These Rough Notes: Ashleigh Young
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Can You Tolerate This? Personal Essays by Ashleigh Young.
Release date: 11 August. Paperback, $30.
With her new collection of essays to be launched by VUP on August 11th, Ashleigh Young answered a few questions for These Rough Notes.
Five questions and answers here
Here’s a sample:
This book has been a long time in the making – from when you won the Adam Prize in 2009 with a portfolio of essays, to now, 2016. How does it feel to finally be publishing your essays in a book form? How much has the work evolved in the time between your MA portfolio and the published book?
That’s a long time! I feel glad and a bit nervous, but mostly tired because I’ve been so busy avoiding this book for seven years. I know all the avoidance tricks now. I could probably organise a special conference on avoidance, or a festival. My favourite trick for avoiding this book – because it was full of problems that I didn’t want to think about yet – was to write things that weren’t this book. So I finished writing a book of poetry and started writing a blog. The blog allowed me to write my way into things I probably wouldn’t have written otherwise – cycling, odd encounters, mental health, phrases and gestures, friendships, members of my family, inner voice … Sometimes the posts were intensely personal and sometimes detached.
The launch:
Victoria University Press warmly invites you to the launch of
Selected Poems
by Jenny Bornholdt
&
Can You Tolerate This? Personal Essays
by Ashleigh Young
6.00pm–7.30pm, Thursday 11 August
at Unity Books
57 Willis St, Wellington.
All welcome.
Buy both books on the night for only $60 (normally $70).
This offer applies at the Unity Books launch only.
On ANZL – Letter from Cape Town: Selina Tusitala Marsh on coconuts and colonialism
Selina Tusitala Marsh has written an account of her recent visit to Capetown that includes poems and journal prose. It has just been posted on the Academy of New Zealand Literature site.
The full here.
A brief extract:
Nearly There
There’s a poem that needs finishing. It began in London and will end in Cape Town. It started on the night of March 14 after a conversation with Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at Malborough House. I had been commissioned to write and perform a poem for Queen Elizabeth II, Head of the Commonwealth, for Commonwealth Observance Day on behalf of its 53 member states. After the Westminster gig we were invited back to one of the palaces, where I met the Duke of Edinburgh and had the following exchange:
‘Good evening, Your Highness.’
‘Yes. And what do you do?’
‘I’m a poet.’
‘Yeeess. But what do you dooo?’
‘Oh, I teach postcolonial literature at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.’
Cocking his head and holding my gaze, the Duke replied, ‘Post?’
Slight smirk on his face, he then moved on down the line to other greeters.
After sharing this story with some poets, it was suggested that I record the conversation and turn it into an audio poem, capturing as many people with as many different accents saying the word ‘post’. I said I could do one better, that in July I was going to the Association of Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies conference in South Africa. There, I’d have Commonwealth representatives galore to give me their own accented enunciations of ‘post’: ‘POST!’ ‘post –‘, ‘post?’, ‘PoSt’, ‘Post!’, ‘P**T’, and perhaps even ‘!//post’ (if there were any Khoisan speakers around).
So, I’m off to Cape Town to finish a poem, write some poetry, and give my conference paper on an experiment where I apply avante garde poetry techniques (a mixture of Found Poetry, Erasure Poetry and Open Field Composition) by blacking out Albert Wendt’s classic 1977 novel Pouliuli (which happens to mean ‘black’, ‘void’ and refers to a metaphysical darkness). I’m also running a poetry workshop with Glen Arendse, a Boesman Mouthbow musician (the hunting bow is also a traditional instrument of the San Boesman – yes, think The Gods Must Be Crazy, then think again).
Landfall Review Online showcases great writing (reviewer and the poets): Elizabeth Morton on Joan Fleming Dinah Hawken Claire Orchard
Full review here
On Joan Fleming: Failure makes lemonade; slams one door only to shake others open – sometimes. Failure has a knack of forcing its protagonist down substitute alleyways, leaving one to navigate unorthodox routes in pitch black. Joan Fleming’s latest collection, Failed Love Poems, is about Love, but more so, it is about a lengthy, howling procession of Loves gone kaput. There is love clinging on by tooth-strings, love in absentia, love as apology, love treading on eggshells, love cemented in verse, and love that ebbs in spite of itself.
Landfall Review Online: James Norcliffe reviews Rachel Bush, Kerrin P Sharpe and Lynley Edmeades
Three terrific books! Full review here but a sample from James’s section on Kerrin:
Moving from Thought Horses to Kerrin P. Sharpe’s new collection, Rabbit Rabbit, is a little like turning from Cézanne to Miro or Klee. The slow-paced meditative and long loping lines of Bush exchanged for the short, darting lines of Sharpe veering off in unexpected and at times astonishing directions.
Surrealism is difficult to pull off. You look for the mad logic of the dream to hold the piece together, otherwise the leaps seem arbitrary, gratuitous. Sharpe is a dab hand, however, having perfected her craft in two previous collections from Victoria University Press: Three Days in a Wishing Well (2012) and There’s a Medical Name for This (2014). Like Klee, she takes her line for a walk, but while it takes strange byways it is always on a (not sometimes obvious) leash. This current book gathers together another entertaining selection of rabbits pulled out of hats, although in the title poem the rabbit is put in the hat (along with the writer’s mother):
mother tamed a rabbit
fur-trimmed scented
in a hat she could hide in
Because this is a Kerrin Sharpe poem we can safely assume the rabbit is not a rabbit and the hat is not a hat, although the mother is almost certainly a particular mother.
MEGA-READING AT OGH LOUNGE 10 AUGUST, 5.30-7 PM ALL WELCOME
LOUNGE #51 Wednesday 10 August
Old Government House Lounge, UoA City Campus, Princes St and Waterloo Quadrant, 5.30-7 pm
John Adams and Don’t Judge Me
Iain Britton
Janet Charman
Owen Connors
Romy Hooper
Gregory Kan
Vivienne Plumb
Ila Selwyn
David Taylor
Barbara Unković
Free entry. Food and drinks for sale in the Buttery. Information Michele Leggott m.leggott@auckland.ac.nz or 09 373 7599 ext. 87342
The LOUNGE readings are a continuing project of the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc), Auckland University Press and Auckland University English, Drama and Writing Studies, in association with the Staff Common Room Club at Old Government House.
LOUNGE READINGS #51-53: 10 August, 21 September, 19 October 2016
Going West Festival programme now out
This is the first festival with new programme directors. The programme offers the usual eclectic mix of conversations in a great setting with good food. A family festival, in a way.
There are a few poetry highlights but gone are the little poetry interludes breaking up the sessions. I miss that.
Emma Neale is the Curnow Reader.
Albert Wendt is giving the keynote address.
Serie Barford and Gregory Kan are in a session with Robert Sullivan.
On Saturday night there is the poetry slam with judges yet to be announced.
I am chairing a session with Sue Orr and Helen Margaret Waaka: ‘In Small Places …’
A few things I don’t want to miss:
Emma Neale: What happens when trauma transforms our children? Emma Neale offers up a lyrical exploration of parenthood that is both funny and disarmingly frank. She’ll discuss her new novel with writer Siobhan Harvey.
Damien Wilkins and Sue Orr in conversation on writing, teaching and Damien’s Dad Art, a vibrant novel about the capacity for surprise and renewal.
Barbara Brookes shares the story behind her ground-breaking A History of New Zealand Women with Judith Pringle, looking at the shaping of New Zealand through a female lens.
Flying Nun founder Roger Shepherd joins lifelong music fan John Campbell to share his memories of the label’s early days and the spirit of adventure and independence that took its sound to the world.
Full programme here.
Sir James Wallace supports creative writing
Sir James Wallace supports creative writing
26 July 2016
Cybonn Ang, Sir James Wallace and Angelique Kasmara at the Pah Homestead
Arts patron and philanthropist Sir James Wallace funds two scholarships and a prize to support creative writing in the Faculty of Arts.
Two Sir James Wallace Master of Creative Writing Scholarships are awarded each year to incoming Master of Creative Writing (MCW) students, based on the strength of their application.
At the end of the programme, the Sir James Wallace Master of Creative Writing Prize is awarded to the writer who has produced the best portfolio of work.
The scholarships are valued at $3,500 each, and the prize is valued at $5,000 — New Zealand’s richest prize for a creative writing student.
This year the two scholarships went to Cybonn Ang and Angelique Kasmara.
Angelique explains that “as a single parent with a young child, embarking on a Master of Creative Writing — and having to take out a large student loan — was by far the scariest thing I’ve done this year.”
“However, as well as easing my stress over the financial burden, the scholarship goes far in reassuring me that I am on the right path. Also, as I’ve long admired Sir James Wallace’s support for the arts, it feels extra special to be one of the recipients of this award.”
The convenor of the MCW, Paula Morris, is very appreciative of Sir James’s targeted generosity.
“Sir James’s ongoing support of creative writing at Auckland reflects his support of and respect for emerging talent. The MCW is a programme of writers rather than students — they’re working on books, and many have sacrificed a lot to make the year’s writing possible. The encouragement and endorsement of a patron like Sir James means a great deal to all of us.”
Sir James is steadfast in his support of the arts, and encourages others to follow his lead.
“Philanthropy is of vital importance for all communities. It is the civic and moral duty of those that are in the position to do so to support appropriate institutions, causes or individuals financially and in other ways. By doing so they contribute to improving and enriching the lives of those around them, which in turn can be very rewarding for the philanthropist.”
Find out more about the Master of Creative Writing or giving to Auckland
Book Launch: Jenny Bornholdt’s new poems and Ashleigh Young’s essays
Victoria University Press warmly invites you to the launch of
Selected Poems
by Jenny Bornholdt
&
Can You Tolerate This? Personal Essays
by Ashleigh Young
6.00pm–7.30pm, Thursday 11 August
at Unity Books
57 Willis St, Wellington.
All welcome.
Buy both books on the night for only $60 (normally $70).
This offer applies at the Unity Books launch only.
For more information click on the titles below:
Selected Poems by Jenny Bornholdt
$40, hardback
Can You Tolerate This? Personal Essays by Ashleigh Young
$30, paperback
NZ Poetry Shelf 