Live Encounters Poets on Poetry July 2026
How does one become a poet? by Gillian Roach.
Poets are born, then made, then they make themselves. It’s a process. Watching children play with Lego, I see strong connections with the way people engage with words and language. There are key developmental stages. The youngest start alongside an adult or older child, enjoying the bright colours and strong shapes, the satisfying way the blocks click together. As their agility and confidence develop, they move to more advanced sets, carefully following the ‘constructions’ to build the exciting item on the box cover, before taking the delicious step beyond the instructions to make something entirely their own. (I am fascinated by how these ‘lego expressions’ reflect the child making them, alongside the influences of their environment and culture. One child’s rocket ship might be tiny and intricate, the other’s roomy and furnished for pets.)
While most children move on to other pursuits, for some the practice of building seems to fill a deep need — providing a physical embodiment of their thoughts; mind and hands working together. This commitment to the process often leads them to high levels of creativity and proficiency, in a virtuous circle. They are Lego poets.
For me, words clicked early. I loved them completely; the way they rhymed and chimed, the scents and sensations and worlds they carried. I was lucky to grow up in a home with story books, puns and wordplay; to be educated in a culture which celebrated literacy. These building blocks provided the foundation for a lifetime practice of poetry, a lifetime of creative expression. All contributed to the process.
© Gillian Roach
Gillian Roach is a Ahuriri Napier poet who won the New Voices — Emerging Poets Competition in 2018 and was runner-up in the Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems in 2018 and 2019. Her poetry has been widely published, including in Landfall, takahē and Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook. Gillian is a founding member of the Isthmus poets, and has published three collaborative poetry collections with them over the past 9 years. She completed a Master of Creative Writing degree at AUT in 2016, and has also written novels and short stories.