The evening's compilation of works will include recitals of a selection of Vana and Claudia's published and current poetry, interspersed with discussion of their different writing processes and inspirations. Drawing on their shared love of Classics, the UC Teece Museum provides the perfect backdrop to this symposium of poetry.

Born in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Vana Manasiadis has been moving between Aotearoa and Kirihi Greece the last 20 years. Her most recent book The Grief Almanac: A Sequel, followed her earlier Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima in experimenting with hybridity and code-switching, and is being translated into Greek for forthcoming publication in Greece. As editor and translator she has edited or co-edited bilingual poetry selections including Tātai Whetū: Seven Māori Women Poets in Translation, a Spinoff 'Best Poetry Books of 2018’, with Maraea Rakuraku of Tūhoe and Ngāti Kahungunu. Her Ursula Bethell residency project is an exploration of translanguage and dialoguing driven by Skylla and glaciers and strange exiles.

Claudia Jardine (she/her) was born in Te-Tihi-o-Maru in 1995 and lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch. In 2020 she published her first chapbook, The Temple of Your Girl, with Auckland University Press in AUP New Poets 7 alongside Rhys Feeney and Ria Masae. In the same year, she received the Alex Scobie Research Prize for her Masters level thesis in Classics. For the winter of 2021 Jardine was awarded an Arts Four Creative Residency in The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, where she has been working on a collection of poems and obsessing over loom weights, deep sea creatures and a giant rat. She has had poems published in youth journals, not-youth journals, magazines, zines and websites, and her debut folk pop EP North is available online.

Brought to you by the UC Teece Museum, with support from the UC College of Arts Ursula Bethell Residency in Creative Writing and The Arts Centre Creative Residencies programme.

Museum doors open from 6.30pm, talk starts 7pm.

This event is free but places are limited so please register to attend.