Sydney launch: Te Purere/The Exodus: The Anthology of Expatriate New Zealand Poets

Edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and John Gallas, Cold Hub Press, 2025

There are myriad Aotearoa new Zealand poets who live overseas; several eminent, others relatively unknown. This significant anthology is the first to give voice to these expatriate Kiwi and their distinct perspectives, widening the parameters of New Zealand poetry well beyond its shores. \”John Gallas and Vaughan Rapatahana were destined to create an anthology like this since for many years those writers have been migratory birds, cultural hunter- gatherers. As Rapatahana, the ‘indigenous expatriate’, describes his exploring: ‘from the east I travel / to the east I rebound / carting the lumber of assorted cultures / the hardware of hybrid emotion . . . // I become a different jigsaw.’ The anthology is a valuable reminder that we are all jigsaws in progress, not confined to a single identity.\” –Roger Horrocks, Introduction.

P O E T S

SUSAN ADAMS [LES WICKS READING] / MIRO BILBROUGH / DOC DRUMHELLER / STEPHEN SMITHYMAN / ANGELA STRETCH [HOST] / E WEN

B O O K S A L E S

Special book price at the event courtesy of the publisher, Cold Hub Press. The anthology can be purchased through the publishers website. International fee $60.

A B O U T T H E P O E T S

Susan Adams (Poems read by Les Wicks). After careers in ballet, dance academics, management level hospital work /7 medical research science Adams came to poetry late in life. In the space of a few years, she was widely published internationally & won prizes. Her book Beside Rivers (Island, 2013) was commended in the Anne Elder Award, one of Australia’s leading book honours.

Miro Bilbrough is a filmmaker, writer poet whose memoir of a counter-culture New Zealand adolescence, In the Time of the Manaroans (THWUP 2020, Ultimo Press 2021) was much loved and reviewed. She began publishing prose poetry in the debut issue of Sport in 1988, followed by Landfall, and has since appeared in A Game of Two Halves, Contemporary Feminist Australian Poetry, 2016, Australian Poetry Anthology, Cordite, The Disappearing, Otoliths, and Best New Zealand Poems 2020. Her chapbook Small-time Spectre (2010) was published by the legendary Kilroy Press. Her films include Being Venice (2012) and Flophouse (2004), an adaptation of Herman Melville’s Bartleby (2001) and the cine-poem Urn (1995). www.mirobilbrough.com

Doc Drumheller (New Zealand touring poet) is an award-winning poet, musician, dramatist, who has published 11 collections of poetry. His poems are translated into more than 20 languages, and he is the editor and published of the New Zealand literary journal Catalyst. He was elected to represent New Zealand on the Executive Board of the World Congress of Poets, and is the editor in chief of the World Congress of Poets literary journal Fuego. He has represented New Zealand at international poetry festivals all over the world. His latest collection, The Hotel Theresa, features seventy of the published poems from more than one hundred composed between 2011 and 2024, Cold Hub Press (2024).

Stephen Smithyman (Melbourne) is the son of Kendrick Smithyman and Mary Stanley. He has lived and worked in Naarm/Melbourne for many years and is now retired there. He has published two collections of poetry and one of short stories, in recent years–all Ginninderra Press, Adelaide. ‘Uluru’ is from his second collection of poetry, Halfway and Back. ‘Northbound: Mythologies’ is included in his next poetry collection, Reading ‘Anna Karenina’ on the Beach, Melbourne Poets Union (2025). Stephen regards himself as an Antipodean poet, not belonging exclusively to either Aotearoa/New Zealand or Australia, but rather to both believing that, for all their differences, there are many powerful affinities between them.

Angela Stretch (Host) lives on Gadigal/Sydney, She is a poet, curator and writer from Otautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand. The artist uses language and poetry through different mediums and has been exhibited and published nationally, and internationally. She is the director of Poetry Sydney and intelligent animal, and produces Arts Friday on Eastside Radio.

Wong E Wen (Canberra) moved from Otaytahi to Canberra in 2022. Most recently, her poems have appeared in A Clear Dawn, Ko Aotearoa Tatou, No Other Place to Stand, and Landfall.

Cover image: Pauline Canlas Wu
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This is the last poetry event for the year at the Stanley Street Gallery [SSG]. Presented by SSG and ps, the poetry program is a quarterly reading event held on a Saturday afternoon in the popular inner Sydney precinct.

Poetry Sydney acknowledges First Nations peoples as the sovereign custodians of Country, and pay respect to Elders of past, present and to future generations. We value the distinct culture, customs and practices present in the many and diverse tribal nations across Australia.

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