Perch Perch: tepoti Dunedin celebrates 10 years of our UNESCO City of Literature & 100 years of Janet Frame

(Paperback)

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A book celebrating ten years of tepoti Dunedin as Aotearoa New Zealands UNESCO City of Literature, and 100 years of Janet Frame. Within these pages, readers will find original work from 60 writers: collaborative and individual poems, celebrated poets and new voices. The book also includes works by poets we have lost but whose work resonates in our community and in the world: Janet Frame, Peter Olds, Elizabeth Brooke-Carr and Vincent OSullivan.

The book opens with a poem by Robert Sullivan and closes with Dunedin soundscapes. On every page between, there is something special about this place our histories, our perspectives; the colours, rhythms and moods of our landscapes and our selves. In tepoti, there much to examine, and celebrate, from hills to harbour.

Created as a gift to honour the UNESCO City of Literature and launched on August 28, 2024, National Poetry Day.

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Author Bio

CONTRIBUTORS

Tunmise Adebowale is a Nigerian-born New Zealander currently studying at the University of Otago. She won the 2023 Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook Student competition in the Year 13 category and the 2023 Sargeson Short Story Award for the Secondary Schools Division. Her work has been published in The SpinoS, Tarot, takah, Pantograph Punch, Turbine-Kapohau, Newsroom, NZ Poetry Shelf and Verb Wellington. She was also featured in Canadian theatre company Theatrefolks 2021 collection: BIPOC Voices and Perspectives Monologue.

Lynda Scott Araya teaches English and Media Studies, is a writer and owns a heritage home in North Otago. She has published short stories and poems in Aotearoa and internationally. She is a passionate advocate for improving literacy. Lyndas foci include the stigma of suicide bereavement, domestic abuse, and all the quirks of daily life.

Manu Berrys practice employs a range of printmaking techniques. His driven work ethic has seen a diverse body of work created over the last 15 years. Informed by Japanese woodcut tradition without being beholden to it, and inspired by his South Island home environment, Berry creates nature scenes, portraits and tableaus, and captures the character of place. His work can be found at Bellamys Gallery in Macandrew Bay. His woodcut print is on the cover of this book.

Tui Bevin is a former medical researcher who lives in Dunedin. She enjoys the freedom and challenge of writing poetry, memoir and essays as a way of processing her understanding of the world and preserving stories for her grandchildren. She has been placed in poetry competitions and published in Landing Press and NZ Poetry Society anthologies.

Claire Beynon is a South African-born artist, writer and interdisciplinary researcher who has lived in Dunedin since in 1994. In addition to a well-established solo practice, she collaborates with artists, writers, scientists and musicians in New Zealand and overseas. She is a published and award-winning writer of poetry, essays and short stories. Her new collection For When Words Fail Us | A small Book of Changes is forthcoming from The Cuba Press.

Victor Billot is a Dunedin writer. His poetry collection The Sets was published by Otago University Press in 2020.

Liz Breslin is a tangata Tiriti writer, editor and performer of Polish and Irish descent. Lizs two full-length poem collections are In bed with the feminists (Dead Bird Books) and Alzheimers and a spoon (Otago University Press). Liz is a creative critical PhD candidate at the University of Otago, making zines and visual poems as part of a queer exploration of settler colonisation in the rural south of Te Waipounamu.

Elizabeth Brooke-Carr (1940-2019) was a poet and writer. She taught English in secondary schools for twenty years and tutored creative writing evening classes. Her poems, and her short story Jimmy the Needle, were published in the Otago Daily Times and her articles on social justice and environmental issues were published widely. Elizabeth was the inaugural writer-in-residence, Down the Bay, at the Caselberg Trust cottage in 2010.

Diane Brown is the author of eight books. Her debut collection Before the Divorce We Go to Disneyland won the Best First Book of Poetry at the Montana Book Awards 1997. She has written two poetry books, two novels, a travel memoir and two poetic memoirs, Here Comes Another Vital Moment and Taking My Mother to the Opera. Her most recent book is the verse novella, Every Now and Then I Have Another Child (Otago University Press, 2020).

bram casey is an aspiring writer and actor from tepoti who currently lives in te whanganui-a-tara to study theatre. his work has been published in minor gospel, overcom, re-draft and the 2023 and 2024 NFFD tepoti ekphrastic poster series.

Kakanui-based Linda Collins is a memoirist, poet, fiction writer, journalist and editor. She is also a mental-health care advocate. Her books include Loss Adjustment (memoir) and Sign Language for the Death of Reason (poetry). Lindas personal essays and other nonfiction and commentaries have appeared in, among others, Otherhood, Literary Mama, The Straits Times, The Spinoff, Turbine and Newsroom. Her poetry is in publications including Bath Magg, Cordite, Mslexia and Oyster River Pages.

Kay McKenzie Cooke (Kti Mmoe, Ki Tahu) lives in tepoti. She is the author of four poetry collections and three novels set in western Murihiku Southland. She is presently working on poems for a possible fifth poetry collection.

Majella Cullinane writes poetry, fiction and essays. Her second collection Whisper of a Crows Wing (Otago University Press and Salmon Poetry, Ireland) was chosen as one of The New Zealand Listeners Top Ten Poetry Books of 2018. Her writing has been published nationally and internationally, and she has held residencies and fellowships in Ireland, Scotland and Aotearoa New Zealand. Majella published her third poetry collection Meantime with Otago University Press in May 2024. She lives in Kptai Port Chalmers with her family.

William (Bill) Direen is best known as a poet and musician who has combined his talents in numerous publications and performances in New Zealand and overseas. Direens collections of poetry include Inklings (1988), Crappings (1993) and New Sea Land (2005). He has also written scripts and lyrics for theatrical productions, and a wide range of his fiction has appeared in literary journals and magazines. Bill Direen publishes across genres, including poetry, short and long fiction, theatre and music.

Lynley Edmeades is the author of the collaborative work Bordering on Miraculous (Massey University Press, 2022) with painter Saskia Leek, and two collections of poetry, As the Verb Tenses (2016) and Listening In (2019), both published with Otago University Press. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queens University Belfast and a PhD in English from the University of Otago. She is the current editor of Landfall.

David Eggleton is a writer and poet who lives in tepoti Dunedin. He was the Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate between August 2019 and August 2022.

Lola Elvy writes music, poetry and other forms of creative fiction and nonfiction. She is a central committee member of New Zealands National Flash Fiction Day organisation and founded and edits the online youth journal fingers comma toes. She teaches music and creative writing and has collaborated with schools to bring the creative arts to the classroom. Her work has been featured at events, online, and in print anthologies, including Fast Fibres, a fine line and The Larger Geometry: poems for peace.

Michelle Elvys poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and essays have been widely published in Aotearoa and internationally, most recently in Landfall and a fine line. Her books include the everrumble (2019) and the other side of better (2021). Her anthology work includes Ko Aotearoa Ttou | We Are New Zealand (Otago University Press, 2020), A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha, edited with Witi Ihimaera (Massey University Press, 2023), and two forthcoming collections of translated and translingual writing.

Fiona Farrell lives and works in tepoti Dunedin. She publishes poetry, novels, short fiction, plays and non-fiction. Fionas numerous awards include the Prime Ministers Award for Fiction and, in 2012, the ONZM for Services to Literature.

Brenda Finlayson lives on Otago Harbour with the birds and sea creatures. She is a former journalist and counsellor who writes poetry and prose, walks and cycles, grows veges and watches clouds.

Sandie Forsyth lives on the Otago Peninsula. She reads regularly at the Octagon Collective and is a member of the Dromedaries writing group.

Janet Frame (1924-2004) was a celebrated New Zealand author of novels, short stories, poetry and the three-volume autobiography An Angel at My Table that was adapted for cinema by Jane Campion. Janet Frame won numerous local and international literary prizes including the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book and was often rumoured to be a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and held two honorary doctorates. She was awarded a CBE in 1983 and in 1990 she was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand, which is New Zealands highest civil honour. Her work is in print around the world and has been translated into many languages.

Eliana Gray is a writer living in tepoti. You can find their work in print and littered throughout the internet in places such as Cordite, Landfall, The SpinoS, Pantograph Punch and others. They can usually be found in the ocean.

Anna Hoek-Sims is based in tepoti Dunedin with her partner and leonine cat, Sbastien. She has been a bookaholic from an early age, enjoys learning foreign languages, especially French and Japanese, and loves playing around with words, their sounds, and shapes.

David Krena-Holmes, born in Wellington (1938), has had poetry published in journals in several countries. He is working on cantos to follow his A Song from the Antipodes (Maungatua Press, 2002). Other publications include Te Reo Mori the Basics Explained (Oratia Media, 2020).

David Howard is the auth