Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate 2022-24
Chris is a regular at our events, both as an audience member and on stage. He is a champion of poets across Aotearoa and has stated publicly that he wants to "push the focus and the attention on to everything else that’s happening in New Zealand, like the slam scene..."
"As Poet Laureate, my goal is to promote poetry of all kinds to reach aspiring and established poets, and audiences, so I'm thrilled to be supporting Motif Poetry as their Patron. I've long admired what Motif Poetry does to foster and encourage poets from all walks of life, as well its work to produce some of the best poetry events in Aotearoa. Spoken word and slam are an important part of our literary community, and I can't wait to see what Motif Poetry has in store." - Chris Tse, 2023
Chris Tse was born and raised in Lower Hutt. He studied English literature and film at Victoria University of Wellington, where he also completed an MA in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. He and Emma Barnes edited Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (AUP, 2021), the first major, multi-genre anthology of writing by queer New Zealand writers. Chris is currently The Spinoff's Friday Poem editor and will be editing Best New Zealand Poems 2023. In August 2022 he was named the 13th New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2022-24.
His poetry, fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications in Aotearoa and overseas. Chris is the author of three poetry collections published by Auckland University Press: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (winner of the 2016 Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry), HE’S SO MASC, and Super Model Minority (longlisted for the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and shortlisted for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry).
Visit:
https://christse.co.nz/Discover the ways that you can get involved in the poetry community and support our Aotearoa poets.
