Today Paula Green will receive the 2017 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement – Poetry. Seraph Press is utterly delighted that Paula has been recognised with this award for her contribution to poetry in New Zealand.
To date Paula has published seven collections of poetry for adults; her first, Cookhouse, in 1997 and her most recent, New York Pocket Book, we are pleased to have published in 2016. She has also written three collections of poetry for children and children’s picture book. She’s also written considerable critical work about New Zealand poetry, perhaps most notably the book 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry, co-written with Harry Ricketts, but also many many reviews. Listing all these things makes me feel exhausted already, but Paula is indefatigable! She’s also edited the anthologies Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems and A Treasury of NZ Poems for Children, and in the last few years has run two blogs that are major poetry hubs – one for children and one for adults – and has been a frequent visitor to classrooms around the country, getting children all fired up about poetry. And all this while she’s working a non-fiction book about poetry by New Zealand women.
Paula has an enormous heart and does all of this out of love, her love of poetry and of people too. So many poets around the country have appreciated her support as well as her own beautiful words. I hope this award goes some way to making her feel how appreciate she is by so many.
If you’re in Wellington tomorrow, Thursday 10 August, you could pop down to Unity Books during your lunchtime to hear Paula read and discuss her work with the other prestigious recipients of the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement – Witi Ihimaera, who received the fiction award, and Peter Simpson, who received the non-fiction award.
Thursday 10th August 12.30–1.15pm
Unity Books Wellington
57 Willis Street
All welcome
To date Paula has published seven collections of poetry for adults; her first, Cookhouse, in 1997 and her most recent, New York Pocket Book, we are pleased to have published in 2016. She has also written three collections of poetry for children and children’s picture book. She’s also written considerable critical work about New Zealand poetry, perhaps most notably the book 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry, co-written with Harry Ricketts, but also many many reviews. Listing all these things makes me feel exhausted already, but Paula is indefatigable! She’s also edited the anthologies Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems and A Treasury of NZ Poems for Children, and in the last few years has run two blogs that are major poetry hubs – one for children and one for adults – and has been a frequent visitor to classrooms around the country, getting children all fired up about poetry. And all this while she’s working a non-fiction book about poetry by New Zealand women.
Paula has an enormous heart and does all of this out of love, her love of poetry and of people too. So many poets around the country have appreciated her support as well as her own beautiful words. I hope this award goes some way to making her feel how appreciate she is by so many.
If you’re in Wellington tomorrow, Thursday 10 August, you could pop down to Unity Books during your lunchtime to hear Paula read and discuss her work with the other prestigious recipients of the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement – Witi Ihimaera, who received the fiction award, and Peter Simpson, who received the non-fiction award.
Thursday 10th August 12.30–1.15pm
Unity Books Wellington
57 Willis Street
All welcome
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