I love Invercargill – and its poetry festival, too

Posted: Monday Jul 01, 2024

A diary of the Dan Davin Literary Foundation Poetry Festival that took place Invercargill over the first weekend of June.

From north to south, Aotearoa is loaded with literary festivals, each with a unique way of inviting bookish people to come out and play. Over the last month we’ve seen our shiniest literary event, the Auckland Writers Festival, and our friendliest, the hyper-local Dan Davin Poetry Festival in Waihōpai-Invercargill. I was fortunate enough to attend both. Somebody with rhythm might write a Kiwiburger-type jingle about reading on down from Quay Street to Dee Street, Hobson Street to Don Street, but I am not that person.

I am also not a poet and yet here I am on a damp Friday afternoon at James Hargest College for a student poetry workshop. After a poetry reading at Gore Library and a panel at Invercargill Library yesterday, today is all about the teens. Sara Hirsch, London-grown poet, director and educator, now based in Tāmaki Makaurau, has come straight from Aurora College to their second workshop of the day. Meanwhile, up the road in Riverton, the wandering Ōtepoti writers Kay McKenzie Cooke and Jenny Powell have paid respect to the recently washed-up sperm whale carcass on a nearby beach and are working with young writers at Aparima College.

Signing in at James Hargest College I note that students in socks and kilts are learning an actual waltz in the adjoining hall. “They’re practising for the formal this weekend,” the school administrator smiles. “We still learn all the dances here at James Hargest.” 

Over in the school library, the students who have opted to join the workshop are in safe hands with Sara Hirsch, an experienced educator who opens the workshop with the best-ever icebreaker: “Does anyone have a name that people get wrong?” Three-quarters of the teenagers raise their hand. 

A lively series of activities get the young creatives buzzing. Sara has such a talent for torch lighting a way into a piece of writing, and I record some nuggets for myself: “you cannot edit something that doesn’t exist,” is going straight onto my lock screen. By the time I leave, the waltzing teens are onto something different. “I think it’s the Gay Gordons, that one,” a passing teacher tells me. 

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