Could you tell us about the Hagley Writers Institute?
Hagley Writers’ Institute is a part-time writing program for adults who want to take their work further. It started back in 2007, and runs on Saturdays during school term for twenty weeks. We get a good group of writers together, they come in for three hour sessions to discuss and learn all sorts of technical things.
Basic things like structure, narrative, dialogue and plot development, and trickier things like “What is a line break?” and “What do you do with them?” We look at the use of rhyme, and the structure of poems like Haiku, things like that.
And how many students would attend the Institute?
Small groups, around 10 per class, from quite a mixed background with mixed abilities. This year we had 40 people in 4 streams. There were two in-person classes for first years, an advanced class, and an online class as well.
How does that organisation fund its work?
There is a charge of $1650 per year for the students, which mostly covers materials, licensing fees for the work we copy to give to the students, that sort of thing. The Institute is part of Hagley Community College, and funded by the Department of Education. But we are just one part of what is going on locally – there is a Creative Writing Degree at Canterbury University, and there are various writing groups and poetry events and workshops in the area.
What about the other groups or organisations you mentioned?
The Canterbury Poets’ Collective is the oldest group running regular readings, but there are plenty of other groups who organise events – Catalyst, the Austin Club, Common Ground, the Late Night Poetry Hour. We are starting to work together more, although each group does cater to slightly different audiences.
Recently the CPC had a funding drive to ensure we had the money for the next few years. We were aiming for $20,000 and managed to achieve it. People came out to support us and we had over 150 individual people contribute to that total. There are people who might not turn up to every event, but they will support us financially.
People will say that there is no market for poetry, but we meet so many people who like poetry, who read poetry and others who write poetry, but they just don’t know where to go or how to progress what they are doing. So we are always trying to encourage people to get involved.
You are aiming to create an atmosphere where poets and writers have avenues to move forward?
Sadly I think we are a long way from a situation where the work we do would reliably lead to a sustainable career in poetry and writing, but we are aiming to give people teaching, mentoring, events and publishing opportunities where at the very least there is a pathway to make small things happen.
And is there a connection between this organisation in the South Island and organisations in the North Island of New Zealand?
Unofficially. There does tend to be a separation between the North Island poetry communities and those here in the South. But again, things are getting better. If you look at the Canterbury Poets Collective; we bring in people from outside our local area, from all over New Zealand, to read here, so we get to see what is happening elsewhere and they get to experience what we are doing here, and that is a good way of making the connections across the islands. A start, anyway.
