Poetry Night in Ōtepoti - 7 October 2026

By Ōtepoti He Puna Auaha | Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature | Posted: Wednesday Oct 14, 2026

Poet and Octagon Poetry Collective committee member, Nicola Thorstensen shares highlights from their latest poetry reading:

From elegy to Iggy

The Octagon Poetry Collective hosted its monthly poetry night for October at the New Athenaeum Theatre on the 7th, in association with UNESCO City of Literature Dunedin. MC Mac MacDonald first called on Nicola Thorstensen to say a few words in memory of eminent poet and prose writer Majella Cullinane, whose funeral took place earlier in the day, and to read one of her poems.

Mac then led the audience through the first series of open mic readers. As often happens with open mic, a recurring theme emerged, this time birds. Birds were ‘tiny clockwork emeralds’, they were bumping into glass and being revived, they were endangered, saved, observed, they were metaphors. Birds appeared in a date tree in China during a teaching stint. Later works referenced dancing as an act of affirmation, chasing after a group of escaped balls, and linked war games to the real thing. Other readers exhorted the audience to pronounce their name correctly, and paid tribute to past poets.

David Howard, the first of the featured poets, took his cue from the sombre nature of the day, reading a series of elegiac poems in memory of his father and others. Howard eschewed sentimentality in favour of unflinching realism, reminding the audience that ‘the last time could be right now’.

Second feature David Eggleton summoned extraordinary energy reserves to lead the audience through an onslaught of images for the naïve tourist, warned us never to eat anything bigger than our heads, and finished with a nod to the apparently indestructible Iggy Pop, ‘rebel without a pause’.

The next Octagon Poetry Collective Poetry Night will be held at 7pm, 11 November at the New Athenaeum Theatre.

Feature Poets: Megan Kitching and Sue Wootton.

MC: Jackson.

Everyone welcome.