Our People
Patrons
Dame Fiona Kidman
Board and Staff
Laurice Gilbert
Interim President
Shane Hollands
Vice-President
Julianne Exton
Treasurer
Kim Martins
Administrator, Social Media
Cadence Chung
Managing Editor
Natasha Kerridge
Assistant Editor
Anna Jackson
Board Member
Josiah Morgan
Board Member
Jackson
Board Member
Sarah Scott
Reviews Editor
Sofia Drew
Newsletter Editor
Dame Fiona Kidman
Dame Fiona Kidman is a novelist, memoirist, poet, and one-time screenwriter. She has written around 35 books, many in international translation. She has been awarded a DNZM, OBE, and the French Legion of Honour in recognition of her services to literature in Aotearoa and France. She attended Riverview Primary School for seven years before her family moved south. She lives in Wellington. Her latest book is The Midnight Plane: Poems Selected and New (Otago University Press, 2025).
Laurice Gilbert
Interim president
Laurice Gilbert was NZPS president for 10 years. She has been published in 9 countries because she hates networking and hasn’t the emotional resilience for the NZ literary circuit. Life Member of the NZPS; three Pushcart Prize nominations; once shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.
Kim Martins
Administrator
Kim Martins is a writer and poet based in Northland. After a career in law and education, she took up writing again in 2016 and has since been published in various journals and won writing contests, including the 2020 NZPS International Poetry Competition Haiku section. She has published five novels and a poetry collection.
Email Kim at info@poetrysociety.org.nz for all general enquiries.
Natasha Kerridge
Assistant Editor
Natasha Kerridge (she/her) is a graphic designer with a focus on branding and editorial design, paired with a strong love for illustration. She excels at translating literary worlds into compelling visual narratives and spends her free time writing and reading poetry and fiction.
Shane Hollands
Vice-President
Shane Hollands is a veteran of the New Zealand performance poetry scene. He is well-known for his innovative work with music of differing genres from electronica to metal, and his efforts to give other poets a platform to perform; he established performance poetry collective The Literatti, and the NZ national celebration of beat poetry, The Kerouac Effect. He was one half of the art-music duo The Beautiful Losers, and now regularly tours the country as the front-man for jazz-beat poetry band, Freaky Meat.
Josiah Morgan
Board Member
Josiah Morgan (Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Maniapoto) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Ōtautahi. His latest book i’m still growing is out with Dead Bird Books now in all good bookstores. His other books were all released in the United States, including his hybrid text, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was performed as a six-hour-long performance artwork in Auckland Pride 2024. He believes in magic and the power of words to transform.
Anna Jackson
Board Member
Anna Jackson is the author of seven collections of poetry as well as Diary Poetics: Form and Style in Writers’ Diaries 1915–1962 (Routledge, 2010) and Actions & Travels: How Poetry Works (Auckland University Press, 2022). She lives in Island Bay, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and is associate professor in English literature at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington.
Jackson
Board Member
Jackson lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin. In 2021, they moved to Aotearoa from Australia, where Recent Work Press published their fourth poetry collection, A coat of ashes, based on their award-winning PhD thesis. In New Zealand, their poems have appeared in takahē, Turbine | Kapohau, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook and other journals. They are on the committees of the New Zealand Poetry Society and Dunedin’s monthly poetry reading group Octagon Collective.
Julianne Exton
Treasurer
Julianne lives overlooking the western fringe of the Auckland Harbour in Beach Haven with her husband. After a lifetime working in Educational Leadership, Management and Charitable she has stepped away to clear space for new creative pursuits including poetry writing, mosaic art, travel and mentoring.
Sarah Scott
Reviews Editor
Sarah Scott’s poems have been published in Ōrongohau|Best New Zealand Poems, Turbine|Kapohau, NZ Poetry Shelf, Landfall and other publications. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the IIML and was 2023 runner-up in the Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems. She recently curated the Poetry Lightbox Series in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, where she lives with her husband and sons.
Sofia Drew
Newsletter Coordinator
Sofia Drew (she/her) is a poet and student of English Literature and Philosophy. However, the only time she feels she has the authority to call herself a ‘poet’ is in author bios (like this one you are reading now)! You can find more of her writing in Starling and Symposia Magazine.