Film showcases a spoke’n’word tour of the Otago Central Rail Trail

By Laura Williamson | Posted:

In late 2020, Liz Breslin, Annabel Wilson and Laura Williamson embarked on a “spoke’n’word tour” of the Otago Central Rail Trail

The three poets packed amps, mics and notebooks into trailers and e-biked the length of the Rail Trail to perform at historic halls in five locations along the way: Clyde, Ophir, Oturehua, Ranfurly and Middlemarch. Rail:Lines was a poetry tour like no other. It was emissions-free, muddy, rowdy, and backdropped by otherworldly landscapes, and it’s the subject of a new documentary screening this month in Wānaka, Queenstown and Dunedin.

Laura, who is based in Wānaka and edits the print magazine 1964: mountain culture / aotearoa, said the tour was about taking words out into the rural corners of Otago, many of which have inspired writers in the past. “Literature and landscape have been shaped by each other in our region, and this is one of the things we wanted to celebrate,” she said.

It was also about showcasing the potential of using bikes, instead of cars or vans, to take a show on the road. "We wanted to model using e-bikes to travel between venues. It can be done, especially with more and more tracks like the Otago Central Rail Trail opening up across the country. Our fuel costs were zero, our carbon footprint negligible and riding bikes is super fun. Plus, lots of people came to our shows. It’s not every day a trio of cycling poets shows up in your town.”

The three women teamed up with Wānaka’s The Film Crew to make Rail:Lines The: Film, a 25-minute documentary about the tour. According to Laura, “we wanted a wider platform to promote the viability of touring an emissions-free arts project, highlight the strength of the poetry community in our region and add to the scant number women’s poetry stories documented on film." She notes that among the 55 titles tagged to ‘poetry’ on the NZOnScreen online archive, only four female poets are represented.

There will be a live performance along with each screening, because that’s how the poets roll.

Screening schedule – tickets from EVENTFINDA:

• ŌTEPOTI DUNEDIN: Thursday, November 10 @ 8pm - Dog With Two Tails Cafe and Bar
• WĀNAKA: Friday November 11 @ 6pm - The Studio Space in Spencer House Mall
• TĀHUNA QUEENSTOWN: Sunday, November 15 @6pm – Te Atamira, Queenstown Writers festival

www.facebook.com/poeticjusticeWānaka/

Performer bios:

ANNABEL WILSON

Writer and teacher Annabel Wilson is from Wānaka, and currently lives in Lyttelton. Her poetry has been widely published and her plays have been performed at Dunedin UNESCO Cities of Literature Short Play Festival, Festival of Colour, BATS theatre, Te Pou and recorded for RNZ. Annabel’s first book, Aspiring Daybook, won the NZ Mountain Book and Film Festival Best Fiction award (2018) and was long-listed for the Ockham Book Awards (2019). Annabel is also a recipient of the R.A.K Mason Fellowship at NZ Pacific Studio, the AAWP Emerging Writers’ Prize and a residency at Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage. Web: annabelwilsonwriter.com

LAURA WILLIAMSON

A Canadian writer, songwriter and poet based in Central Otago, Laura Williamson is the editor of the print magazine 1964: mountain culture / aotearoa. She co-wrote ‘The Blue Moments Project’ song and spoken word cycle which premiered to a sold-out audience at the 2017 Festival of Colour, and her book The Bike and Beyond: Life on Two Wheels in Aotearoa New Zealand is out now as part of the BWB Text series. Instagram: @laura_willwritefor

LIZ BRESLIN

Liz Breslin is a writer, editor and performer. Her second poem collection, In bed with the feminists (a selection of which won the 2020 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems) was published by Dead Bird Books in June 2021. Liz was virtual writer in residence in National Centre for Writing, UK, in 2021, and co-created The Possibilities Project with Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature in 2020. Web: lizbreslin.com