Wednesday 26 November
9–9.30 am Registration, coffee and tea
9.30–10.30 am Introductory remarks, historical perspective on the form and a round-table discussion
Chris Price
Harry Ricketts
Jordie Albiston
Helen Heath
Maureen Gibbons
10.30–11 Poetry readings
Shari Kocher
Linda Weste
Bella Li
Airini Beautrais
11–11.30 am Morning tea
11.30–1 pm Papers: Image
Bella Li, Framing Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Poetic Biography and the Photographic Archive
Ben Laird, Resisting Narrative Linearity?: Biographical Poetry in Print and Programmable Media
Kerry Hines, Photographs and Poems
1–2 Lunch
2–3 pm Papers: Historical verse biography
Anna Jackson, I, Clodia, Portraiture and Story-telling
Linda Weste, Re-envisioning: Simultaneous Narration in the Historical Verse Novel
3–4 Keynote: Toby Davidson, The Master and the Mask: Francis Webb’s Verse Biography
4–4.30 pm Afternoon tea
4.30–6 pm Papers: Portraiture
Helen Rickerby, Articulating Artemisia: Revisioning the Lives of Women from History
Erin Scudder, Storying the Portrait
Anna Smaill, Frank Bidart and the Ethics of Embodiment
7.00 pm Public poetry reading at Meow, 9 Edward Street
Thursday 27 November
9–9.30 am Coffee and tea
9.30–11 am Panel: New Zealand writing
Angelina Sbroma, Blurring the Lines: Biographical Poetry
Max Chapnick, Newton’s Sock, Kepler’s Symphony, and Tinsley’s Spiral Arms: Physicists in New Zealand Poetry
Samantha Lentle-Keenan, Poetry, Autobiography or ‘Stuff That Has Happened To Me Lately’?
11–11.30 am Morning tea
11.30 am–12.30 pm Talanoa on the biographic in Pasifika women’s poetry
Tulia Thompson
Karlo Mila
Leilani Tamu
Teresia Teaiwa
12.30–1 pm: Poetry readings
Janis Freegard
Maureen Gibbons
Majella Cullinane
Nina Powles
1–2 pm Lunch
2–3 pm Keynote: Robert Sullivan
3–4 pm Papers: Myth and biography
Airini Beautrais, Narrative and Verse Form in Tusiata Avia’s Bloodclot.
Vana Manasiadis, How Classical Mythology Begat Verse Biography. (Or, Truths in the Re-telling, and New Mythological Protagonists).
4–4.30 pm Afternoon tea
4.30–5.30 pm Poetry to drama
Karen Zelas, From Page to Stage – Geography of Loss
Jenny Powell, The Truth of Berlin
6 pm Launch of I, Clodia by Anna Jackson at Unity Books Wellington, 57 Willis Street
Friday 28 November
9–9.30 am Coffee and tea
9.30–10.30 am Keynote: Jessica Wilkinson, The Poetic Biography: Archival Wandering & Singular Encounters
10.30–11 am Morning tea
11–12 am Letters and the biographical project
Vivienne Plumb, in this kitchen: biographing each other
Geraldine Burrowes
Majella Cullinane, Where Poetry Begins: Research and the Creative Process
12–1 pm Poetry readings: family and biography
Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle
Mary-Jane Duffy
Marty Smith
Helen Heath
Vana Manasiadis
1–2 pm Lunch
2–3 pm Papers: family and biography
Joan Fleming, Anne Carson’s Nox as Therapeutic Biography
Christopher Edwards, “I won’t make it a work of the imagination. I’ll make it you”: Corporeality and Biography in William Carlos Williams’s Yes, Mrs. Williams.
3–3.30 Afternoon tea
3.30–5 pm Papers: The book-length verse biography
Amy Brown, ‘Who could be more ordinary?’: Empathy in the Poetic Exhumation of Kings, Saints and Soldiers
Marguerite Johnson, a red star flamed in the east – Jane Holland’s ‘Boudicca’ Series
Shari Kocher, The Beautiful Truths of Biographical Verse: Palimpsestic Masks and Paper Bodies in Dorothy Porter’s Akhenaten.
5 –5.30 pm Round-table discussion, concluding remarks
Saradha Koirala
Jack Ross
Chris Tse
Anna Jackson
7 pm Conference dinner at Osteria del Toro, 60 Tory Street
