If walls could speak

AUCKLAND, Thursday: Phantom Billstickers, in collaboration with the Auckland Arts Festival, is giving passionate new Kiwi poets a voice on the streets, with posters opposite the Auckland Library in Lorne Street and across the city.

Phantom’s Robin McDonnell said: “Spoken Walls is what happens when the voices of our rangatahi are given a platform to speak.

Arts Festival’s artistic director Shona McCullagh said: “I saw one of Phantom founder Jim Wilson’s poem poster social media posts and I liked the way it brought the power of the word to new audiences.

“When you stumble on a poem in a public place, it’s a kind of silent activism. I wondered if we could do something similar, but with young, unknown writers in our city.

“So I got in touch with Phantom and took it from there.

“When you stumble on a poem in a public place, it’s a kind of silent activism.”

“We worked with Action Education, which is an arts-based youth development organisation that uses spoken word poetry to engage young people.

“They got in touch with schools and ran workshops around the region. We wanted diverse voices, and we found 14 young poets from different high schools and communities.”

Look out for Spoken Walls: A City In Verse during the Auckland Arts Festival. Poems will be popping up around town from 10 March 2022. Check out the poems here

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• 0800phantom.co.nz