Poets to recite on the water

Trying out their floating platform at Ferrum Engineering Ltd yesterday are poets (from left)...
Trying out their floating platform at Ferrum Engineering Ltd yesterday are poets (from left) Michael Harlow, Poppy Haynes, David Eggleton and Sue Wootton. Photo by Stephen Jaquiery.
A group of Dunedin poets will go to sea later this month.

David Eggleton, Sue Wootton, Michael Harlow and Poppy Haynes will read their poetry from a floating punt at Careys Bay during the Dunedin Heritage Festival.

Eggleton (1991), Wootton (2008) and Harlow (2009) are all University of Otago Robert Burns Fellows, while Haynes is the Critic poetry editor.

"I've performed in a lot of different places, but I've never performed on a landing craft before," Harlow said. "This is a great way to bring poetry into the community. It doesn't belong in the closet."

The 5m punt was restored by Ferrum Engineering Ltd for the festival event.

"It needed a touch-up and this was a good opportunity to do it," Ferrum Engineering Ltd general manager Ian Kemp said.

"It's a nice, easy stable platform. We use it as a work platform occasionally to do work on boats. Guys have welded from it."

The craft originally served as a tender on Lady of the South Pacific, which plied Fijian waters in the 1980s.

"It was a little passenger boat that was used to look at coral reefs," Ferrum Engineering welder Merv Pulham, who restored the craft, said.

Mr Kemp said said the company had declined to charge for the punt, in favour of a donation to the children's ward at Dunedin Hospital.

"Poets Adrift" will be held at Careys Bay from 1.30pm until 2.30pm on Saturday, March 21, as part of the Dunedin Heritage Festival.

 

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