Day celebrates verse

If you're wandering through Garden Place at lunchtime today, watch for roving poet Matt Boom - he'll be the one dressed as American writer Edgar Allan Poe, reading poetry and telling people about tonight's open mic night at the Garden Place library.

Today is national poetry day and local poets can verbalise their verses at two events at the Garden Place library.

Poets Alive will host local poets who can recite their verse, or material they've chosen while younger poets can perform their verses at the "poetry slam", a hip-hop or spoken word competition aimed at youth, but open to all.

Both events start at 6pm and registrations will be accepted tonight.

Hamilton National Poetry Day committee member Catherine Wallace said the day was a celebration of poetry in all its forms - limerick, haiku, sonnet, free verse, ode, lines that rhyme, lines that don't.

"Everyone is encouraged to come and either read one of their own or someone else's poems and listen to all the others at Garden Place Library tonight," said Dr Wallace.

"Poems are enormously varied and that's part of the fun, hearing what other people come up with."

The MC for open mic night will be Dr Mark Houlahan.

Winners in the Wintec poetry competition will be named at the open mic event and winners will read their entries. Winners will be selected by a panel of judges.