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The view from the Writers' Centre

14 June 2010 – A Million Poems for Matariki: Otahuhu

Otahuhu school children are being challenged to write as many poems as they can to celebrate Matariki, the Maori new year, as part of a creative writing project promoted by the Michael King Writers’ Centre.

A Million Poems for Matariki is a poetry project that encourages creative writing as well as helping build to build local communities.

Popular Auckland poet Selina Tusitala Marsh, who is known as the rap poet, will lead poetry writing workshops for several local schools during the project. The schools taking part are Fairburn Primary School, St Josephs School, Otahuhu Intermediate School, McAuley High School and Otahuhu College. Some of the workshops will take place in the schools and some will be held at the Otahuhu Library.

Several posters have been designed to celebrate different aspects of Matariki, including stars, kite flying and harvesting. Children will write their poems on the posters, which will be gathered up and displayed at the Otahuhu Library. Adults are also welcome to write a poem.

The workshops will be held during Matariki, which starts today and runs for about a month. Students will be invited to read their poems at a community event at the Otahuhu Library which will be held later. Some of the children will also be invited to take part in an event to celebrate their work at an event at the Auckland City Library as part of New Zealand Poetry Day in July.

Poetry posters are available from the Otahuhu Library and the completed posters need to be returned to the library so that they can be put on display.

Afterwards, the posters will be collected and bound together, to be held for future reference. Some will be uploaded to a web site which will be developed as a later stage of the project.

The Otahuhu workshops have been organised by the Otahuhu Community Librarian Barry O’Callaghan.

“A Million Poems for Matariki is part of an innovative wider project that encourages creative writing and community development,” says Karren Beanland, Manager of the Michael King Writers’ Centre, which is located in Devonport.

“Writing poetry is a fun and effective way to introduce children to creative writing and to encourage them to play with language. Workshops require few resources other than pen and paper, and can be easily made available to large numbers of people. Poetry can also involve performance, so it incorporates the oral traditions of many cultures.”

Devonport Community Coordinator Maire Vieth developed the idea for A Million Poems for Matariki in 2009, and due to the popularity of the project in Devonport, she is working with the Michael King Writers’ Centre to extend the concept to Otahuhu and, later in the year, to Waitakere schools, where it is proposed to offer poetry workshops on a different theme.

The project has been funded by a grant from the North Shore City Council’s ARST fund, a fund established especially to support the arts across the Auckland region. The grant is being used to develop the poetry posters, teaching material and community resource kits.

Some of the poetry posters, the teacher resource material and a kit about how to carry out a school or community poetry project will be made available through the nzepc (the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre) web site, which is supported by The University of Auckland. This will become an on-going community resource. The templates for community poetry projects will cover different themes, as well as Matariki.

“The 2009 experience of A Million Poems for Matariki shows that poetry can be used as an agent to strengthen community ties. We are trying to build on that idea this year,” Karren Beanland says.

“This project is an exciting collaboration involving the arts, community development and education across the Auckland region.”

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