Michele Leggott, New Zealand Poet Laureate 2007 – 2009. Emeritus Professor of English, University of Auckland.

Michele Leggott is a poet and editor with a consuming interest in archives and the poetics of memory. She has published 11 collections of poetry and was the New Zealand Poet Laureate 2007–9. Her archival work spans anthologies, critical editions and web projects that address New Zealand and Modernist American poetry. She received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2013. In 2017 she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Her most recent books are Face to the Sky (Auckland University Press, 2023) and Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris (Te Papa Press, 2025) with co-author Catherine Field-Dodgson.

Michele’s talk is entitled “The Way Back: Two kinds of writing that helped save my life.” Face to the Sky, my poetry book, and Groundwork are the two faces of the writing that saved my life emotionally and intellectually as the Malaghan scientists transformed my immune system so that it could find and destroy the cancer and give me a shot at a second life.