Words have been Mark Raffill's stock-in-trade for over 30 years. Whether scribbling dispatches from the famine-stricken Horn of Africa or penning reviews of rock albums, the Nelson based poet, publisher, journalist, columnist and publicist has crafted text as though his life - and the lives of others - depended on it. But it has never just been about words on paper or text on screen.

Mark has performed his poems at concerts and festivals around the country for the past dozen years.

Raffill's ear for spoken rhythms and love of the live gig has been fueled by a parallel career as a concert and event promoter, band and night club mamaner, youth worker and former jug band musician! Such diversity provides fertile soil for a poet's musings.

So, too, do three decades of adverturous and close-nit family life. Mark lives with his wife Jeanie and varying combinations of their four children on Best Island, Richmond, near Nelson, New Zealand.