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.