When: Wednesday May 13th, 5.45pm
Where: Gus Fisher Gallery, The Kenneth Myers Centre, 74 Shortland Street, Auckland
Victoria University Press launches Roger Horrock’s new poetry collection
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Yoga and creativity retreat at Te Henga
‘The Critic in New Zealand’ by Rosabel Tan: A second offering from the Horoeka / Lancewood Reading Grant
‘The Critic in New Zealand’ by Rosabel Tan
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“The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there’s a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants.”
— David Attenborough, BBC Interview
Early in his career, Wystan Curnow was invited to give a lecture on what it meant to be a critic. “But that presented certain difficulties,” he later wrote in the Bulletin of New Zealand Art History. “For instance, I was not sure I was one.”
It was 1974 and Curnow was working at the University of Auckland’s English department. He was, by definition of his employment, regularly engaged in the business of literary criticism, but he had avoided being a critic of books by New Zealand writers. As for his other interests, he conceded he might be considered an art critic. “At least,” he wrote, “if a dozen or so notes and brief essays published over a period of fifteen years in magazines all but one of which are now defunct makes one an art critic in New Zealand.” Ruefully, he concluded, it seemed it did.
Like many others before and after him, Curnow’s hesitation stemmed from the occupational versatility our country demands from its creative practitioners. Because of how small our population is, the market for any art form is prematurely capped and its growth is precariously stunted, economically and artistically. Industries have to be propped up by public funding and philanthropy, and being able to specialise as a writer or an artist or a musician becomes either a unique luxury or a financially risky lifestyle choice.
Because of this risk, artists often end up expanding their talents horizontally, whether they want to or not. It’s remarkably and sometimes advantageously easy to do in a country with so many shoes to fill. We see musicians who are also teachers who are also music writers who are also promoters. We see actors who are also publicists who are also producers who are also casting agents. We see the rise of the cultural ambassador: people who – rather than honing a specific craft – hone the skills of an entire industry. Like plants, we grow in the direction of the sun, but here the sun shines with a hazy, erratic glow.
- For the rest of the essay see here
The IIML revives the National Schools Poetry Award for 2015
Not sure of the details yet of fundraising but will keep you posted.
The IIML revives the National Schools Poetry Award for 2015
How you can help
Kia ora,
In 2003 Bill Manhire set up the only national poetry competition for high school students in Aotearoa. Last year we had to cancel the Award through a lack of funds. We have just launched a fundraising campaign to help revive an important literary event for young writers which each year has attracted more than 300 poets from across the country.
We’re not starting from scratch. We already have some support from Creative New Zealand. But we still have a large shortfall. With your help we can deliver a full Award, securing the workshop which is such a vital part of the experience, and promoting poetry throughout our high schools.
The Award is about much more than a winning poem. English teachers use the award to generate excitement and activity around Creative Writing. Ten shortlisted poets are flown to Wellington for a weekend of workshops with great poets hosted by the International Institute of Modern Letters. These young writers become ambassadors for creativity when they return to their schools.
The Award has made a difference. Students who have been shortlisted in previous Poetry Awards have gone on to study Creative Writing at tertiary level, won other national writing prizes for emerging writers and have been published in national magazines and literary journals.
Ruby Solly, from Western Heights High School, Rotorua, was the 2013 runner-up: ‘After I came back from the poetry workshop I became very committed to school and writing as I had been given a taste of what it was like to be with other writers and to see what kind of course or occupation I could end up in as a poet. The workshop showed me various ways of both ‘sparking creativity’ and refining my work to make it the best that it could be. These skills helped me to achieve publication in both Minarets (literary journal) and Redraft. It was definitely a highlight of the year for me.’
Margie McLaren, who teaches at Baradene College, writes: ‘The main benefit is the new confidence instilled in the students about the value of poetry in a utilitarian world which does not always attach the significance to poetry that it deserves . . . The Award is an affirmation of the many benefits of working with and celebrating language, and the special ways in which poetry can reflect human experience. The opportunity of entering for the Award has been a very positive and rewarding experience.’
We hope you can support us!
Ngā mihi nui,
Damien Wilkins
Director
International Institute of Modern Letters
Would you miss the HoopLa ?
It is a great list — Best NZ Poems is now live
Our current NZ Poet Laureate, Vincent O’Sullivan, has edited Best NZ Poems 2014. It is an eclectic taste of why New Zealand poetry is so very very good at the moment. Congratulations!
Here is a taste of Vincent’s introduction:
“Last year I joked, more accurately than I realised, that there are now more publishing poets in New Zealand than there are commissioned officers in our armed forces. And that was before I considered the three thousand poems that turned out for inspection in 2014. There’s at least a clarity if we’re just noting numbers. But talk of poetry may quickly fall into generalisation and defence of a corner, when it comes to poems that interest us deeply. We are always reading towards the elitism of our own taste, whether or not we quite put it like that. Geoff Page, the editor of the excellent Best Australian Poems 2014, wryly picks up on this when he writes, ‘Our time on earth is finite, and we are invariably hierarchical.’ It’s not a big step from there, of course, to the necessary corrective that we are always teetering on the verge of possible error.
Inevitably then, the discomfort other editors too have felt with that title, ‘Best Poems’. I wish it weren’t called that, because I have never heard a compelling argument to take it seriously. As a philosopher might say, it is a ‘category error’. Instead, what you have are twenty-five poems that I admired when I first came on them, continue to admire as I read them again, and am fairly certain that next time round they will still attract me with the particular kind of attention they give to how something is said, or for their technical elegance, or for the finally indefinable lift that good poetry provides. But let’s not make out that anything more definitive than personal choice is going on. One reader’s shortlist may be another reader’s rejects. Yet what a privilege, and a celebratory one, to be handed the chance to invite readers, ‘Look at these, look at their variety, their elan, their vigour—isn’t that something?’”
Full introduction here
Contents here
The National School Poetry Award will be running a Boosted fund-raising campaign to make up shortfall
I had the pleasure to be a judge for The National Schools Poetry Award a few years ago and think it is a terrific feature of our writing landscape. Aside from the competition, the Wellington workshops are a great opportunity for young writers passionate about poetry and song writing to come together. I endorse this proposed campaign strongly. In my experience, writers came from all over New Zealand, under the umbrella of poetry, to share, to develop and to take off in myriad writing direction directions.
This just out from IIML:
The National Schools Poetry Award was set up by Bill Manhire in 2003. Last year we had to cancel the Award due to a lack of funds. This year Creative New Zealand has given us half what we need to run a full Award. To make up the shortfall we’re launching a Boosted fund-raising campaign. For most of the decade the Award has been running, we’ve been in the wonderful position of having private sponsors (Bell Gully at the start, then NZ Post). Times are tough and now we’re looking for wider support. We’ll be sending out links soon.
In the meantime here’s a great testimonial from Vanessa Scott, Head of English at Pakuranga College: ‘I believe this Award has lifted the profile of poetry within the school and shown the school community how young people can excel in literature and the arts, and that these achievements are just as valid as those won on a rugby field.’
Launch of two new books on and by Poet Laureate Vincent O’Sullivan
Come and celebrate Vincent O’Sullivan’s writing:
Being Here: Selected Poems by Vincent O’Sullivan will be launched on
When: Wednesday 15 April 5.30pm–7.30pm at
Where: National Library of New Zealand (Ground Floor),
70 Molesworth Street, Thorndon, Wellington.
This is a double launch with Steele Roberts for Let the Writer Stand: the work of Vincent O’Sullivan, edited by Judith Dell Panny
Dame Fiona Kidman will launch both books at this event.
APPLICATIONS OPEN FOR 2015 FLASH FICTION COMPETITION
APPLICATIONS OPEN FOR 2015 FLASH FICTION COMPETITION
Celebrating the shortest form of fiction writing
Closing date 30 April
For rules see the competition link
http://nationalflash.wordpress.com/
Read winning entries from previous years via the archives link
For any other info E: nationalflash@gmail.com
or this page
History Write Now: Free workshop
HISTORY WRITE NOW: FREE WORKSHOP #1
Before workshop, select an artifact from Papakura Museum and start writing about it.
Can be fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, non-fiction…
Where: Sir Edmund Hillary Library function Room 209 Grt South Rd, Papakura
When: Saturday 21st March 9 15am – 12 00noon, spaces limited, book early
check website for details and to book a place
NZ Poetry Shelf 