Well it’s been quite a while more than I’d planned to be away from this blog. I mean, I know I said I was taking a wee break over winter … two years ago …
I promise I will be posting a bit more regularly, because it’s been quite a turbulent two years, with lots of great things (and a couple of not great things), and I do tend to use this blog as a kind of diary as well as a platform for speaking to whoever happens to be listening out there. But it’s the platform aspect that has finally applied the 240 volts to my backside that has made me return to the keyboard.
I’ve written quite a lot over the years about the Canterbury Poets’ Collective, and how important they’ve been, not just to me but to the poetry community generally. It was where I took my first public steps as a poet, reading my own poems to a group of strangers.
It was terrifying. And exhilarating. I can’t remember what I read, and I can’t even really remember who came up to talk to me afterwards, but I remember how it felt: I had found my tribe.
Over the next couple of weeks, I got to put names and faces together, and gradually found my feet. I made friends. I found mentors. I started learning to really listen – to the people reading, and what was good work and what was not so great but maybe brave, or a bit raw but heartfelt and with potential. And what was just someone’s thoughts and feelings, but not yet poetry. But I also learned to listen to the audience, to be able to hear in their reactions what was and wasn’t working in my own poems. Not in a popularity-contest way (although that happened too sometimes), but picking up when the way something was phrased was not making it from my mind to the audience’s. There truly is nothing better than trying out a new piece in front of an informed and generous audience. And the CPC has always managed to be that. Such a huge part of my development as a poet. And I’m just one of many.
Now to the nub of it all. We – the Canterbury Poets’ Collective – need your help. (Yep, they’ve got me back on the committee.)
The CPC is taking part in an all-or-nothing Boosted fundraising campaign, to secure the next five-years-worth of Poetry in Performance readings.
What do I mean by all or nothing? Simple. If we don’t hit the target by the end of September, we get zero. And we really really want to hit the target …
Why do we need the funding?
For every single one of the last thirty-four years, the CPC has put on a poetry reading series, bringing great poets from all over the country to read alongside local poets. Even the earthquakes didn’t stop them going ahead – they just shifted from autumn to spring. And Covid just made us add a Zoom component – giving guests and audience members the chance to attend via computer from the comfort of their own homes.
Among other benefits, it meant we got to hear Kevin Ireland read, larger than life and every but as delightful, just a few months before he died. (Actually the photo of that night is extra poignant – Kevin, essa may ranapiri, and Rose Collins were the guests. I’m pretty sure that would have been the last time Rose read in public, before losing her battle with cancer early the following year. )
We pay our readers, and we also pay something towards the travel costs for our out-of-town guests. It works out at $2000 per four-week season, or $4000 per year. But not being able to get funding from CNZ for the last five (six? too damn many) years means every single season has been penny-pinching and crossing our fingers hoping like hell to get enough bums on seats to cover all the costs and leave us something to use for the next one. It puts a huge limit on what we can do – bringing people in from regional NZ for example is as expensive as bringing people in from Auckland. So we’re constantly juggling the numbers, trying to work out what we can afford and what we just have to let go.
Everything else – the running of the events, the time it takes to organise, the wrangling poets and dates and venues, the planning, the advertising, the endless attempts to secure funding any funding just please some goddam FUNDING – all of it is done by volunteers. For free.
Because we really want to hear great poets too. And because this is – you all are – our tribe.
So now we’re turning to our tribe, to ask you all to help us raise enough money to cover the next five years of readings. It’s a big number – $20,000. But it’s also a true reflection of what it costs to do what we do. And with 7 days to go, we’re 60% of the way there.
Why should you support the CPC?
- Because the readings bring great poets to Christchurch.
- Because the readings show off Christchurch poets to big names from outside Christchurch. (Networking!)
- Because we made it through earthquakes, fires, a terrorist attack, and a global pandemic.
- Because the CPC readings have given many poets their start (me, for one), and there are new amazing poets who also deserve their time to shine.
- Because the CPC open mic is legendary, even in a city with so many awesome open-mics.
- Because thirty-four years isn’t enough.
- Because I really need a break from writing funding proposals.
- Because stuff writing funding proposals.
- No, really. Enthusiastically. And artistically.
- And mount them somewhere interesting. Possibly in some kind of formation.
- Ahem
- Because we’re the only literature-based appeal in the Boost-Otāutahi campaign, and are you really going to let us be beaten by those swanky types from the visual arts?!!
- Pretty please?
You can donate any amount – $5? Wonderful. $50? Fantastic! $100? Brilliant!! More than that? You are obviously someone of incredible sexual attractiveness, discernment, good taste and generosity. But you already knew that. And that I love you.
Genuinely, any sized donation helps.
I hate asking for money. But it has been amazing to see just how many people have answered the call – 78 as of the time of writing this. Some names I know, but a lot I don’t. Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed. And if you haven‘t yet, now’s your chance!
If you love poetry, if you enjoy what I do, if you’ve ever been along to a CPC session (or would like to do so in future) please donate to our appeal. The deadline is September 30th.
For the love of heaven, don’t make me write more funding proposals …
A Dark Feathered Art 
I will happily contribute tomorrow – pension payday!
And including an additional reason: a lot of the traditional poetry pathways (traditional poems AND trad routes) have disappeared under the explosion of post-Covid poems, or at least it seems so to me. I am glad to support a tried and true channel
cheers
Mary Cresswell
mary.cresswell(at)outlook.co.nz
Thank you!
And I hear you about the traditional pathways. The CPC definitely skews towards the page-poem more than the purely performance crowd, which I think is one reason why virtually every visiting poet comments on just how damn good the open mic is. It manages to be the best of both worlds – lower pressure for honing your performance chops, and an audience that really listens to (and thinks about) every word. Where else do you get to hear someone like James Norcliffe trying out a new piece, alongside someone finishing high school, who started writing seriously a year ago and is making their first public appearance?