Carrie Rudzinski
Poet. Performer. Educator.
Welcome.
Carrie Rudzinski (she/her) is a poet, published author, and teaching artist who ranked 4th in the world at the 2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam. Featured in Bustle, HuffPost, and Teen Vogue, she has performed her work over the past 17 years in 6 countries and across the United States. In 2019, Carrie won the Pussy Riot award at the Auckland Fringe Festival and received a standing ovation at the 10th annual Tedx in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her poems have been published in Landfall, The Spinoff, Stasis Journal, University of California Press, Learn Than Burn, We Will Be Shelter, Catalyst, and Muzzle. She has lectured in Creative Writing and Performing Arts at California State University Northridge, Manukau Institute of Technology and Unitec. Alongside Olivia Hall, Rudzinski is the co-creator of three poetry theatre shows: How We Survive (2019), The Bitching Hour (2023) and Hysterical (2022), the latter of which won Best New Play at the Wellington Theatre Awards and Outstanding Performance Poetry at Auckland Fringe Festival. Rudzinski is also the co-editor of Rapture: An Anthology of Performance Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand, published by Auckland University Press (2023).
RAPTURE: An Anthology of Performance Poetry from Aoteatoa New Zealand
edited by Carrie Rudzinski and Grace Iwashita-Taylor
'These poems roam the streets looking for a fight, question who we are and who we are growing into, examine the weaponisation and reclaiming of language. These poems take lovers to bed, scream into the depths of sadness and reclaim bodies. These poems decolonise and re-indigenise, swim in the moana, reshape the word ‘home’. These poems belly laugh deep, sprawl out under a blanket of stars and point into the wonder, wax nostalgic for the friends we have and the friends we have lost. These poems are family – a brilliant representation of the diversity of voice, talent, experience and desires of real writers, real poets, real people of Aotearoa.' - from the introduction of Rapture