You can hear the discussion and read Louise’s fabulous poem. Check out Fiona’s full sequence in Where Your Left Hand Rests (Godwit, 2010). It is poetry in an exquisitely produced book.
All the same, grandmother
how many hills are there left to stand on
because I tell you, it’s getting quite
lonely on this high moral ground
and now that I’ve found you, guilty secrets and all,
I can’t keep away, can’t stop looking at your picture
from ‘High ground’ in the sequence ‘Speaking with my grandmothers’
The image is by Auckland artist, Peter Gouge, who drew it for Amy’s son Robin.
’13th August 2016′ is the first entry in what I’m calling Neon Daze: a verse journal of the first four months,
Amy Brown grew up in Hawkes Bay and now lives in Melbourne, where she teaches Literature and Philosophy. Her last book, The Odour of Sanctity, was published by VUP in 2013.
‘I’ve asked a librarian who has assured me there will be novels in the library, up on the fourth floor. But it’s strange, this public dismissal of fiction. It feels like part of some more general diminution of the arts and humanities in our universities, part of the culture that focuses on the body, on sport, rather than the imagination, part of some vast movement of the zeitgeist under our feet, that mistrusts the imagination and what it might be capable of conceiving. Part of a new global politics.
But in the meantime, here we go, the writers of fiction, in our air machines, bobbing along, fifty feet above our country, looking down, seeing how it might have been, how it yet might be, making things up. Imagining.’ Fiona Farrell
An extract from a riveting must read/listen lecture with a link to the whole piece:
Fiona Farrell delivered this year’s University of Auckland lecture to a packed house at the 2018 Auckland Writers Festival. For a PDF and podcast of the lecture, please follow this link.
The brief was broad: around 40 minutes, talk about anything, whatever is on your mind. Well, what’s been on my mind lately is politics. And fiction. Last year I published a novel, my seventh. It’s routinely introduced at talks and festivals as ‘political’. The only one to be so labeled.
Now, from my point of view, everything I have ever written has been political. The fact that I can write at all – descendant of Irish famine refugees and dispossessed Highland crofters – that I have been delivered the necessary health and education and readers with money, inclination and time for books – has all been over to politics.
But why this book? What makes a work of the imagination ‘political’? Is it because it occupies the junction between fiction and journalism, fact and fantasy? Is it because references to political events or politicians are embedded in the narrative like hokey pokey in ice cream? Does it depend upon some notion of authorial intention, not simply to entertain but to critique the workings of power? Is it because the text suggests factional allegiance, to left or right? And can fiction that professes to be ‘not political’ drift free above the muddle of ideas, decisions, actions that we bundle together and label ‘Politics’? Or is the personal political, as Carol Hanisch and the 70s feminists insisted and is every novel, every one of our imaginings inescapably ‘political’? And as a novelist, is there something distinctive about writing ‘political fiction’?
Full lecture here at Academy of New Zealand Literature
‘Sea foam at Gemstone Beach’ from The Yield, Otago University Press, 2017
This book was one of my favourite reads of 2017 – I was utterly delighted to see it shortlisted in the book awards. If you ever get a chance – go hear Sue read! Otherwise tuck up in some cosy warmth, when it is icy outside, and read this prismatic book.
Sue Wootton’s latest collection, The Yield, was shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2018. She has published five volumes of poetry, and has won several awards including the 2015 Caselberg Trust International PoetryPrize. Mākaro Press published Strip, her first novel, in 2015. She co-edits the Health Humanities blog – Corpus: Conversations about Medicine and Life. She lives in Dunedin.
Sue Wootton’s website
Otago University Press page
Following on from a Wellington Readers and Writers Festival highlight
‘Because what language actually means in Aotearoa is a pretty big kōrero. It’s words, yes, but it’s also what our shared breaths mean, our stares, our ancestors under our skin, tā moko and occupation and recognition. In Aotearoa, as in any place where indigenous language has had no choice but to respond to colonisation and language tune-out (at best), translation to or from te reo is completely political. Of course it is. The language choices are political. The access is political. The results are political.’ Vana Manasiadis
‘When does it start’ Maraea Rakuraku’s poem
Ngā Kupu Waikato: An anthology of Waikato poetry.
Submission closing date is 31 August, 2018.
Open to anyone who has lived in the Waikato region for at least one year.
No more than five poems, please. Preferably NOT previously published, although this is not hard and fast. However, if previously published, do note where & when, please.
Can be on any kaupapa and in any style – just as long as they are not too long, eh! However, poems pertaining to some aspect of the Waikato rohe or region, will be looked at most favourably.
Ki te reo Māori rāua ko te reo Ingarihi hoki – In the Māori language and the English language also.
Please submit to ngakupuwaikato@gmail.com
As attachments in ONE WORD DOCUMENT. Please also include a one-sentence outline of your ties to Waikato – past or present.
Poems will initially be longlisted, and then a panel of Waikato-based poets will select the poems to be included in this anthology.
Tēnā koe.
Vaughan Rapatahana
Editor
THANK YOU to Hamilton City CNZ Creative Communities Scheme for the generous funding available.
Entries are now open for the Caselberg International Poetry Prize, judged by David Eggleton. The winning poem will be published in the Spring edition of Landfall, and the winning poet will receive a $500 Prize and a week long stay at the beautiful Caselberg House out on the Otago Peninsula.
Information for Entrants
The competition opens 1st June and closes on 31st July. Entries are judged blind. First Prize is $500 (plus one-week stay at the Caselberg house at Broad Bay, Dunedin). Second Prize is $250; and there are up to 5 Highly-Commended awards (no monetary prizes).
The first- and second-placed poems will be published in the Spring issue of Landfall, and all winning and highly-commended entries will appear on the Caselberg Trust web-site (copyright remaining with the authors).
Entry fee: $20 for up to four poems from any one entrant. Payment may be made to any branch of the ANZ National Bank to the credit of the Caselberg Trust, a/c no. 06-0901-0353698-00, giving your name as the payer reference; or by cheque made out to ‘Caselberg Trust’, or in cash.
Note – entry fees must be paid prior to submitting your entry, and where payments are not received, poems will not be submitted for judging
Entries may be submitted by e-mail to poetry@caselbergtrust.org or post to:
Caselberg Poetry Prize
PO Box 71
Portobello
Dunedin 9014
NZ
Along with your entries, whether by e-mail or as hard copy, please provide your name and postal address and phone number, and your e-mail address (for receipt of your entry fee when this is received). If you have no e-mail address, and you want receipt of entry please send a stamped addressed envelope.
No entries received after 31st July 2016 will be considered.
Winners only will be notified of their success. A copy of the Judge’s report will be posted on the Caselberg Trust website , and as always, the Judge’s decisions will be final, and no correspondence will be entered into.
David Eggleton lives in Otepoti/Dunedin, where he is a poet, writer, reviewer and editor. His first collection of poems was co-winner of the PEN New Zealand Best First Book of Poems Award in 1987. In 2015 he received the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry. His collection of poems, The Conch Trumpet, won the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry. Also in 2016, he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry. A new collection, Edgeland and other poems, is being published by Otago University Press in July 2018.
How to leave the small town you were born in
First you must demonstrate your ability to count your age on an abacus or use a telephone with a rotary dial. Acquire your badge in either synchronised running or raking leaves in an apron. From then on speak only in morse code. Should you become trapped inside a cactus or a fleur-de-lis, you must draw the Air New Zealand logo from memory to be freed. Should you have forgotten your wool cap or clip-together cutlery set, you will return to the small town you were born in. In your darkest hours shout I will do my best! and recite prayers old and new. The mere thought of the small town you were born in will become repellent, like kissing your cousin or spooning out jellied meats from a tin. When you make it to the outside you may write back home to tell younger siblings of your great odyssey – how you swore allegiance to god and country, and demonstrated great physical and mental skill.
©Louise Wallace
Louise Wallace now lives in Dunedin and is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent being Bad Things (Victoria University Press, 2017). In 2015 she was the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago. She is the founder and editor of Starling, an online journal publishing the work of New Zealand writers under 25 years of age.
NZ Poetry Shelf 