The vital electricity of contemporary poetry: Fast Favourites with Tracey Slaughter

First published on RNZ

October 3

“We are so often detonated into poetry by our nerve ends,” writes Tracey Slaughter in her fiery introduction to this year’s Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, Revelations. “We hone our craft and we learn to rein it in with the cortical, the critical - but most poets know the fuse, the force, the source is, as Column McCann says, ‘the electricity of suffering’.”

Slaughter makes a case in Revelations for the urgency that lives in poetry, and the messages our best new and established poets make in this the 58th issue of the country’s longest running poetry journal. Revelations features 102 poets, with work selected by Slaughter, alongside reviews of 29 new poetry books.

Yes, poetry in Aotearoa is in rude health. It’s a discipline, Slaughter argues, in which the poets she features set alight “the point where personal emergency meets collective oppression.”

RNZ’s Mark Amery invited award-winning author of fiction, poetry and essays, the Kirikiriroa Hamilton based Tracey Slaughter, to play Fast Favourites. Tracey picks out some favourite poems, cultural initiatives and music.     

A new book of poems by Tracey Slaughter will be published by Te Herenga Waka Press later this year.

In December she won the Manchester Poetry Prize in the UK and was awarded just over NZ $20,000. Chosen from thousands of worldwide applicants, it is one Britain’s most established awards for unpublished literature.   

First published on RNZ