Dear All,

Best of luck and bon voyage to our writers, Steve Braunias, Anna Mackenzie, Vanda Symon, David Geary and Janet Charman, as they kick off this year’s Words on Wheels tour in Christchurch next week. They will be ably guided through the South Island high country by Kathryn Carmody, who will trekking them down through Canterbury, Selwyn and Central Otago.

There’s also a poetic feel to this month’s activity as we look forward to  events featuring some of New Zealand’s best poets: Bill Manhire, Jenny Bornholdt, Chris Price and James Brown, and the first visit to New Zealand by the extraordinary international novelist Nadeem Aslam.

This month’s newsletter features poet David Howard’s preparations for a literary festival in Nicaragua; five questions for Jenny Bornholdt before she heads to Scotland to visit their rather New Zealand-obsessed poetry library; and Susanna Andrew talks to bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith.

Also we’d very much like to congratulate the New Zealand writers shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Paula Morris, Mo Zhi Hong and Bridget van der Zjipp, and to celebrate we are offering copies of their books to this month’s readers in our competition.

Best wishes,
Noel
 

EXTENDED PLAY:
ALL THE POETRY YOU NEVER GOT TO HEAR

Don't forget to go to this wonderful event - today from 6.30pm.
Time: 6.30 – 8.pm
Venue: Caffé L’affare 27 College St Wellington
Tickets: $8.00 Book Council Members, $10.00 non-members; door sales only, entry includes a free drink

For further information or images please contact Susanna Andrew at the New Zealand Book Council, 04 499 1569,communications@bookcouncil.org.nz
 

  

If you live in or near Christchurch, Darfield, Tai Tapu, West Melton, Methven, Geraldine, Wanaka, Cromwell or Queenstown, keep your eyes peeled for the Words on Wheels bus, which will be visiting a venue near you between 2 - 8 March. Featuring David Geary, Steve Braunias, Vanda Symon, Janet Charman and Anna Mackenzie, these events will whet your appetite for a range of New Zealand literature. To see the full schedule, please link through to our website.



DAVID HOWARD THINKS WE'RE THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD

David Howard dispatched this to us, before heading off to join other poets in Nicaragua this month.

The International Writers' Programme of the NZ Book Council could be the best thing since sliced bread. To be honest I don’t like most sliced bread, but I do like this programme because it provided the dough for me to ‘go north, not-so young man,' to the V Festival Internacional De Poesia De Granada, Nicaragua, 16-21 February 2009. In 2007 Michael Harlow represented New Zealand (how does one represent a country?) and his lobbying got me the invitation.

After enduring the awful décor of LA, Miami, and Managua transit lounges, I will be rewarded by two days of rest. The inevitable jet-lag will evaporate, along with my spending money, before I’m called upon to perform. Speaking to the contestable notion that poetry (if not the poet) is the conscience of the earth, on the afternoon of the 18th I read with Uruguay’s Eduardo Espina [‘World, it’s all the same since in Spanish it’s mundo./When it starts to be smaller, someone will know.’] and Sweden’s Lasse Soderberg [‘What has become of your America/Walt Whitman?’].

The next evening I find – and perhaps lose - myself reading with Russia’s Yevgeny Yevtushenko [‘Something dangerous/is beginning:/I/am coming late/to my own self.’], Spain’s Luis Garcia Montero [‘Poetry is useless, it serves only/to behead a king/or seduce a young woman’], and Palestine’s Natalie Handal [‘Through literature you enter worlds…’].

Given the engaged and engaging company, I’ll present excerpts from ‘Heroin’, a long poem that was first published on 28 September 2001 in Masthead: American Terror, writings in the immediate aftermath, alongside responses by the likes of Eliot Weinberger and John Kinsella.

I’m keen to recite loaded lines like:

Get up, hero, take your prisoners to serve in perpetuity before your Lord. Place your hands on the neck of your enemy. Who, like the sailors, will come back to tell?

Hopefully I will come back to tell. Whatever, on the 20th I head out for the day to San Marcos, where I’ll sing for my supper at street-corners with seven poets including the slippery Obediah Smith (Bahamas) and the formidable Carolina Escobar Sarti (Guatemala), Given the quality of their poetry and their honed performance skills, I expect to end up famished but happy.

ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH CHATS TO OUR ROVING REPORTER
 

The highly productive Alexander McCall Smith was in New Zealand for two days last week to promote his latest book in the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, Teatime for the Traditionally Built. The Book Council’s Susanna Andrew managed a brief phonecall with him on his publicist’s mobile phone en route to yet another literary lunch…

In terms of output, if ever there were a 21^st century writer to compare to Anthony Trollope it would have to be Alexander McCall Smith.

With over 60 books to his name, including two books he wrote and published in daily instalment in the Scotsman, his output is extraordinary.

‘I write daily, usually in the morning for two to three hours,’ he says. ‘I’m very fortunate. I have always liked to write'

McCall Smith was writing and publishing for children before moving into adult fiction. The barest shift in register occurs in his writing between his adult and children’s books, demonstrating that really good writing knows no barriers. He never exaggerates, he never patronises; the same concerns apply; truth, morality, happiness.

You would think some social science graduate would have taken him to task – a middle aged white man living in Scotland writing a series with a Botswana woman detective – without the familiar problems in Africa writ large – HIV, famine, corruption.

Has he ever been approached to write for the ‘cause’ of Africa?

‘Bad news is always news isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Issue driven fiction is tedious. There are some tremendous organisations doing marvelous work. I support them in their work.’

So gentle is his storytelling that McCall Smith displaces the political while concentrating on the facts of existence and how people resolve ordinary dilemmas in their day-to-day life. His writing is humane, compassionate, and humorous; a respite from the angst a lot of modern fiction can sometimes give you.

Talking to him you hear the sound of his craft – thoughtful well-chosen words with no urgency to hype. His literary influences are fairly wide but asked which author he reveres above others and he says W H Auden. His titles read like poems – Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls and his latest Teatime for the Traditionally Built.

The extraordinary success of his No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series took him by surprise. The initial print run was 1500 copies; it has since run to 2.5 million, but such success was never his ambition. Trained as a lawyer, he was a professor of medical law for many years in Edinburgh and wrote a number of textbooks, among them the wonderfully titled The Forensic Aspects of Sleep, before giving up lecturing to write fulltime.

Lucky for us. As a critic once wrote ‘it would be hard to find anyone bad-tempered enough not to like Alexander McCall Smith’.
 

JENNY BORNHOLDT GIVES US AN ANSWER OR FIVE

Our upcoming event, Extended Play, will give Wellington audiences a chance to hear Jenny Bornholdt and Bill Manhire before they slip away to Scotland for the poetry festival at St Andrews.

The poetry festival StAnza09 is recognized as the major poetry event in the UK. StAnza09 marks the 250^th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns with a fantastic programme of more than 70 international and local poets including Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage. Bill Manhire is the official Poet in Residence which involves, among other things, conducting a public master class, giving a reading with Simon Armitage and taking part in a presentation on Robert Louis Stevenson. The festival runs for ten days from 18 – 22 March.

We asked Jenny Bornholdt how the packing is going:

Who are you looking forward to hearing at the festival?
Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and Gerrie Fellows. I’m also keen to hear younger poets – there’s a reading by some and a discussion of their work, which should be interesting.

What’s the format of the festival – does it take over the town?
The festival takes place at a number of venues around the city. Some things are at the university, but they’re also making use of a theatre, the town hall and a museum.

How do you imagine the audience to be?
I have enormous difficulties imagining audience sizes. I’m always convinced it’ll be one person and their friend. But, from what I’ve heard, there’s a keen audience for this festival.

What’s on your bedside right now?
Laurie Duggan’s new book of poems Crab & Winkle, the DK guide to Scotland, The Faber Book of 20^th-Century German Poems, and The Small Edible Garden – Growing organic fruit and vegetables at home.

What book is going with you?
I presume you mean to read on the plane? – some large, undemanding novel, and I’m planning to buy books at StAnza, so I’ll have plenty to read while I’m there.

Since you’ve recently been abroad, how do New Zealand audiences compare in size?
Very hard to say because it all depends on venue, publicity etc. I’ve read to large and small audiences in NZ and overseas. The smallest audience ever was five people, in Dunedin – it was a really good experience though, because we all just drew our chairs together and had a very intense, interesting hour.

EDUCATIONAL HAPPENINGS

Everything has sped up somewhat now that schools are back, and tours are flourishing all around the country. These will be confirmed by the end of this week, so if you are a school, and thus are interested in such things, please don't forget to sign up for the schools e-newsletter.

Meanwhile, we have a new member of staff in the Education section. Emma Gallagher joined us a couple of weeks ago, and she will be sharing responsibility for the Writers in Schools (WIS) programme. There is a new email for the WIS programme - wis@bookcouncil.org.nz - and this will go directly into Emma's inbox.

Excitement is building for the launch of our new website, which is due in the next month. Part of this new-look website will be a fancy online booking form, which will help teachers make more informed decisions about which author they would like to visit their school next term.

More news next month, I hope everybody is enjoying being back in the thick of things at work.

Sarah Hughes, Education Manager.

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