About
Named “Best Female Poet” at her first national poetry competition, Carrie Rudzinski is a performance poet, published author, and teacher who has performed her work for audiences across the New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, England, and almost all 50 of the United States. Ranked 4th in the world at the 2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam, Carrie represented Boston, Denver, and Los Angeles over the course of 11 international poetry competitions. Her performances have been featured on Tedx, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, and Bustle.
In 2014, Carrie taught Poetry and Performance at California State University Northridge and from 2016 to 2020 taught performing arts and creative writing at Manukau Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand, creating the only tertiary level Spoken Word course in Oceania. From 2020-2021 she lectured at Unitec in Auckland.
Carrie has been a featured performer at Tedx Christchurch, India’s Poetry with Praktiki Festival, the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival, the Nelson Arts Festival, New Zealand Poetry Society Conference, the Ruapehu Writers Festival, LitCrawl, WORD Christchurch and the Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival. In 2019, Carrie was awarded The Pussy Riot Award for her performance at the Auckland Fringe Festival and received a standing ovation at the 10th annual Tedx Christchurch. She created and produced the feminist poetry show How We Survive alongside Olivia Hall which spawned an album and book. In 2022, Rudzinski and Hall created their sophomore poetry show Hysterical, which won Outstanding Performance Poetry at the Auckland Fringe Festival and sold out shows across Aotearoa.
Her work has been published in Landfall, The Spinoff, Stasis Journal, University of California Press, The Legendary, Catalyst, Muzzle, OnMag, Alight, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, We Will Be Shelter, and Learn Then Burn Vol. 2. Bicycle Comics published her first collection of poetry, A History Of Silence, in 2010 and she has since released six self-published books. She has five spoken word albums available to stream on Spotify, including her most recent release Goddess Bound.
Carrie is an experienced Programme Coordinator, working with Michael King Writers Centre, Rising Voices Foundation, and the NZ National Poetry Slam to prioritise and lift youth voices. She is a co-founder and curator of Auckland’s only monthly poetry competition, The JAFA Poetry Slam, which won the 2021 Auckland Fringe Festival Best Performance Poetry Award.
Carrie currently resides in Morningside, Auckland with her partner and plants.