Kōrero
Best Bets: Panda Wong x Chris Tse

‘Best of’ poetry collections, as Chris Tse writes in his introduction to Best New Zealand Poems 2023, “provide something of a ‘state of the nation’ view of poetry.” As Best of Australian Poems 2023 co-editor Panda Wong reflects, they are “what poets were feeling, thinking and imagining across many different forms, mediums and lexicons” — in those times when the events around us are “too much for us to process or express in everyday language”.

So what are those feelings, those thoughts, those imaginings — how do they collide and diverge from across our oceans, and what are our poets telling us about the world in which we live? Join Chris and Panda as they reflect on 2023 through the eyes of our poets in Aotearoa and Australia.

—

Presented as part of the Asian American Literature Festival.

Chris Tse is the author of three poetry collections: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (AUP, 2014, winner of the 2016 Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry) HE’S SO MASC (AUP, 2018), and Super Model Minority (AUP, 2022, a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and longlisted at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards). He and Emma Barnes edited Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (AUP, 2021). In August 2022, Chris was appointed Aotearoa New Zealand’s 13th Poet Laureate. His term has been extended to the end of August 2025. Chris is a 2024 participant of the International Writing Program Fall Residency at the University of Iowa.

Panda Wong is a poet and editor who lives and works on unceded Wurundjeri land. Her first chapbook, 'angel wings dumpster fire', and her first EP, salmon cannon me into the abyss, were released in mid-2022. She co-edited Best of Australian Poems 2023. She is also one half of music/poetry project lotus threads with musician Hannah Wu.