National Writers' Forum

Just back from an amazing weekend at the first ever National Writers' Forum. Huge thanks to Jackie Dennis, Claire Hill, Claire Mabey and all the organising team and sponsors, and to the NZSA for supporting writers in this very practical way, and thanks to all the writers - old friends and new - with whom I shared conversations over the past two days. 

If you read one thing about writing this year, make it this keynote address by visiting speaker Chris Cleave  - "Hate is the .zip file of emotions" - which he has generously shared on his website. In fact it has something to say to everyone, not just writers, so read it and pass it on, and then go and buy (or at least borrow from the library) one of his books, so he can continue writing and saying these wise and wonderful things.

Chris Cleave

Courage Day 2014

November 15 is marked around the world as The International Day of the Imprisoned Writer. This was started in 1981 by PEN, the international writers’ organisation, to acknowledge those writers around the world who are subject to political, economic or other forms of repression.

Here in New Zealand we call it Courage Day, but many people don’t know why, or assume it is called Courage Day across the world, because the name seems so appropriate.

New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) members are encouraged every year to mark this day in some way. In the past, we have had some compelling speakers who have helped us to explore the idea of courage in writing. 

This year, a small but committed group of NZSA Wellington branch members met on Thursday 13 November to explore the meaning behind Courage Day and to remember, acknowledge and support those writers who are imprisoned or in danger because of what they write.  An empty chair stood as a silent representative of those who cannot come to this or any other meeting because they are in prison or under restraint, due to their writing.

• The story behind Courage Day

Courage Day is named after two writers, Sarah and James Courage (grandmother and grandson). You can read about them on the Christchurch City libraries website.

Sarah Amelia Courage (1845? – 1901) wrote a memoir in about 1896 called Lights and shadows of colonial life: twenty six years in Canterbury, New Zealand (by “A settler’s wife”). Many copies were burned by angry neighbours who didn’t like what she had written about them. James Courage’s 1959 novel, A way of love, was banned as indecent because he dared to write about homosexual love.

Heather Hapeta reminded us of other NZ writers and artists whose work has been banned over the years, including Eddie Rout (Safe marriage, 1926), Jean Devanny (The butcher shop, 1926) and Ans Westra (Washday at the Pa, 1964). 

Maggie Rainey-Smith spoke about the jailed Australian al-Jazeera journalist Peter Greste, imprisoned in Egypt with two colleagues since June 2014 on charges of “aiding terrorists, smearing Egypt, and doctoring footage”. A newly issued decree allowing the deportation of foreigners accused of crimes on Egyptian soil is news that may hopefully lead to his release. Maggie spoke of hearing his mother interviewed on Radio NZ about how heart-wrenching it was to see her son appear in a Cairo court, shackled and without a translator. Elsewhere, Lois Greste has described visiting her son in an Egyptian prison for the first time as one of the most difficult days of her life.

Jailed al-Jazeera journalist Peter Greste, who was among three men jailed in Cairo in June on terror charges. Photograph: Khaled Elfiqi/EPA

Lesley Marshall is the NZSA Writers in Prison committee co-ordinator and sends out numerous postcards to imprisoned writers. Recently she received a reply from Aron Atabek, a Kazakhstan poet imprisoned for writing a book critical of his government - and not just a reply but a poem, which Frances Cherry read out for us. 

There is an empty chair in New Zealand –

Kept for me on writers’ congress,
That is the God to turn me –
Back to an ‘environment’, to a writer’s place!

The National Poetry Day event at the Butter Factory in Whangarei collected about 20 signatures and messages from the audience on a card for Aron Atabek, The event featured an empty chair displaying his photos and poetry, and Piet Nieuwland took a photo of it to include in the card.

Every year, PEN international highlights the situation of a number of particular writers. This year they included poet and writer Enoh Meyomesse, currently held in prison in the Cameroon, and I read out a brief bio of his work and an excerpt from his prison journal:

"... what's hardest for me is my eyesight. After those 30 days in total darkness in Bertoua, it's starting to go. My greatest worry these days is that before long I'm going to find myself totally blind..." 

Dieudonné Enoh Meyomesse is currently serving a 7 year prison sentence for supposed complicity in the theft and illegal sale of gold. 

• For more info about Courage Day or the International Day of the Imprisoned Writer, see:

New Zealand PEN page

PEN InternationalFacebook page

'I hope that you find comfort in the fact that your words echo far and wide, reaching hearts and minds beyond the bars of your cell, beyond the walls of your prison, reminding us that the freedom of speech is worth fighting for.' (Elif Shafak writes to imprisoned Chinese writer Gao Yu.)

Wellington Writers Walk

Since its opening in 2002, the Wellington Writers Walk has become one of the showpieces of the city, honouring local writers and proving a fascinating addition to the urban landscape.



On Thursday 21 March, the harbour was sparkling, the waterfront was crowded with people enjoying the balmy sunshine - it was a perfect evening for the unveiling of Stage IV of the walk. Four new benchmark sculptures have now been added to the existing 19 works, making a total of 23 authors whose work is celebrated in this way.

Speeches in Circa Theatre included one from Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae who is joint patron of the Writers Walk with his wife, Lady Janine.


L to R: Sir James McNeish, Elizabeth Knox, Joy Cowley, Jack Lasenby

Invited guests and members of the public then walked to each new plaque in turn for its unveiling. First was Sir James McNeish, whose benchmark is situated on the bridge behind Te Papa leading to Waitangi Park and Chaffers Marina. Elizabeth Knox’s benchmark was unveiled at a temporary spot before being installed near the Meridian Energy Building, Customhouse Quay, in front of Michael Tuffery’s kina sculpture. (Breakfast TV did a live cross to cover this on Monday 25 March.)

Joy Cowley’s benchmark is on the lower walkway, quite close to the Katherine Mansfield plaque (you might need to lean over the fence to see it.) Reading out her quotation, Joy commented how people complain about the Wellington southerly, but forget to praise the gorgeous day that often follows it.


Joy Cowley with Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae and his wife, Lady Janine

Jack Lasenby’s quotation is placed sideways on a pole near the Wharewaka. Jack declared that he was sure the local seagulls – one of which obligingly came and perched on top of the pole - would now be flying around with cricked necks as a result.




Jack Lasenby in front of his vertical quotation that will prove a trap for literary seagulls

Sponsors of the new quotations are The Todd Corporation for James McNeish, The Deane Foundation for Elizabeth Knox, Mark and Wendy McGuinness for Jack Lasenby and Jenny Morel, Allan Bollard and Penguin Books for Joy Cowley.

This was a great event, bringing together many writers and members of the literary community to celebrate and enjoy what is a very special part of our city. It has been an exciting couple of years for the Writers Walk, which also featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair and launched a wonderful new website and Facebook page.

Thanks to Rosemary Wildblood (Chair of the Wellington Writers Walk Committee)  for the lovely photos.

Courage Day 2012

November 15 is marked around the world as The International Day of the Imprisoned Writer. This was started in 1981 by PEN, the international writers' organisation, to acknowledge those who are subject to political, economic or other forms of repression.

Here in New Zealand we call it Courage Day. Dr Nelson Wattie, the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) PEN representative, introduced the recent Courage Day meeting in Wellington. He pointed out that the name refers to the courage that such writers display, but also recalls NZ writers James Courage and his mother Sarah Courage, who both faced opposition because of their writing - in James' case, because he dared to write about homosexuality at a time when such writing was discouraged and could be banned.

This year the NZSA Wellington branch decided to focus on courage shown by writers in a situation close to home, and we invited Dr Jeffrey Paparoa Holman to address us about the courage of people, including writers, in Christchurch, and more generally on writers' courage to speak in stressful and dangerous situations.

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman is a prolific poet, whose books include As Big as a Father (2002), The Late Great Blackball Bridge Sonnets (2004) and Land Very Fertile (2008). This year he published Shaken Down 6.3, a collection of poems, photographs and an essay focusing on the Christchurch earthquake.



He delivered a riveting and moving talk, despite still getting over the effects of jet lag, having only returned last week from the Iowa Residency.

Jeffrey first talked about the courage shown by his family during the war: his father who was in the Navy, and his mother and grandmother who used to talk to him about being bombed in Liverpool during the Blitz. He told us about some of the writers he met at Iowa, in particular a man from Myanmar who in his imprisonment refused to let his art or his work be confined, and treated every item in his cell as a possible art object

Lastly, he read a number of poems from Shaken down 6.3 and talked about the situation in Christchurch: the lingering after-effects - both physical and emotional, the grief over loss of places and buildings around which you had built your memories - but also the greater community spirit, and a creative flowering with initiatives such as Gap filler:



This was the first time that we included the "empty chair" at our Courage Day event. The chair is placed to symbolise a writer or writers who cannot be present because they are imprisoned, detained, disappeared, threatened or killed. It added an extra poignancy to the occasion and to Jeffrey’s wise and moving words about the situation in Christchurch.

Since the meeting, I've been reading through Shaken down 6.3 and have found it a very moving collection. Jeffrey's description of what his parents and grandmother had experienced during the war added more depth to my reading of his poem living with heroes. The book also includes some poems from Japan, April-May 2011, including Densinya rice haiku which uses a frog and an egret in one small ricefield to tell the story of a terrible and enormous  tragedy.

Two writers

One of the good things about living in Wellington is that there are so many interesting literary or book-related events (as well as so many wonderful bookshops, libraries and of course cafes.) Book launches, poetry readings, talks by visiting or local authors, panel discussions, Book Council events, meetings of various writers' groups - and that's without the big events like Readers and Writers Week or the Book Award ceremonies.

I'm on the committee of the NZSA Wellington branch, and one of our jobs is to line up speakers for our two-monthly meetings. Last week, we heard from two writers: Gigi Fenster and Catherine Robertson. (Gigi and Catherine first met each other at a short story writing course in 2005.) .

Gigi Fenster lives and works in Wellington and has an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University. She has been published in a variety of literary journals, including Sport and Hue and Cry. Her first novel, The Intentions Book, was published by VUP earlier this year.

Gigi said that rather than talking about the "chaotic and unplanned" process of writing her novel, she would talk about some of the reactions to it since its publication in April, in particular a description of it as "New Zealand's first Jewish novel".  This had led her to ponder on whether there is such a thing as Jewish literature, and if so, what it consists of and how it is defined.  Gigi listed some of the titles - both expected and surprising - referred to in Jason Diamond's 2011 article on The 50 most essential works of Jewish fiction of the last 100 years.

She talked about her own reaction to having her book defined in this way, and how she thinks it affects her personally as well as the book.


Catherine Robertson’s debut novel, The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid (Random House, 2011), spent 21 weeks on the NZ bestseller list, including at number one. This book and her second novel, The Not So Perfect Life of Mo Lawrence, are both being published in German as well.



Catherine related how her manuscript for The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid came back with a request for it to be "much, MUCH funnier", and how her sense of humour and the love of jokes and puns that makes her writing so entertaining goes right back to her childhood. (Her grandad was obviously a great fan of humorous radio shows and comic actors.) She listed some of her favourite authors and books when she was growing up: Gerald Durrell's My family and other animals, The young visiters by Daisy Ashford, Clive James, Nancy Mitford, Stella Gibbons, P G Wodehouse.

Catherine talked about her journey to being a published author and finding an agent, and said that although her work seems to be stuck with the label "chick lit", she prefers "humorous contemporary women’s fiction". She also talked about her process of writing (in "rolling drafts") and compared writing a funny line to "making home-made custard." You have to "write for long enough", just as you have to keep stirring and stirring "until finally the custard comes right".

It's always fascinating to hear other writers talk about their work, how they got to where they are now and how they approach the job of writing.

Musing about food

One of the great things about writing is how many different ways there are to write. One of them is reviewing - and there are different branches again of reviewing: food, wine, movies, plays, TV as well as books.

We invited a TV reviewer and a food reviewer to speak at our NZSA meeting this month. Linda Burgess, the TV reviewer, was funny and engaging to listen to, especially in light of a controversy over a recent "offhand comment" she made which was taken in a different  way from how she intended it and led to a flood of letters and emails, many of them personal and unpleasant. But, she said, the point of being a reviewer is to hold contentious views.

David Burton’s food reviews can be contentious at times. He's had five threats of defamation (two from the same article), although he has only once had to adopt a disguise to get into a restaurant. He described for us some of his rules for reviewing:

• stay away from a newly opened restaurant for the first 2 or 3 weeks


•  if you book under your own name, only do that on the day


• try and arrive punctually, and hungry


• order off the menu, not the specials board (so they can't make anything special just for you)


• look around to make sure that others are getting the same level of service as you are


• be polite to waiting staff and treat them as professionals.

David said that a review gives a snapshot of that particular night, and only has an impact for a few weeks. It only remains valid for about six months, or until the chef leaves (so you shouldn't rely on the ones which have been in the restaurant windows for years.)

Reviewers put themselves in the spotlight and people will often ask, what credentials do they have? what gives them the right to hold forth like that? It must be an uncomfortable place to be at times, when you want to write an honest review. Much easier to criticise the reviewer sometimes than to take on board what they have to say.

What is a widget?

I'm feeling very pleased with myself, having finally sorted out how to get my links to show up on the sidebar - and without any help from teenagers, none of whom are at home today. Hint: yes, it is something to do with widgets. I did get some help from a writer friend (thanks, Maggie.)

One of the things that stuck with me from Marilyn Duckworth's talk last week was when she said that joining PEN (now the NZ Society of Authors) helped her to connect with other writers and to believe in herself. She said that writers are at the mercy of readers and publishers, and it can be a "damaging ride." That's very true. It's hard to explain sometimes how very vulnerable you can feel when sending out a manuscript, and how deflated and devastated if - for any one of a number of reasons - it ends up being rejected.

On the other hand, I'm very conscious that it is a privilege to have the chance to work on a manuscript and send it away, to have the time, the equipment, the education. Last year we spent a month in Laos and Vietnam, where people work terribly long hours simply to earn enough money to send their kids to school. Another time, we visited our daughter who was teaching on a  remote island in Vanuatu. One of the teachers said, "how lovely to be able to go away on holiday." When we returned to the capital, Vila, we met the woman who did the laundry at our hotel. She had come from that same island over 20 years before to earn money to send back home, but she'd never been able to afford to go back herself, and had grandchildren whom she had never seen.

So sitting here fiddling with links and widgets is a huge privilege, and I'm grateful to all my writer friends for their support and encouragement.

 

Janet Frame Memorial Lecture

One of the writers organisations I belong to is the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA). Every year the President of Honour delivers the Janet Frame Memorial Lecture, and this year it was delivered on 1 March at Te Papa by Marilyn Duckworth. 

Marilyn called her talk "Learning to swivel: the changing face of New Zealand literature", and shared many wonderful insights about how the writing life has changed since the days when she wrote her novels longhand, typed them on a typewriter, laboriously counted the words and posted them off on the long 6-week trip to Britain. She is very modest about her work, but what an amazing achievement to be able to look back over 50 years as a published author.

“Novel writing is a dangerous occupation,” Marilyn believes, and she took her “first blithe steps into that crocodile swamp”, aged just 23, with her novel A gap in the spectrum. Back in the 1950s, there were no book launches, no writing courses or fellowships, few local publishers and only a few other women writers, and it didn’t matter if you were “shy and tongue tied” because the publicity machine didn’t exist. Today’s writers travel a very different path, and “the excitement of stepping out into unfamiliar territory” is perhaps no longer quite the same. 

Marilyn also looked back over many years of PEN activities - remembering John Pascoe and Monty Holcroft (who would raise their hats to her in passing on Lambton Quay) Pat Lawlor, Ruth Gilbert, Denis Glover (who told her it was her job “to look decorative” on the committee), Ngaio Marsh and Noel Hilliard, among others. She recalled many “eye-opening and unforgettable” parties, and a number of Wellington bookshops, with fond memories in particular of Hugh Price’s Modern Books, which gave her her first window display.

More changes are inevitable, but as Marilyn said: “reading, however we do it, remains one of the nicest and most rewarding things anyone can do.” And despite being a “70-something novelist” whose own favourite writers are “aging and tired, if not already dead”, it’s clear that Marilyn, who has been an outstanding role model and source of encouragement for many, is still a writer at heart.

“I do love words,” she said. “What writer doesn’t?”

Her talk was recorded for Radio NZ and you can find it here:http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/janetframememoriallectures/audio/2511581/2012-janet-frame-lecture-by-marilyn-duckworth

You can also read Elizabeth Knox’s 1993 interview with her here:
http://quoteunquotenz.blogspot.co.nz/2011/12/elizabeth-knox-on-marilyn-duckworth.html

 And here is one of Marilyn's books:

 

Cherries on a plate: New Zealand writers talk about their sisters, edited by Marilyn Duckworth.  

The picture on the cover is of Marilyn (left) and her sister Fleur Adcock.

Having a sister myself, I'm very fond of this book.