Are you involved in any local poetry groups or collectives?
Past affiliations – I was a member of The Airing Cupboard Women Poets group for many years, a founding member of The Small White Teapot Haiku Group, a founding member of the Australian Haiku Society.
Current affiliations – member of the New Zealand Poetry Society and the New Zealand Society of Authors. I’m the current chair of the Canterbury Poets’ Collective. I’m also involved in two private critique groups, but they probably aren’t relevant to the question. I run short poetry courses as “The Poetry Class”, and I’m employed as a specialist tutor at the Hagley Writers’ Institute. I’m also one of three co-editors at Sudden Valley Press, a small not-for-profit poetry press based in Canterbury.
Do you have a social media or digital profile for your poetry?
I don’t do social media, but do have a website – http://joannapreston.com. I’m trying to be good and blog a bit more often, but that’s as close as I get to social media. Also relevant are http://suddenvalleypress.com, and http://canterburypoets.org.nz
Do you promote poetry beyond your own work?
Very much so. Through teaching, through editing, through publishing, and through my work with the Canterbury Poets’ Collective. It may be part of why I take a decade between books … so much easier to be enthusiastic about someone else’s work than to hurl yourself into the abyss of putting a collection together and waiting to hear how it lands. And there are so many really good poets!
Where to now?
Getting up the courage to finish the new collection. And working on the books that SVP are bringing out next year, which I’m seriously looking forward to. Three are first collections, which is always exciting. And I’m supposed to be bringing out a book of writing exercises too, but finding time for that may require the discovery of another space/time dimension.
If you would like to follow up on Joanna Preston’s work see the following link: https://joannapreston.com/bio/
