This Sat­urday a large num­ber of spots in Wel­ling­ton are tak­ing part in a pub crawl but without the pubs. And with lit­er­at­ure instead. A LitCrawl if you will!

Actu­ally that’s a slight lie. There are not only three pubs involved (Hashigo Zake, Meow and Little Beer Quarter) but there’s a Writers’ Beer as well. Nine NZ poets adorn bottles of beer brewed by Mus­sel Inn.

Manuka Beer, Stout, Lager and a Poem
Manuka Beer, Stout, Lager and a poem. Does­n’t every­one feel like words flow more freely after a beer or two, before far too quickly they seem to wash around in and stumble out of your mouth after one too many?

James Brown, Doc Drum­heller and Emma Barnes all have their poems on the Writers’ Lager.

Max Chapnick, Helen Rick­erby, Dami­en Wilkins, Ines Almeida, Air­ini Beaut­rais adorn the Writer­’s Manuka Beer bottles.

And Chris Price is the sole poet to be pub­lished on the Writers’ Stout.

Poetry on beer
Poetry on beer

There are a 14 events tak­ing place through­out the city between 6 & 9:15pm on Sat­urday at a range of ven­ues includ­ing the afore­men­tioned bars, The City Gal­lery, Six Bar­rel Soda, Wel­ling­ton Chocol­ate Fact­ory, Fer­ret Books & Arty Bees AND it’s gold coin entry to all of these events.

The Writers’ Manuka Beer is for sale at Meow so why not head along to Off the Page @ Meow and exper­i­ence per­form­ance poets from home and away “spill words, music, truth, fic­tion, songs and dirty polit­ics”, includ­ing Cap­tain Hound­stooth who won the Wel­ling­ton region­al final of the NZ Poetry Slam.

If that is not excit­ing enough, or you can­’t do Sat­urday Even­ing, then there’s the Elev­enses ses­sions @ 11am on Sat­urday, which include Monu­ment­al Crawl – tak­ing a walk through the city with Dr Mark Stock­er a Cur­at­or of His­tor­ic­al Inter­na­tion­al Art at Te Papa, and Kahini – a con­ver­sa­tion with Marco Sonzogni, an award-win­ning edit­or, poet and lit­er­ary trans­lat­or, on the gift of trans­la­tion. AND both of these events are free (with a chance to make a dona­tion)

There’s also the awe­some Women of Let­ters event at San Fran on Sunday night. A line-up of New Zea­l­and women have been invited to write on the theme of ‘Let­ter to my unanswered ques­tion’ and will read their let­ters aloud in front of you. The women writ­ing and speak­ing are:

Artist­ic Dir­ect­or of the NZ Fest­iv­al SHELAGH MAGADZA

Play­wright, theatre dir­ect­or and per­former JO RANDERSON

Act­ress and dir­ect­or NANCY BRUNNING

Journ­al­ist, broad­caster and former politi­cian PAM CORKERY

Comedi­enne, poet and act­or PENNY ASHTON

Act­ress and play­wright MIRANDA MANASIADIS

And writer and human rights advoc­ate MARIANNE ELLIOTT

So this Sat­urday – get out into this fine city of ours. Drink in the beer and lit­er­at­ure that LitCrawl has to offer because Without lit­er­at­ure (and argu­ably beer), life is hell.