Tomorrow’s Poets. 70 guests, clutching BYO drinks in plastic cups, squished like sardines into Time Out Bookstore’s cosy upstairs to hear some of Auckland’s voices in poetry.

All Tomorrow’s Poets was conceived three years ago as a National Poetry Day event that would celebrate poetry in a relaxed, fast paced setting. We wanted to give the feeling of an exhibition opening - an upbeat evening that is engaging and fresh. Time Out staff Cait Kneller and Surinam Reddy continued this tradition while curating this year’s ATP. When selecting the poets they specifically chose a diverse group of practitioners who worked in different mediums.

We heard poems about sex, love and racism. ‘Fuck’ was a very common word. Two poets admitted to being very drunk, one was hungover. Some poems were 10 minutes, some were just a line or two. ATP veteran Gregory Kan’s words were collaborative and multi layered. We watched Bianca Rocca’s poem on a screen. We sat in the dark listening to Makanaka Tuwe: “I AM - that I am so let me be.” Tourettes spoke of Richie Macaw, yearning to be a farmer, rather than an All Black. Cait Kneller spoke of life in Glenfield.

Each guest paid a koha of $5 that was distributed amongst the speakers. In return, they recieved a specially made ATP#3 zine. You can read Cait and Suri’s interviews with our ATP poets on Time Out’s blog.

Gregory Kan