For more information see here
All Good Poems Wear Classical Shoes
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David Eggleton is off to Nelson to perform
A new writers festival like no other: Ruapehu Writers Festival, Ōhakune, 17–20 March 2016
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.
Lynley Edmeades kick starts Dunedin’s Octagon Collective/Dog with Two Tails Poetry Readings as MC this year
I am looking forward to this book!
Starling goes live at Wellington’s Meow Cafe
STARLING: A new online literary journal publishing poetry and prose by New Zealand writers under 25 years old. Founded by Louise Wallace & co-edited with Francis Cooke.
ISSUE 1 LIVE: Eight incredible young writers from our first issue will take to the stage to read their work:
Lily Ng / Georgie Johnson / Natalie Morrison / Rebecca Hawkes / Tayi Tibble / Sharon Lam / Phoebe Wright / Claudia Jardine
Come along to celebrate the arrival of Starling at this relaxed all-ages, free event. Bring your mates or bring your kids! Soak up some inspiration for the afternoon. Meow’s delicious coffee and food available for purchase, as well as beer and wine for those 18 and over if it happens to be one of those stellar sunny days Wellington is famous for.
Atlas is a new NZ medical journal seeking creative writing submissions
Atlas is a recently established medical literary journal, both online and in print, that hopes to encourage thought and open discussion on the ascientific and creative aspects of medicine and the human body.
The journal takes its name from the atlas, the first vertebra in the body. Supporting the skull, the atlas allows the head to nod yes.
We hope that Atlas will become a space to share questions, appreciation and respect for the body’s structure and complexity. We want to recognise that the body exists within a social and cultural context that differs for each individual. We believe that illness and suffering should be interpreted and treated within this context and it is through stories and metaphor that we can connect with these differences.
We hope to publish our first issue in print in mid 2016 and are currently open for submissions.
For our first issue, we are keeping contributions as open and wide-ranging as possible, accepting all forms of poetry, prose, short stories and non-fiction from writers, doctors, patients and artists.
We also want to provide a space for everyday New Zealanders to share their views on the current state of the health system, to provide a voice for those who feel their needs have fallen through the cracks and for those within the system to share their views.
Here are some topics that have been on our mind recently that we’d be interested in your thoughts on:
architecture, housing and health
the sociology of diagnosis
interactions between gender and the physical body
the emotional and philosophical aspects of surgical intervention
the healthcare needs of indigenous people
the meaning/meaninglessness of suffering and pain
Submissions close at 10pm on the 31st of May 2016. For more information please visit here.
Joan Fleming has a gorgeous new web site
Congratulations on this Joan Fleming, poet extraordinaire – your new web site is a treat to navigate.
Web site here.
I especially love the photographs for all the headers and the stockpile of interviews.
Poetry Shelf: Invitation Interviews – Mary McCallum interviews Jamie Trower
Mary McCallum of Mākaro Press interviews debut poet Jamie Trower about his collection Anatomy, which they published under their Submarine imprint in 2015.
(for my review of the book see here)
Mary McCallum: As a new poetry publisher we get a lot of emails from people wanting to submit their collections of poetry. Some of those emails are like explosive devices — as soon as you open them you know you’re in danger. All the tiny words on the screen shimmer with the excitement of being written by someone for whom words are not simply tools or exciting ways to evoke the world of experience or imagination, but tiny rockets that have changed or saved a life.
This was the case when I opened an email from Aucklander Jamie Trower – a young man in his early twenties who had only just discovered poetry, but who had nonetheless crafted a whole collection that he wanted me to read. A collection of poems that charted his recovery from a terrible childhood brain injury that could have killed him.
What a ride. It felt to me reading Anatomy for the first time – and I continue to feel this – that Jamie had given himself permission to write how he wanted to write, and discover what he wanted to discover using words in a way that he’d never thought possible. With obvious delight he raged on the page, and laughed at and interrogated it. Words came and he connected them and lit the fuse. Which is not to say Jamie wasn’t open to editing. He was. He loved the whole process … more of a chance to play with words, more connections to fire. We published it, dear reader, and this week I talked to Jamie about the book so close to his heart – how he wrote it and why, and where to now.
M: What made you start to write poetry?
J: In the months of rehab after I sustained a severe brain injury as a nine-year-old, I learned to use a typewriter. I wrote sporadic, jumbled notes of how I was feeling and the changes I noticed in my wheelchair-bound body. I really started writing poetry after taking a creative writing course at the University of Auckland two years ago. It was then that I went back to the notes that I wrote in rehab and found myself expanding and stretching the words into poetry.
M: What do you like about it?
J: The beauty and ease of poetry. How a single moment can be expanded on, heightened, strengthened, transformed, stretched, redefined and moulded in a couple of lines. How a writer can adapt a thought, a feeling or an event so easily through compressed, rhythmic language.
M: Who are your poetry heroes? Are there any poets you try and emulate?
J: I am in awe of Sam Hunt, Paul Muldoon, Ben Okri – the list goes on! I think their writings are compelling and eloquently formed. I draw on their poetry quite a bit – how they use simple thoughts and words to create a big impact.
M: Your poetry collection feels like one long narrative poem about what you went through when you had a brain injury as a child – rather than lots of separate poems – do you see it that way?
J: Anatomy is definitely narrative in its structure: a start, middle and end. I tried to separate the poetic canvas by titling the poems – making it feel like more of a collection rather than a narrative – and pairing it with a traditional form of storytelling. I decided in the editing process to parallel poetry with prose to guide the reader, and to allow the emotion I felt to show through more.
M: In Anatomy you indicate the typewriter was an important tool in your rehab – is poetry also important as a form of therapy in getting over what happened to you?
J: Poetry will always be my rehab, my therapy, my hospital, my home. This use of self-expression and self-examination helped me (and still does) realise that I needed to take control of my own body, my own disability. I hope to continue to use the lessons that poetry has taught me for many years to come.
M: What are you writing now?
J: I’m writing my next poetry collection, and I’m brainstorming a novel on the side. I’m excited to see what comes of it!
M: Who are you reading?
J: Right now I’m reading Michele Leggott’s Heartland (for the tenth time, it feels). She very kindly came to the launch of Anatomy, which was very, very cool.
Mākaro Press page
You are invited to the launch of Gregory Kan’s This Paper Boat
Auckland University Press and Gregory Kan warmly invite you to the launch of
This Paper Boat
6pm, Thursday 25 February
Time Out Bookstore
432 Mount Eden Road
Mount Eden Village
Auckland
My mother used to make up stories in the darkness that no one knew the endings to. It was a kind of permission to have imperfect and beautiful plans.
Please join us in celebrating the publication of Gregory Kan’s debut poetry collection, launched by award-winning poet Michele Leggott.
6pm, Thursday 25 February 2016
Time Out Bookstore
432 Mount Eden Road
Mount Eden Village
Auckland, 1024
RSVP not essential but helpful for catering
Phone 09-373-7528 or email pressmarketing@auckland.ac.nz
Poetry Shelf review: Jamie Trower’s Anatomy – it is poetry as reboot
Jamie Trower Anatomy Mākaro Press 2015
At the age of nine, Jamie Trower suffered a traumatic head injury when skiing on the slopes of Ruapehu. After months in a coma, he spent two years at the Wilson Centre in Auckland. Jamie is currently based in Auckland where he is studying English and Drama at the University of Auckland. Anatomy is his debut poetry collection.
Anatomy rebuilds anatomy. The word ‘disability’ (disabled, disable, disablement) is like a shadow protagonist that Jamie pitches against and from. It felt like a physical presence, an entity to interrogate as Jamie navigates his recovery paths. To read our way into and out of ‘disability’ is to thwart ‘unable’ and latch upon ‘enable.’ It is to follow Jamie from the accident and rocks to his cloud nine.
I felt a little nervous opening the book, as in the middle of my PhD, I smashed into a glass door and suffered the effects of post-concussion syndrome for about a year. Everything was thrown in the air as I struggled to make sense of the world let alone my academic research. My ability to speak and write and c0mprehend (and hang out the washing, cook dinner) was utterly compromised. Once I started reading Anatomy, the twitchiness at revisiting the memory of my vulnerable head faded.
This book is poetry as record, it is poetry as reboot and poetry as rehabilitation. Writing becomes a way of refurbishing self and moving through. You are carried along by the fluency of the line, so lyrically, yet there is the white space of hiccup. Some words are stretched out as though we say them slowly ( d i s a b i l i t y, t h i n g). Some words drop down the page like a teetering step ladder to cloud nine or back down to earth. The poetic choices heighten the struggle to recover, and to face what recovery means.
This is a poetry collection that moves and elevates you, that records a devastating experience at the most personal of levels, and that plays with what words can do (from the first clacks and clatters on the old typewriter he was given by his teacher). Wonderful!
from ‘( m a y b e , t o m o r r o w )’
m i g h t
hybridize
from teenage boy
in
n a p p y & pacifier,
to a mighty sea bird –
to a juvenile juggernaut
– dancing
in the wild …
to whistle
in rainbows
of thistles,
(ocean spray) …
Mākaro Press page
NZ Poetry Shelf 