The star of Wellington’s awesome LitCrawl event this weekend is poet Kaveh Akbar, who has a great haircut.

Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar will perform at Wellington’s annual LitCrawl event this weekend, and so will his haircut.

Many say he has the best haircut in world literature. The evidence certainly strongly supports these claims.

He is the closest thing to a superstar in modern poetry without being insipid, like Rupi Kaur or Lang Leav; he is 29 years old, and has 31,800 followers on the Twitter machine; his work has been published in the New Yorker; his poems include the brilliant, and brilliantly titled “Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned Into Threats”; and he has an amazing haircut.

LitCrawl director Claire Mabey told The Spinoff Review of Books, “I got him via Hera Lindsay Bird who enlightened me to his genius and put us in touch. I immediately loved his poetry and wanted to bring him to LitCrawl where we feel the poetry game is strong! We have teamed up with Wheeler Centre in Melbourne and WORD Christchurch so Kaveh is doing three centres on this trip…Kaveh’s life and work is fascinating beyond his mesmerising poetry readings so the event will be a mix of conversation and performance.” She didn’t mention his Flock of Seagulls haircut.

Kaveh Akbar will appear at LitCrawl this weekend in Wellington. The programme also includes Lizzie Marvelly on feminism, Naomi Arnold on mental illness, Jesse Mulligan on short stories, Leah McFall on humour, Emily Writes on parenting, and Madeleine Chapman is in conversation with Steve Braunias about ghosting her book on Steven Adams.

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