Poetry Night in Dunedin - 12 August 2026

By Octagon Poetry Collective - Mac MacDonald | Posted: Thursday Aug 20, 2026

Poet extraordinaire and Octagon Poetry Collective committee member, Mac MacDonald, shares highlights from their latest poetry reading:

POETRY: AN EXTREME SPORT

In association with UNESCO City of Literature Dunedin and the New Athenaeum Theatre, the Octagon Poetry Collective hosted its monthly poetry night for August at the New Athenaeum Theatre on the 12th. The audience, a big one for a poetry event, numbered around sixty-five. The open mic segment was also jam packed with twenty-six poets up for a turn in the spotlight. As a result, MC, Jackson, set a cracking pace and for the first time ever, we experienced poetry as an extreme sport. Safe sentence construction as directed by OSH and ACC was abandoned because we needed to riot!

Dunedin local, Sandy Forsyth, was the first of two Feature Poets. She turned us into a woman in the background, older than old, seen but not touched by a forgetting people. We became a lamb on the wrong side of the fence staring back to the flock asking who are you to keep me out of my mind? Then we set off with no sense of path in the hope a poem would find us.

Linda Collins travelled down from Kakanui to be the second Feature Poet. We were called as foreigners to a picnic of halal sweetmeats beside a river not bothered by the season. Two fishermen found you on blades of flax. On a city train we carved your name on the seat in front. Father gave closed eyes a last kiss. We said, “You are the Peregrine!”

The next Octagon Poetry Collective Poetry night will be held on September 9, 2026.

Feature Poets: Rachel O’Neill and Michelle Elvy

MC: Nicola Thorstensen

Everyone welcome.