Auckland University Press and Unity Books Wellington
warmly invite you
to attend the combined launch of
Helen Rickerby’s How to Live
and AUP New Poets 5 with Carolyn DeCarlo, Sophie van Waardenberg,
and Rebecca Hawkes. Edited and with a foreword by Anna Jackson
6–7:30pm, Wednesday 7 August 2019
Unity Books, 57 Willis Street, Wellington
‘Requiem’ was first published in the Atlanta Review (USA) in 2017. (I wrote the first draft during a Kahini workshop on the Kapiti coast).
Janis Freegard’s most recent publications are a novel The Year of Falling (Mākaro Press, 2015) and a poetry collection The Glass Rooster (Auckland University Press, 2015). Based in Wellington, she is a member of the Meow Gurrrls poetry group and blogs occasionally.
entrar en el silencio
entrar en el silencio que no es un silencio
restos de un zapato por boca de un eje
oxidado caldera a un tenedor en el arroyo
estanque de anguilas, donde desmanteló la draga
terminó su canción en un valle de escombreras
entrar en el silencio que no es un silencio
entrar en un silencio que nunca fue
las ruedas de un helecho de germinación lokie
una señal de tren vestido de líquenes
el signo de una mina donde los muertos
todavía persisten perdido a los amantes queridas madres
entrar en un silencio que nunca fue
introducir entonces el mundo sin llamar
la excavación de perforación sluicing tala
agricultura pesca arando un sueño
acarreando una isla de las constelaciones
en el resplandor de un reinado extranjero
introducir entonces el mundo sin llamar
entrar en el silencio entrar entrar la oscuridad
la colmena de la invitación entrar
la majestad Introduce el vino entrar
el desierto mientras que usted puede entrar en
con banderas y entrar con instrumentos
entrar en el silencio entrar entrar
enter the silence
entering the silence that is not a silence
remains of a shoe by the mouth of a shaft
rusted boiler at a fork in the creek
pond of eels where the dredge dismantled
ended its song in a valley of tailings
entering the silence that is not a silence
enter a silence that never was
the wheels of a lokie sprouting fern
a railway signpost clothed in lichen
the sign to a mine where the dead
still linger lost to lovers dear to mothers
enter a silence that never was
enter then the world without knocking
digging drilling sluicing felling
fishing farming ploughing a dream
hauling an island from the constellations
into the glare of an alien reign
enter then the world without knocking
enter the silence enter the dark enter
the hive of the invitation enter
the majesty enter the wine enter
the wilderness while you may enter
with flags and enter with instruments
enter the silence enter enter
geben Sie die Stille
Eingabe der Stille, die keine Ruhe
bleibt eines Schuhs durch den Mund einer Welle
verrosteten Kessel mit einer Gabel in den Bach
Teich von Aalen, wo der Bagger abgebaut
beendete seine Songs in einem Tal der Tailings
Eingabe der Stille, die keine Ruhe
geben Sie eine Stille, die niemals war
die Räder eines Lokie Sprießen fern
ein Eisenbahn Wegweiser in Flechten bekleideten
das Zeichen, um eine Mine, wo die Toten
noch verweilen, um die Liebhaber lieb Mütter verloren
geben Sie eine Stille, die niemals war
Geben Sie dann die Welt, ohne anzuklopfen
Graben Bohrungen Schleuseneinschlag
Fischerei Landwirtschaft Pflügen einen Traum
Schleppen eine Insel von den Sternbildern
in die Blendung einer fremden Herrschaft
Geben Sie dann die Welt, ohne anzuklopfen
geben Sie die Stille einzugehen die dunkle eingeben
der Bienenstock der Einladung geben
die Majestät geben Sie den Wein geben
die Wüste, während Sie können eingeben
mit Fahnen und mit Instrumenten geben
geben Sie die Stille geben geben
from an unpublished series called ‘Wild Iron’
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman is a Christchurch poet and a writer of non-fiction, and senior adjunct fellow in the School of Humanities and Creative Arts at the University of Canterbury. Born in London, Jeffrey immigrated to New Zealand in 1950, growing up in the Devonport naval base in Auckland, then the coal mining town of Blackball on the West Coast of the South Island. He has worked as a sheep-shearer, postman, psychiatric social worker and bookseller.
Jeffrey’s poetry collection As Big as a Father was longlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards (2003). In 2007, Jeffrey and Martin Edmond won the Copyright Licensing Limited Award giving them $35,000 each towards a non-fiction project. Best of Both Worlds: The Story of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau, was published by Penguin in 2010. Jeffrey was the 2011 Waikato University Writer-in-Residence and in the same year shortlisted for the Ernest-Scott History prize, Australia. In 2012, he was awarded the Creative New Zealand University of Iowa Residency. The resulting book, The Lost Pilot: A Memoir was published by Penguin NZ (2013). In 2014, Jeffrey travelled to Berlin on a Goethe-Institute scholarship, pursuing research for his current project, a family history based on links with his German relations.
Jeffrey’s SHAKEN DOWN 6.3: Poems from the Second Christchurch Earthquake was published by Canterbury University Press in 2012. His most recent collection, Blood Ties: New and Selected Poems was published by Canterbury University Press in 2017.
Victoria Broome, ‘The Heart of My Father’ from How We Talk to Each Other, Cold Hub Press, 2019
Victoria Broome has published poems in literary journals and anthologies, was awarded the CNZ Louis Johnson Bursary (2005) and has twice been placed in the Kathleen Grattan Award (2010, 2015). How We Talk to Each Other is her debut collection.
Cold Hub Press author page
Poetry Shelf review of How We Talk to Each Other
Starling Issue 8 will go live on Tuesday 23 July, and to celebrate we’ll be holding a launch party on Saturday the 27th at Newtown’s finest bookstore, Book Hound!
There will be readings from ten of the writers featured in the Issue 8:
Rose Lu
Sinead Overbye
Rose Peoples
Danica Soich
Mel Ansell
Vita O’Brien
Cadence Chung
Isabelle McNeur
Claudia Jardine
Rebecca Hawkes
Come along and enjoy some of the best new writing around, and help us celebrate the new issue!
Verb Podcast!
Kaveh Akbar & Kim Hill live at Meow (from the 2018 festival)
It was a real honour to host Iranian-US poet Kaveh Akbar at LitCrawl last year. Kaveh was a generous guest and incredibly moving poet. This conversation with RNZ’s Kim Hill was a festival highlight. Listen on our Podcast Page here. Enjoy! (And whet your appetite for more conversation and poetry in performance coming in 2019…).
From mid-July to October each year, the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML), home of Victoria University of Wellington’s renowned creative writing programme, runs a series of events highlighting writers active in and around Wellington, as well as guests from overseas.
Sessions take place on Mondays at lunchtime, with additional evening events from time to time.
Writers on Mondays is a stimulating way to start the working week – and it’s free!
The 2019 Writers on Mondays events are listed in full below. You can also download the programme (2,050KB PDF). Previous years’ programmes are available to download at the bottom of this page.
Writers on Mondays is presented with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Phantom Billstickers, National Poetry Day and Circa Theatre.
Events run Monday 12.15 – 1.15pm on The Marae, Level 4, Te Papa with the exception of the two Short Sharp Script sessions at Circa Theatre.
Admission is free, all welcome.
No food may be taken onto Te Papa Marae.
The 2019 Creative New Zealand/Victoria University Writer in Residence Lynda Chanwai-Earle is a ground-breaking poet and playwright, whose work HEAT was the first-ever play to be powered by solar and wind power. This year, she is working on the second and third plays in her ‘Antarctic Trilogy’, and co-writing a television drama drawing on the real-life murder of a Chinese student in Auckland that was also the basis for her play Man in a Suitcase. Lynda is a well-known public broadcaster with RNZ, and has toured in a Māori theatre company visiting schools and prisons. She explores her interlocking creative lives with producer/playwright Miria George.
New York poet Amy Leigh Wicks finds a new home in Kaikōura in The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage, and New Zealander Nikki-Lee Birdsey plumbs the fault lines between her lives in America and Aotearoa in Night As Day, while Chicago poet Steven Toussaint composed the deeply musical poems of Lay Studies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. Sugar Magnolia Wilson hails from Fern Flat, but the poems of A Woman’s Heart is like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean travel to Korea and into intimate and distant histories. essa may ranapiri (Ngāti Raukawa) is a non-binary/takatāpui poet whose Ransack rummages through language and history in a search of a place to call their own. All five poets layer place and history, love and loss in their books, yet all five voices are utterly distinctive. Introduced by Chris Price, they read poems from here, there, and everywhere.
Dinah Hawken’s urgent yet contemplative poems have been celebrated in Aotearoa since her award-winning début, It Has No Sound and is Blue (1987). In There Is No Harbour, Hawken sets the depth of injustice Māori have endured in Taranaki against her own family history in search of greater clarity in the present. In her new book, PEAT, Lynn Jenner enlists poet and Landfall editor Charles Brasch to help her think through aspects of the land and the national character unearthed by the construction of the Kāpiti Expressway. Two Kāpiti writers, who share a conviction that the past is not a foreign country but everywhere at hand if only we know how to look, join chair Bill Manhire in what promises to be a fascinating discussion.
Cultural historian and writer Maria Tumarkin moved from the Ukraine to Australia at age 15. Her latest bookapplies a freewheeling intelligence to five common axioms such as ‘time heals all wounds’, interrogating their accuracy and adequacy in the face of trauma. “Maria Tumarkin’s shape-shifting Axiomatic deploys all the resources of narrative, reportage and essay,” writes Pankaj Mishra in the Guardian. “It is a work of great power and beauty.” Tumarkin is the author of three other acclaimed books of ideas: Traumascapes, Courage, and Otherland. She also collaborates with visual artists, psychologists and public historians, and teaches writing at the University of Melbourne. She appears in conversation with Chris Price.
Best New Zealand Poems is published annually by Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters. Get ready for Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day (on 23 August) by coming along to hear nine of the best read work selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2018—and be sure to visit http://www.bestnewzealandpoems.org.nz to view the full selection. Join 2018 editor Fiona Farrell as she introduces Nikki-Lee Birdsey, Jenny Bornholdt, Doc Drumheller, Sam Duckor-Jones, Bernadette Hall, Anna Jackson, Therese Lloyd, Mary McCallum, and Chris Tse.
In Are Friends Electric?, 2019 Ockham NZ Book Award for Poetry winner Helen Heath explores the merger of human beings with technology, and asks questions about the potential of a digital afterlife to assuage human desires and griefs. She talks with Royal Society Science Book Prize and the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize winner Rebecca Priestley about her memoir of science on the icy continent, Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica. This deeply personal tour of the place Priestley had longed to visit since childhood also explores her anxieties, both for herself, and for the threatened place she loves.
A wonderful opportunity to hear a fresh mix of prose and poetry by the current cohort of writers in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing Programme at Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters. Caleb Harris, Ash Davida Jane, Elaine Webster, Cris Cucerzan, Rebecca Reilly, Geraldine Warren, Stacey Teague, Una Cruickshank, Mikee Sto-Domingo, and Fiona Lincoln are introduced (in that order) by Kate Duignan.
Part 2 of the popular Next Page sessions features readings from (in order) Danyl McLauchlan, Preya Gothanayagi, Melanie Ansell, Jane Cherry, Catarina de Peters Leitão,Tanya Ashcroft, Manon Revuelta, Dave Glynn, Louisa Buchanan, and Janey Thornton. They are introduced by Chris Price.
Actors perform dynamic new work by MA scriptwriting students from the IIML. This week scripts by Sally Bollinger, Mitchell Botting, Emily Callam, Emilie Hope, and Jonathan King are introduced by Ken Duncum.
More exciting work in progress from the second group of IIML scriptwriters, at Circa Theatre. This week the spotlight falls on work from David Mamea, Helmut Marko, Monica Pausina, Sophie Scott, and Rachael Stokes. Introduced by Ken Duncum.
Elizabeth Knox’s new novel The Absolute Book is set in London, Norfolk, the Wye Valley, and Auckland, as well as in the hospitals and train stations of Purgatory. Old acts of revenge return with force, as three people are driven towards a reckoning felt in more than one world. Craig Cliff’s second novel Nailing Down the Saint explores the life of St Joseph of Copertino, as recreated by the movie industry. Can rational materialism explain everything? Join Kate Duignan to discuss parallel worlds, moral reckonings and religious borrowings in these novels.
Lawrence Patchett’s first novel The Burning River is a work of fictional futurology set in a version of New Zealand where a plastic miner who survives by alliances and trade is swept into a perilous inland journey with new companions. In Carl Shuker’s novel A Mistake, a gifted female surgeon at Wellington Hospital must make her way in a male-dominated world. Fergus Barrowman explores the allegiances and codes these characters must navigate to survive, and the different types of world-building that have gone into each of these novels.
This is a terrific conversation – listen here.
Lay Studies VUP
at the Spinoff: ‘TMI: An essay on contemporary poetry in Aotearoa/New Zealand’
‘This much is obvious: something electrifying is taking place in New Zealand poetry. I became a permanent resident of this country four years ago, and at that time I privately considered verse here to have grown a little stale. While stand-out collections frequently knocked me over – among them Amy Brown’s The Odour of Sanctity (2013), Chris Holdaway’s Six Melodies (2014), and John Dennison’s Otherwise (2015) – my general impression was that a nostalgic suburban quietism had captured the style, tone, and subject matter of New Zealand poetry, calling to mind James K. Baxter’s warning to denizens of this ‘Happy Island’ that ‘one of the functions of artists in a community is to provide a healthy and permanent element of rebellion; not to become a species of civil servant’. Since then, however, a talented cohort of writers in their 20s and 30s, many of them women, LGBTQ, and people of colour, have exploded onto the scene in a searching and incendiary spirit, and have transformed the literary landscape irrevocably.’
Steven Toussaint, from the Spinoff essay
Lay Studies will be launched at Time Out Bookstore on Friday July 19th 6-8 pm
NZ Poetry Shelf 