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Feature Title

The Faceless

by Vanda Symon
Bradley, middle-aged man trapped in middle-class New Zealand, picks up a teenage hooker in downtown Auckland....


Feature Author

Ann Beaglehole is a historian and fiction writer. Her first novel, Replacement Girl, was published in...


Archive

Readers’ round-up, 06-03-2012

The Cover Story, 11-05-2010

Rant and Raves


Short and Sweet Q&A with Helen Heath

03-05-2012

Helen Heath's debut collection of poetry, Graft (VUP) will be launched tonight in Wellington and we celebrate by asking her a few questions about the book, her obsessions as a poet and what she's up to next.

1. What are your most pronounced obsessions as a poet?
I have an obsession with pattern recognition within collections – reoccurring themes and images and piecing things together, it gives me great satisfaction - like a giant Sudoku. Thematically the poems in Graft are obsessed with bearing witness but also the big issues of how we deal with death and birth and finding our place in between them, it’s a bit ambitious in that way I guess!

2. I loved reading in the press release that the word graft originates from the Old Norse groftr, meaning to dig. In what ways does the collection tap into this active process of exploration?
Mostly the poems dig into the past and they dig up dead people (metaphorically!). They are trying to find things like a truth, an answer or a lost person. The title poem actually has a very deep hole dug in it literally and was great fun to write.

3. You published a chapbook of poems called Watching for Smoke (Seraph Press) in 2009. Is Graft a continuation of those explorations or a departure?
Some of the poems in Watching for Smoke appear in Graft, they are mostly family poems. Graft expands out thematically into science, magical thinking and the point at which these two things blur together, which is more often than you might think.

4. What are you reading at the moment?
At the moment I am reading material for my PhD in creative writing at the IIML, lots of books about cyborgs, cognitive science and how technology is affecting us like, James Gleick’s The Information. I love it! Of course I’m also reading poetry - books by Robert Crawford, Jorie Graham and Lavinia Greenlaw.

5. What will you be working on next?
My next creative project is a book of poetry that explores the way we meet with technology physically and socially; how we take it into our bodies, how it affects our brains and the way we interact with each other. From hip replacements and pacemakers to computers as prosthetics, Facebook, smartphones as external memory, even plastic surgery and spectacles – we augment ourselves and merge with technology.

Get your copy of Graft here and find out more about Helen Heath here on her blog. To celebrate the release of the collection we also have a couple of giveaway copies to offer you. Head to our Facebook page to enter the draw.






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Emma Gallagher swears by contemporary Irish literature

27-04-2012

For such a wee, damp island, Ireland has produced more than its fair share of literary greats: Swift, Wilde, Yeats, Shaw, Bowen, Joyce, O’Connor (a couple of them), Beckett, Heaney, O’Brien (a couple of them), Murdoch, Trevor, McGahern, Binchy, Doyle, Banville, Toibin, Barry, Enright, McCabe, and Keyes.

Even so, many critics want today’s Irish writers to say goodbye to the past – feck all the potatoes and the donkeys and the priests over the nearest dry stone wall – and deal to the new Ireland in all its post-boom, economically depressed, high unemployment and emigration glory. No more tilling lovely black clods of earth as the misty, mistlike Irish mist descends.

15,000-pound-2007-BBC-National-Story-Prize-winning author Julian Gough says in his rant/interview with the Dalkey Archive Review, ‘Reading award-winning Irish literary fiction, you wouldn’t know television had been invented.' He wants to know, where are all the X-boxes and YouPorn? Where is all the swearing? ‘The Irish swear better than almost anyone else on earth, bar maybe the Spanish and a couple of countries in Africa. That’s another area where I think recent Irish literary writers – with the honourable exception of Roddy Doyle – have failed us badly.’

Gough rates Kevin Barry and Ross O’Caroll Kelly – and they’re both as far from soft clods of earth as you can get. Barry’s 2011 novel, City of Bohane, is a kind of a gangland Ireland 40 years in the future. (For some inspirational swearing, check out Barry’s story Fjord of Killary in the New Yorker.) Ross O’Carroll Kelly is the satiric alter-ego of journalist Paul Howard, who nailed the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger with his wealthy, rugby-playing, D4 dwelling (a posh Dublin postcode) creation. ‘Ross’ writes a column in the The Irish Times which is so popular it has spawned a number of novels, guides and plays such as Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's Guide to (South) Dublin: How To Get By On, Like, €10,000 A Day.

But despite any criticism, Irish writers are still winning awards and winning over readers across the world. Some new(ish) Irish writers to keep an eye on are novelist Claire Kilroy, and short story writers Claire Keegan and Philip O Ceallaigh.

A lot of recent Irish literary writing doesn’t concern itself with Ireland at all. Emma Donahue’s 2010 Mann Booker and Orange Prize short-listed novel Room is based on a scenario similar to the Josef Fritzl case, set in America. Let the Great World Spin won Colum McCann the IMPAC prize in 2011 and is set in 1970s New York, bringing together a range of New Yorkers, including two Irish brothers who have emigrated. Irish-born Joseph O’Neil’s Netherland, again set in New York, follows a cricket team of immigrants in the aftermath of 9/11, and produced quite a stir in 2008 with the New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani describing the novel as ‘stunning’ and saying it provided ‘a resonant meditation on the American Dream’.

Irish crime writing, instead, has turned inwards, revealing a new and much darker Ireland, rather than dreaming of mean streets elsewhere. While Ireland’s best-known crime writer John Connolly set his novels in America, crime writers are now also exploring Dublin and other Irish cities. ‘In the past few years, Irish-set crime writing has not merely begun to blossom but has become arguably the nearest thing we have to a realist literature adequate to capturing the nature of contemporary society,’ wrote Irish Times journalist Fintan O’Toole. Crime writer Declan Burke’s blog ‘Crime Always Pays’ is worth watching for updates on the best new Irish crime fiction. Tana French’s debut novel In the Woods about two detectives solving the murder of a twelve year old girl won a small list of best first novel prizes. And even Mann Booker winner John Banville has turned to crime, writing under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.

In the same way, Chick-Lit is firmly set in the present and deals with contemporary issues in Irish life. Following on from juggernaut Marian Keyes who has written about topics like drug-addiction and depression, are best-selling writers Cecelia Ahern (PS I Love You), and Sinead Moriarty (The Baby Trail), whose novel follows a woman through her struggle with infertility.

And happily for us, Irish writers travel. You can see four of Ireland’s leading writers, Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Eion Colfer and Oliver Jeffers, at the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival in May.

Emma Gallagher works for the New Zealand Book Council. Her story 'The Reception' appears in the latest issue of the Book Council's booklovers' magazine Booknotes.




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True Stories Told Live and a weta or two

05-04-2012

Author, cartoonist, and graphic designer Sarah Laing recently took part in our True Stories Told Live fundraiser event for Writers in Schools that also celebrated the HAKA! Exhibition at the National Library Auckland Centre. The theme was PRIDE and seven authors delivered entertaining and moving true stories. Sarah Laing also wrote a 6-page comic to lock her story firmly into her memory. This great comic depiction also means that those of us who couldn’t make it on the night can enjoy her fantastic story. Read the first instalment here then head to Laing’s blog Let Me Be Frank for the full tale.

The Book Council’s next reader event will be a rare and exciting Meet the author event with critically acclaimed picture book creator Oliver Jeffers. This will be his first-ever public New Zealand event in Wellington on Tuesday 8 May. For full details and to purchase your tickets click here.



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Jenny Pattrick's historical novels inspire new Denniston walking trail

22-03-2012

On the last day of NZ Book Month Jenny Pattrick will launch a self-guided walking trail on the South Island’s West Coast that links in with key events and locations from her novels The Denniston Rose and Heart of Coal.

Readers and trail walkers will learn about the local landscape and its history through the lens of the Denniston novels, opening up what you might expect from an experience that roves on and off the page. And for those of you who wish to keep things as interactive as possible, there is also an iApp for the tour, potentially a New Zealand first for this kind of literary venture.

Pattrick became very familiar with the historical coal mining area of Denniston when she was researching and writing the novels, which are set in the 1880s. ‘I visited the area many times,’ she says. ‘An old retired coal-miner, Geoff Kitchin, walked with me explaining how the coal was mined and where different families – including his own – lived. He brought the ghost towns to life. The Coal Town Museum in Westport was a great source of information too.’

Coal is an integral part of the fabric of historical Denniston, and Pattrick says connecting the novels to geographical sites was aided by her earlier research. ‘It was an easy process for me,’ she says, ‘because there are so many good old photographs of Denniston and old maps. I had placed my characters in real areas and had always imagined them living in precise places.’

Pattrick deftly brings the bustling and boisterous settlement of Denniston to life, evident when the heroine of the novels, Rose, describes her surroundings:

‘I like living on the Hill because some people here are kind to me and I have my friends Michael and Brennan and I can go to school. Denniston is cold and dirty and around the Bins everything is rattling and crashing; the men have black faces and they joke even when they work so hard. Coal is everywhere inside and outside the houses. The white washing on the line turns black. When the wagons are racing down the Incline you have to watch out not to get run over and killed. Brennan’s big brothers all work in the mines – even the twins who are eleven – and his Dad and uncles too. Except the one who got killed by coal falling on him.’

An earlier concept for the trail was put on hold, Pattrick says, but picked up steam again a year or so later, this time with support from the Department of Conservation (DOC) in Buller and the Denniston Heritage Trust. ‘Harry Broad from DOC Headquarters in Wellington came up with the idea of the trail a year or two back,’ she says. ‘Together we designed billboards to be placed on the plateau marking the trail with photos and quotes from the book. This idea ran into difficulties and was mothballed. Since then the old mine area in Denniston has been beautifully developed as a tourist attraction. Now DOC in Buller has decided to run with the idea of a Denniston Rose tour but this time producing a brochure which people could use as a self-guided tour of places on Denniston which appear in the book.’

And as already mentioned, for those who want an interactive experience there is an iApp available in addition to the trail brochure. ‘The iApp will add to the information in the brochure with photographs, old video clips, sound effects of the Incline working, information about the book and author and conditions of the time,’ Pattrick says. ‘Also I have recorded short excerpts from the book, illustrating each stop on the tour and these will be included in the iApp. I think this may be the first for a literary tour iApp like this in New Zealand.’

And what does Pattrick hope readers will take from the tour?

‘I hope it will give those who have read the books an added historical dimension - an understanding of the isolation and harshness of the nineteenth century life. Of course when you read a book you have your own image of the landscape and the places, so perhaps some people will find the reality different from the one they imagined as they read. But in this case I think the only conflict will be in the great difference between the quiet ghost-town now and the crowded houses and roar of industry in those past times. I think the iApp, the excellent interpretation panels on Denniston and the exciting ride into an old mine – The Denniston Mine Experience – will together bring both the past, and the books to life.’

The launch with Jenny Pattrick and presentation of the self-guided tour will take place on 31st March 2012 at 10am at Denniston ‘Friends of the Hill’ Museum. Bookings: Buller District Library 03 7888030. Participants need to organise their own travel to Denniston.

Jenny Pattrick’s Book Council Writers file
Further Denniston Rose Trail launch information


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Readers’ round-up

06-03-2012

Being a fan of The Paris Review’s On the Shelf round-up of cultural news, I thought a speedy rundown of news of interest to New Zealand readers was in order. 

And to fuel the reading fires here's a quote by Abraham Lincoln: ‘The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.’

Posted by Rachel.


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Back to... Where books come to life


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Phone 0064 4 801 5546
Level 4, Stephenson & Turner House, 156 Victoria St, Te Aro,
Wellington 6011, New Zealand