Brown, James
IN BRIEF
James Brown is a widely anthologised poet. His first collection, Go Round Power Please, won Best First Book of Poetry at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. He was the recipient of a 2000 Buddle Finlay Sargeson Writers Fellowship. Under the pseudonym Dr Ernest M Bluespire, Brown published Instructions for Poetry Readings, offering Bluespires' advice on giving and attending poetry readings. Brown was the 2004 Victoria University Writer in Residence and in the same year he designed a poetry course for Whitireia Polytechnic.
Photo Credit: © Robert Cross
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brown, James (1966 - ) grew up in Palmerston North. He has several collections of poetry, all published by Victoria University Press, and he has been a finalist in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards three times. He lives in Wellington with his partner and two children, where he is a part of the writing team at Te Papa, New Zealand’s National Museum, and teaches undergraduate poetry writing at Victoria University.
In 1991, Brown completed Bill Manhire’s creative writing course at Victoria University. For much of the 1990’s, he was a freelance writer/editor and co-edited the literary journal Sport.
In 1994, he was awarded the Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary, and a New Zealand Society of Authors / Reader's Digest Stout Research Centre fellowship. His first poetry collection, Go Round Power Please (1995), was shortlisted at the 1996 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award.
‘Brown is bricoleur,’ writes Anne French in New Zealand Books, ‘a home handy man with found language; and unlike many of them, he puts it to proper use, makes poems with neatly mitred corners and doors that are hung straight.’
David Eggleton notes that ‘Brown is ever intent on disrupting the reader’s expectations on offering something unexpected. He wants to convey a sense of shock, surprise, discovery. He’s out to show how ambitious language can be as a form of communication.’
Brown’s second collection, Lemon, was published in 1999. Writing in the NZ Listener (Dec 25-31, 1999), Elizabeth Knox calls it ‘possibly the year’s best New Zealand book. James Brown’s latest book has teeth and claws, social savvy, poetic sensibility, and stimulating peculiarities. Lemon is a great reading experience.’
Brown also writes short fiction. His stories have appeared in the NZ Listener, Sport, Landfall, and have been broadcast on Radio New Zealand. They are also anthologised in Zig Zag (1993), The Picnic Virgin (1999), and Boys’ Own Stories (2000).
In 2000, Brown received a Buddle Finlay Sargeson Writers Fellowship, and in 2001 he became the Canterbury University Writer in Residence. In 2002, he was one of four authors shortlisted in the inaugural Glenn Schaeffer Prize in Modern Letters.
Brown’s third collection, Favourite Monsters (2002), is a book of many voices, and of subjects ranging from politics to parenthood, art and religion. In 2002, he also published a booklet entitled Instructions for Poetry Readings (Braunias University Press) under the pseudonym Dr Ernest M Bluespire. Offering Dr Bluespire’s well-schooled advice on how to successfully give or attend a poetry reading, the booklet was reprinted in 2004.
In 2003, Brown designed the Whitereia Polytechnic Online Creative Writing Course, before becoming Victoria University/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence in 2004. In 2005, he edited The Nature of Things: Poems from the New Zealand Landscape (Craig Patton Publishing). The book features photographs from the renowned landscape photographer Craig Patton alongside landscape poetry, and was a finalist in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
Brown’s fourth book of poetry, The Year of the Bicycle (2006), was also a finalist in the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
He is the editor of the online anthology Best New Zealand Poems 2008. His own poetry is widely anthologized, most recently in Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets (2009).
writers in schools information
James Brown takes part in the Book Council's Writers in Schools programme. He is happy to discuss ways of being a good reader of poetry and fiction, and ways of writing poetry and fiction. Brown's areas of specialty include poetry, teen fiction, novels, and adult fiction. He is able to talk to students aged 7-18 years and prefers to talk to students aged 15-18. He is also prepared to run workshops by arrangement. Brown prefers to work with groups of 10, with maximum of 20 in a class. He is able to participate in tours outside of his region.
KAPAI: Kids' Authors' Pictures and Information
Where do you live?
Island Bay in Wellington
What kinds of books do you like to read?
Poetry, children’s books (I have a two-year-old and a five-year-old – Harry Potter is big in our house!) essays and short stories.
Who is your favourite author?
A.A. Milne — I read The World of Pooh at least once a year. Donald Barthelme – a post-modern short story writer. Charles Simic — I like his prose poems.
How do you think up your ideas?
Mostly I start off with an interesting line, which has an engaging voice or tone to it. And I follow that to see where it takes me.
What is the best thing about being a writer?
Absolute freedom. Well, getting to make your own rules — the freedom to do that.
Some Questions from Primary School Students
Do you have any pets?
The neighbour’s cat Maxi. Several resident mice, plus the odd rat. Spiders — we have a lot of friendly spiders.
Do you have a favourite colour?
Green
Do you have a favourite food?
Spicy food
Do you have a favourite movie?
Drowning by Numbers
How about a favourite game?
Hide and seek.
What is the most fun thing about being an author?
Using your imagination and not having anybody telling you you’re not doing it quite right.
How do you make a book?
When I’ve got enough poems I sort out the ones I think are the best. Then I put them into groups —poems about family, poems about fairness, etc. — which become the sections of the book.
Where do you like to go for your holidays?
Sometimes we go to Waiheke Island in Auckland.
What was the naughtiest thing you ever did at school?
Hid the teacher’s motorbike (Form 1). Locked someone under the floor of the school theatre (Form 4). I never did anything bad at primary school.
Some Questions from Secondary School Students
How did you get started?
At University, while doing an English degree. I think most English Lit. Students have a go at writing at some point during their studies — I mean they’re studying the stuff!
Who inspired you when you were getting started?
Adolescent hormones and Bill Manhire.
What advice would you give an aspiring young writer?
Read. But not just anything — good contemporary equivalents of what you’re writing. You may need to ask someone to direct you.
Is it difficult to make a living as a writer in New Zealand?
Impossible — especially for poets. Even fiction writers have to have overseas contracts to stand a chance.
What were you like as a teenager?
Rebellious, but not evil. I had a lot of free rein because it was just me and my dad (my sister and brother lived with mum). I now look back and think that given that I could stay out all night and do what I liked, my dad is pretty lucky I didn’t go totally off the rails. I think that even though I hated rules and regulations and conventional society in general, I always had a strong sense of right and wrong and not impinging on other people’s rights.
Is there anything else you can tell us about yourself?
When I was 10 or 11 we had an underground den (and a tree house), which we’d built down the end of our garden. We were ‘at war’ with the kids over the fence. We threw dirt and they, because they lived in a nice new house that only had pebble-gardens, threw stones. Ouch! One day we decided to tunnel under the fence and come up under one of their pebble-gardens in order to get a few stones for ourselves. We dug and dug, then came up. It turned out that their pebble-gardens was laid down on top of black polythene — which we quickly tore a hole in. Unfortunately, what we hadn’t realised was that the pebble-garden was in a sort of bowl shape, and the entire garden — plants and all — drained like a bath into our tunnel! Luckily they weren’t home at the time so we corked up the hole with a log of firewood, climbed over the fence (it was a high corrugated iron fence and we needed to use a tree) and, using buckets and a rake, put back the pebbles and plants. It looked a bit messy but they never noticed. We left the tunnel, but never pulled out the log cork again. Eventually, we moved house, though I can’t remember if we ever filled in that particular tunnel. I know we filled in some. I wonder what the new owners would’ve thought.
Media links and clips
- James Brown's writing in Best New Zealand Poems 2001
- James Brown's writing in Best New Zealand Poems 2004
- James Brown's writing in Best New Zealand Poems 2005
- James Brown's writing in Best New Zealand Poems 2006
- James Brown's writing inTurbine 03
- James Brown's writing inTurbine 04
- James Brown interview inTurbine 04
- James Brown's writing inTurbine 08
- James Brown 'Closer' short story in the Listener
- James Brown 'How I write my love poems' poem in the Listener
- James Brown 'New Year' poem in the Listener
- James Brown and Hinemoana Baker video conference
- James Brown's Victoria University Press profile
- James Brown on the NZETC site
- James Brown poem in Trout 11
