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Mad Doggerel Cabaret features current poet laureate David Eggleton, right, poet Daren Kamali, left, and musician Richard Wallis.
David Eggleton’s current tour of the country is his “last hurrah” as New Zealand’s poet laureate.
His three-year run as poet laureate comes to a close on Friday, just as Eggleton enters the last leg of his national tour with Mad Doggerel Cabaret.
The show, which comes to Christchurch’s Arts Centre on Tuesday, is a wild mix of poetry and music featuring Eggleton’s latest poems, music from David Wallis and the “mesmeric and shamanic” poems of Daren Kamali.
Eggleton said it had been interesting to be the country’s poet laureate through such a turbulent period.
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“I have been the lockdown laureate,’’ he said. “It was quite a journey.”
He said he tried to find the “black, sardonic humour” in recent events. He has written poems about pandemic billionaires and riffed on John Key’s description of New Zealand as the “hermit kingdom”.
“I have written a poem about the way billionaires have amassed incredible wealth during the pandemic, while other people suffer.
“It is called The Squillionaire.”
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Eggleton’s reign as New Zealand’s poet laureate comes to a close on Friday.
He described the Mad Doggerel Cabaret show as “street performers presenting a cabaret of New Zealand life today with light-hearted, topical poetry”.
“Poetry can be serious and po-faced and a little interior. My poems are for everyone and edgy without getting caught up in the angst of things.
“There are so many ways to write a poem, but people restrict themselves to the agonising.
“It is closer to song and rock n roll for me.”
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Eggleton has enjoyed touring New Zealand with the Mad Doggerel Cabaret.
The tour, which has taken the trio from Whangarei to Stewart Island, has given Eggleton plenty of inspiration for new poems.
“It has been good seeing all the small towns and seeing what life is like.
“In Whanganui, we saw an anti-vax shop with all the conspiracy theory slogans. Things like that will percolate into poems eventually.
“It takes time because I want to the language to last and not just be a little squib.”
He said they felt like a group of “troubadours or travelling minstrels” as they toured the country in a minivan.
“It makes you feel like you are part of a long line going back to mediaeval times.
“I have always got my ear to the ground to hear the tones of the moment and how people feel about things.
“I tap into those and turn them into rhythm and rhyme.”
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