Category Archives: NZ poetry event

Some photos and thoughts on The Lauris Edmond Memorial Poetry Award

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This award was launched by the Canterbury Poets’ Collective and The NZ Poetry Society in 2003. Five poets read in a festival slot and one poet gets the award. Originally the event was staged during the Christchurch Writers’ Festival but, after the earthquake, it moved to Wellington (with one brief return).

This year Dinah Hawken, Bob Orr, Claire Orchard, Chris Tse and Harry Ricketts read. The festival as a whole seems to short change poetry somewhat, so I welcomed the opportunity to hear this group. Ultra small venue which was full to max. Would there be an audience to fill something a little bigger?

But smallness is intimate and the readings were a treat. I was especially keen to hear Claire Orchard read as I have her debut book next on my pile to read and already have a strong relationship with the work of the other poets. I loved her reading.

The winner: Bob Orr. It feels like this award casts light on a poet who deserves a little more attention. Bob has the ability to take you to all four corners of the world and show you a vital snapshot. Something that gets to the very heart of place, of people, of experience. His poetry comes out of strong attachment to home but is wide in its reach. Wonderful!

Bob thought he had just come to read a couple of poems  so was quite surprised to get the package with a cheque.

A few years ago I was delighted to launch a collection of Bob’s at the Grey Lynn Library. It was packed to the rafters with poetry fans of all ages. So seldom do I see such a turn out. The warmth and affection for Bob and his poetry in that room was exactly why he deserved this award.

Congratulations!

My thoughts: 2016 Ockham NZ Book Award Poetry short list

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Congratulations to all those who make the short lists! Especially in a year that was larger than a year.

Here is the short list for poetry, see below for other categories.

Poetry
How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, by Chris Tse (Auckland University Press)
The Night We Ate the Baby, by Tim Upperton (Haunui Press)
Song of the Ghost in the Machine, by Roger Horrocks (Victoria University Press)
The Conch Trumpet, by David Eggleton (Otago University Press)
Would this be my list? No! But that doesn’t mean a thing. Book Awards will always reflect the predilections of the judges. And there are some strong collections here that I have reviewed and loved. Great to see Chris’s debut collection make the cut.
Good to see a small press make it along with the big presses who continue to show an admiral devotion to poetry.
Whom do I mourn? Emma Neale’s extraordinary collection, Tender Machines. Ahh!
I haven’t read many of the novels that made it but how I adored Anna Smaill’s The Chimes that did not. Sorry to be a party pooper on that one.
And how good to see Fiona Farrell and Lynn Jenner make the non-fiction list. I reviewed both those books on the blog and thought they were standout examples of how we can write about the world, catastrophe, home.
Fiction plus poetry equals one woman out of eight.  No women poets. Does this mean the men wrote all the best books in the past year? No way!
Is NZ literature in fine heart? Utterly yes. Astonishing books missed the long lists in both poetry and fiction. We are publishing such quality writing it makes judging almost impossible for Book Award Judges.
For those that missed out, good books have a life beyond book awards. Astonishing books are bigger than book awards. Remember that.
For those that have been picked, enjoy the well-deserved moment, then let the white noise settle and get on with what really matters. Writing.
The 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards finalists are: 
Fiction
The Back of His Head, by Patrick Evans (Victoria University Press)
Chappy, by Patricia Grace (Penguin Random House)
Coming Rain, by Stephen Daisley (Text Publishing)
The Invisible Mile, by David Coventry (Victoria University Press)
Poetry
How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, by Chris Tse (Auckland University Press)
The Night We Ate the Baby, by Tim Upperton (Haunui Press)
Song of the Ghost in the Machine, by Roger Horrocks (Victoria University Press)
The Conch Trumpet, by David Eggleton (Otago University Press)
General Non-Fiction
Maurice Gee: Life and Work, by Rachel Barrowman (Victoria University Press)
The Villa at the Edge of the Empire: One Hundred Ways to Read a City, by Fiona Farrell (Penguin Random House)
Māori Boy: A Memoir of Childhood, by Witi Ihimaera (Penguin Random House)
Lost and Gone Away, by Lynn Jenner (Auckland University Press)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
Te Ara Puoro: A Journey into the World of Māori Music, by Richard Nunns (Potton and Burton)
New Zealand Photography Collected, by Athol McCredie (Te Papa Press)
Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History by Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney, Aroha Harris (Bridget Williams Books)
Real Modern: Everyday New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s, by Bronwyn Labrum (Te Papa Press)
The Fiction category is judged by distinguished writer Owen Marshall CNZM, Wellington bookseller and reviewer Tilly Lloyd, and former Director of the Auckland Writers Festival and former Creative New Zealand senior literature adviser Jill Rawnsley.
The Poetry Prize is judged by former Auckland University Press publisher Elizabeth Caffin MNZM, Dr Paul Millar, of the University of Canterbury, and poet and University of Auckland academic Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh.
The General Non-Fiction Prize is judged by Metro Editor-At-Large Simon Wilson, Professor Lydia Wevers, literary historian, critic and director of the Stout Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, and Dr Jarrod Gilbert, a former Book Awards winner for Patched: A History of Gangs in New Zealand, of the University of Canterbury.
The Illustrated Non-Fiction Prize is judged by former publisher Jane Connor, publisher of the magisterial The Trees of New Zealand, which won the Book of the Year award in 2012, Associate Professor Linda Tyler, Director of the Centre for Art Studies at The University of Auckland, and Leonie Hayden, the editor of Mana magazine.
The winners (including of the four Best First Book Awards) will be announced at a ceremony on Tuesday May 10 2016, held as the opening night event of the Auckland Writers Festival. The awards ceremony is open to the public for the first time. Tickets to the event can be purchased via Ticketmaster once festival bookings open on Friday 18 March.

Stars of Pasifika Poetry at Auckland Library

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Word of mouth! Love the way Auckland Central Library draws in the poets.

Poets’ Night Out in Havelock North with CK Stead, Paula Green, Gregory O’Brien and Chris Price

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For Eventfinda tickets go here

The Poet Laureate Celebrations includes this event! Looking forward to my trip south.

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Congratulations Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh

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In two weeks, one New Zealand woman will stand in London’s Westminster Abbey to perform a poem for the Queen on behalf of 53 countries.

Selina Tusitala Marsh, a Pasifika poet and Auckland University academic, has been commissioned to write and perform a poem at the Commonwealth Day Observance on March 14.

As well as the Queen, the service will be attended by Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma, along with High Commissioners and other dignitaries from across the Commonwealth.

 

See the rest of the article and a video link here.

LitCrawlcomes back to Wellington like a juicy box of chocolates I see

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LitCrawl is three nights of Literary Goodness. Each night is different, and every one is a juicy box of chocolates. Artists include: The Pandhandlers (as seen in Writing Tunes & Playing Poetry in last year’s LitCrawl), Bill Manhire, Robert Easting, Sarah Webster, Hera Lindsay Bird, Tim Corballis, The Empire City, Chris Price, Ken Arkind. Plus more.

When: Thurs 3, Fri 4 & Sat 5 March
Where: Potocki Paterson Art Gallery, Level 1, 41 – 47 Dixon St
Tickets: Get them! At the Fringe site here. Doorsales available if there’s room left.

 

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Poetry and the Transit of Venus: a NZ – German collaboration

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‘Come on, let’s push the inflatable out

on the night’s wide waters, see

how far it goes.’

Chris Price from ‘Venera’

 

Three German poets came to view the transit of Venus with three New Zealand poets at Uawa/ Tolaga Bay on June 6th 2012.

They observed the black dot. They wrote poems.

In the same year they met in Germany and translated a selection of each other’s poems  before performing together at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Victoria University Press has just published a beautiful edition of the poems, in both English and German, with images, notes and interviews.

The poets:

Hinemoana Baker, Glenn Colquhoun, Chris Price

Uwe Kolbe, Brigitte Oleschinski, Ulrike Almut Sandig

 

It is as though poetry is the inflatable that six poets pushed out into the ‘night’s wide waters’ of writing; into the passage of the black dot, the thought of Cook’s eye trained all those centuries back, into the little repetitions of stone or buttercup or light.

As you might expect no poem cluster is the same.

Each lift and slip of the inflatable is as much a lift and slip for the reader as it is the writer. A voyage of discovery, in a way.

I especially loved the way the poems took me back to that once-in-a-lifetime experience. How to make poetry of such things?

I was also drawn to the pairings of poets and the way they translated each other’s work.

As the ever enthusiastic Rick Stein says: There should be more of this. What other projects can we invent that bring poets together in such fertile ways?

 

The poems are simply and intricately addictive. Congratulations and thank you VUP! The book is a little gem.

 

VUP page

 

Hinemoana Baker is a Wellington poet, musician and teacher. She is the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer in Residence in 2015–16.

Urike Almut Sandig is a Berlin poet who works with various composers and musicians. She has received numerous awards and scholarships, most recently a scholarship from the Berlin Senate.

Glenn Colquhoun is a poet, children’s writer, and GP. In 2014 he represented New Zealand on the Commonwealth Poets United poetry project which celebrated the Glasgow Commonwealth Games.

Uwe Kolbe is a poet, translator and lecturer who lives in Hamburg. He has received many prizes and awards, most recently the Heinrich Mann Prize from the Academy of the Arts in Berlin, and the Meran Poetry Award.

Brigitte Oleschinski is a Berlin poet, essayist and performer. She received the prestigious Peter-Huchel-Preis in 1998. She is best known for her poetry collections Mental Heat Control (1990), Your Passport is Not Guilty (1997) and Geisterströmung (2004).

Chris Price is a Wellington poet, nonfiction writer, musician and teacher. Her most recent poetry collection is Beside Herself (2016).

 

 

 

 

A new writers festival like no other: Ruapehu Writers Festival, Ōhakune, 17–20 March 2016

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Tickets are on sale now for the country’s newest, and quirkiest, writers festival, to be held in Ōhakune in March. And even if you can’t make it, you can still be involved by donating to its crowdfunding campaign.

 

A pony ride with a popular children’s author, a literary waterfall walk, poets on bikes and a venue like something out of Twin Peaks: this doesn’t sound like the average writers festival. But then the first ever Ruapehu Writers Festival, which will be held in Ōhakune on 17–20 March, is not an average writers festival.

Locals and visitors alike will be able to enjoy a long weekend of events – including readings, panel discussions, workshops, sessions for children and a poetry slam – featuring 40 New Zealand writers, from the well-known to the up-and-coming. Tickets and season passes are on sale now, and a Boosted crowdfunding campaign to support the festival is running until the end of February.

Festival sessions include a Friday night lecture by award-winning novelist Elizabeth Knox, a fiction-writing workshop with Auckland writer Sue Orr and the pony ride with Stacy Gregg, the author of the popular Pony Club Secrets series. The setting will be acknowledged in a session about local history with leading non-fiction writer Martin Edmond, who grew up in Ōhakune, and local historian Merrilyn George, and another on the Desert Road.

Other well-known writers who can be heard at the festival include novelists Emily Perkins, Fiona Farrell, Nicky Pellegrino, Jenny Pattrick and Fiona Kidman and poets Paula Green, Harry Ricketts, Tusiata Avia and James Brown. Local writers are also being included, such as novelist and Taumarunui High School teacher Antony Millen, and editors from four of New Zealand’s literary presses will talk about what they look for in new writing. The complete programme is available on the festival website.

 

The festival is the brainchild of poet, lecturer in English literature at Victoria University, and 2016 Katherine Mansfield Fellow Anna Jackson . She and her husband Simon Edmonds, owner of Tuatua café, have a house at Rangataua, next door to Ōhakune. “We realised that Ōhakune, half way between Auckland and Wellington, is the perfect place to hold a writers festival. While many people visit during winter for skiing, it’s at its most beautiful in summer. And the local community has been so enthusiastic about having this event in their town.”

Joining Jackson and Edmonds on the organising committee is poet and Seraph Press publisher Helen Rickerby. She says, “This is going to be an informal and fun festival, and I think the fact that it’s being organised by writers has given it a different approach.” Jackson says she expects readers and writers involved to come out of the session still talking about some of the ideas and books discussed. Readers and writers will also have chances to meet each other and keep talking about ideas on the waterfall walk – free for anyone to come along.

 

The festival will be based at the Powderhorn Chateau, right next to the Ōkahune railway station. “It is a fantastic venue, with large spaces and two decks to relax on in between sessions. Being in an alpine forestry town, the hotel has log walls, which reminds me of the hotel in Twin Peaks – but less creepy,” Rickerby laughs.

Tickets are on sale now, with earlybird season passes at just $90 (until 6 February) and individual sessions at $14, with concessions also available.

 

Edmonds says, “It was important for us to keep prices low, so as many people as possible could afford to come. We have some funding from Creative NZ, but we hope people will support our crowdfunding campaign so we can pay for accommodation and travel for the guest writers, who are generously donating their time.” Because Boosted contributions are eligible for a tax credit, donors will get 33 cents back from every dollar they donate.

 

  • Donate to the Boosted crowdfunding campaign.
  • Find out more about the Ruapehu Writers Festival and buy tickets here.

 

Media:

  • For more information contact Chris Wilson on 04-463 9498, 021 0525 300 or chris.wilson@vuw.ac.nz, or Anna Jackson at anna.jackson@vuw.ac.nz.
  • To interview the organisers or any of the participating writers, email anna.jackson@vuw.ac.nz.
  • Profiles and photos of participating writers are available on the festival website.
  • A media kit, including downloadable logos and images, is available the festival website.