WOMAD NZ Announces The 2023 World Of Words Programme
The World of Words celebrates diverse and exciting voices designed to inspire people to think, talk, laugh, listen and learn.
WOMAD NZ 2023, March 17-19
Celebrating 20 years, 17 Festivals
And Over 1500 Performers
Be Part Of Global History.
WOMAD 2023 tickets On Sale Now From www.womad.co.nz
WOMAD’s World Of Words is a series of spoken sessions featuring novelists, poets, comedians, critical thinkers, entrepreneurs and more from around Aotearoa.
The WOMAD NZ 2023 World Of Words speakers in alphabetical order are journalist and author of “The Great Successor” Anna Fifield, New Zealand’s poet laureate Chris Tse, poet and multi-disciplinary artist Daren Kamali, one of New Zealand’s best-known painters, Dick Frizzell (MNZM), multi-award-winning comedian James Nokise, author Lil O’Brien, poets and cabaret performers Mad Doggerel Cabaret, award-winning New Zealand screenwriter, director and author Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue), Poetry Slam host Penny Ashton, lawyer, author and keen adventurer Rose Carlyle and independent researcher and writer Dr Susette Goldsmith.
The traditional Kunming garden is one of the most peaceful and serene areas within Pukekura Park and is the idyllic home of The World Of Words stage. It invites WOMAD attendees to sit back and relax as the eleven diverse and thought-provoking 2023 World Of Words speakers set out to educate and entertain.
Get to know your 2023 World Of Words speakers below:
Anna Fifield
Anna Fifield was a foreign correspondent for international newspapers for 20 years, writing for the Financial Times and the Washington Post on postings in Seoul, Tehran, Beirut, Washington DC, Tokyo and, most recently, Beijing. She was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University in 2013-14 and was awarded Stanford University’s Shorenstein Prize in 2018 for her reporting on Asia. Her highly acclaimed book The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong-Un has been translated into 24 languages. She returned to New Zealand last year to become the editor of the Dominion Post in Wellington.
Chris Tse – Poetry Slam
Chris Tse is New Zealand’s Poet Laureate for 2022-2024. Born and raised in Lower Hutt, Chris studied film and English literature at Victoria University and completed an MA in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. He is the author of three collections of poetry published by Auckland University Press: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (winner of the 2016 Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry), HE’S SO MASC, and Super Model Minority. He and Emma Barnes edited Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa.
Daren Kamali- Poetry Slam
Daren Kamali is Fijian, Wallis, Futunan, Samoan and Scottish. His works are inspired by his upbringing in Fiji and his Aotearoa NZ roots. Daren incorporates poetry, visual arts, performance arts, and sound/musicality with a Pan Pacific approach as a poet and multi-disciplinary artist. His creations draw from people and places, particularly cities, islands, and the ocean; a combination of the old and the fresh, Pacific heritage and tradition has heavily influenced contemporary thinking and narrative – connecting the past to the present to space, time and people. Daren also co-founded the South Auckland Poets Collective in 2008, and founded the Street Poets & Artists Collective Enterprise (SPACE) in 2021.
Dick Frizzell (MNZM)
One of New Zealand’s best-known and most versatile painters and the highly sought-after designer of a range of products from toys to wine. He is the author of Dick Frizzell: The Painter, It’s All About the Image, The Sun is a Star – A Voyage Through the Universe, and Me according to the History of Art.
James Nokise – Late Night Comedy
Multi-award-winning comedian James Nokise is much more than just a Stand-up artist. He’s also an acclaimed theatremaker and playwright who has toured the International Fringe Festival Circuit, with successful seasons in places such as Edinburgh, Perth and even New York City. James is a renowned social commentator, columnist, podcaster, and former writer for 7 Days. In 2019, he won the Fred Award, at the NZ International Comedy Festival. More recently, the stand-up comedian and son-of-a-preacher-man hosts Yours Faithfully, an 8-part series exploring different religions from an NZ perspective on TVNZ on demand.
Lil O’Brien
Lil is the author of the hilarious and heartbreaking coming-out memoir Not That I’d Kiss A Girl, which was voted in the Top Ten ‘Best of the Best’ for 2020 by Auckland Libraries and has been praised in The Spinoff, The NZ Herald and more. Lil is currently translating Not That I’d Kiss A Girl for the screen with South Pacific Pictures.
Mad Doggerel Cabaret – Late-night Poetic Cabaret
In Mad Doggerel Cabaret, poets David Eggleton and Daren Kamali combine with musician Richard Wallis to present a comic and lyric portrait of Aotearoa New Zealand and its place in the South Pacific Moana Nui today. Their Mad Doggerel Cabaret is full of cascading words, wild musicality and lightning humour.
Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) – Book Club
Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) is an award-winning New Zealand screenwriter, director and Author of Better the Blood, the WOMAD NZ 2023 Book Club Book. Better the Blood explores these raw and unhealed scars through the genre Bennett most loves, the crime thriller. Better the Blood is published by Simon & Schuster simultaneously in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand and is also currently in development for a six-part television series.
Penny Ashton- Poetry Slam Host
Penny Ashton is back with more aural excitements and to whip you into a frenzy over who will be crowned the 5th WOMAD Slam Champ. She has spent the pandemic safely touring New Zealand with her comedy musicals Promise and Promiscuity, Olive Copperbottom and Austen Found. Her new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility will be performed at the Court Theatre in Christchurch in 2023. To stave off the boredom of being locked in her West Auckland house, she has launched the Showy Ovaries podcast all over about menopause.
Rose Carlyle
New Zealander Rose Carlyle is a lawyer and keen adventurer. She has crewed on scientific yachting expeditions to subantarctic islands and lived aboard her yacht in the Indian Ocean for a year, sailing it from Thailand to South Africa via Seychelles. Rose was a Michael King Writer in Residence in 2020. Bestselling book The Girl in the Mirror was her debut novel.
Dr. Susette Goldsmith
Dr. Susette Goldsmith is an independent writer, editor of non-fiction, and research fellow at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. She has edited numerous museums, art galleries, scholarly books, essays, and monographs and contributed articles and regular columns for diverse publications. She has published four books. Her ongoing research explores ways of understanding and safeguarding the natural heritage of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her latest book Tree Sense was shortlisted for a 2022 PANZ design award.
WOMAD NZ 2023
From; Afghanistan to Zambia, psychedelic rock to incredible vocalists, classical to hip hop, Grammy award-winning to up-and-coming, traditional to contemporary, memoirs to mathematics. WOMAD NZ 2023 features 24 music and dance acts and eleven thought-provoking speakers, all set to celebrate, inspire and entertain. With more artists to be announced!
The 2023 festival celebrates its 20th anniversary at the award-winning Bowl of Brooklands and Brooklands Park in New Plymouth.
The World of Music, Arts and Dance festival boasts eight stages, each featuring an eclectic and cross-cultural line-up with talented musicians, artists, and inspiring speakers for three days and nights of extraordinary music and culture like nothing else in Aotearoa.
Situated in a natural amphitheatre over a lake, the iconic Bowl stage is a venue with the wow factor. While the Dell Stage is an intimate affair surrounded by gentle native bush. Both The Gables and the Brooklands stages are known for their high energy and late-night sets. The Kunming Garden hosts the World Of Word stage, which celebrates diverse and exciting voices designed to inspire people to think, talk, laugh, listen and learn and the OMV STEAM Lab is a place of wonder where Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics unite, with inventors, innovators and people at the top of their fields pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo. Unique to Aotearoa, Te Paepae proudly hosts Māori Culture workshops and activities, and music, food, and conversation are at the heart of Taste the World.
Loved by all ages, WOMAD NZ 2023 is a worldly fix without leaving the country—the ultimate culmination of sounds, scenery and good vibes.
Chief Operating Officer for WOMAD UK, Mike Large, states, “WOMAD, first and foremost, is a great festival to enjoy and discover music, arts and dance. But it was born with a purpose and created in response to difficult times. There was apartheid aboard, race riots and terrorism at home in the UK. Our founder Peter Gabrel believed that by bringing great artists together in a family-friendly environment, the audience would forget their fears and prejudices and open their hearts to the music instead… WOMAD and what it stands for feels more important now than ever.”
Tickets to the three-day camping festival are on sale now from www.womad.co.nz .This year, WOMAD has teamed up with PayPlan making it easy for festival-goers to book tickets now, pay in regular, easy payments, and be dancing under the mighty Taranaki Mounga in March 2023. Camping and glamping options are available.
