Holman, Jeffrey

writers in schools information

Holman is able to visit schools outside his region through the Writers in Schools programme and is happy to talk to students aged 10 years and over. Please continue down the page to see Holman’s answers to a list of questions provided by school students: He is happy to talk about poetry, short stories and writing adult fiction and non-fiction. Jeffrey is available to present in Maori also. He prefers to speak to classes of less than 20 students. He is prepared to run workshops by prior arrangement.

KAPAI: Kids' Authors Pictures and Information

Some questions from Primary School students

What sort of pets do you have?
We have two cats, litter mates, but not at all alike. Pipi is tabby and mad, always crying for more food and getting under my feet. She belongs to Adele, but I usually feed her. Tohora (named after a whale) is a black longhair, with a white bib, very laid-back and belongs to Mark.

What is your favourite colour?
I don’t really have one; I just like the shades of green you see in the bush on the West Coast of the South Island where I grew up. Seeing the red of the rata in the Otira Gorge is pretty awesome. And the red and yellow and black heads of the goldfinches feeding in the seedheads.

What is your favourite food?
My favourite food is a nice whitebait patty, cooked up as an omelette mix with a bit of parsley, some white bread and butter, and salt and pepper.

What is your favourite movie?
My all time favourite is 'Some Like it Hot' but the best in recent years is 'Magnolia'.

What is your favourite game?
My favourite game would be a toss up between rugby and rugby league. I played rugby league for Blackball as a schoolboy – mostly in the second row.

What is the most fun thing about being an author?
The most fun thing is writing whatever you like and nobody saying 'that’s wrong!' or 'that’s not good enough!' They might not like it but it’s one place where you can be boss.

How do you make books?
Publishers and printer actually make the books. Writers write the pages. Publishers say yes, we’ll pay to get it printed and sold. Printers use the manuscript (usually from a disk, or a CD, or sent by email these days) to run off lots of copies on big printers, a bit like the ones connected to home computers. Then they glue the pages and put a cover on. You can make your own books – it’s called self-publishing, but then you have to sell them yourself. It’s better to get somebody else to publish you and sell the books to booksellers although you do have to be good!

Where do you go for your holidays?
I like to go anywhere there’s a bit of bush and a beach — and a good coffee shop. Golden Bay is great, up at Pakawau. We go to Nelson a lot and I like to get back to the Coast when I can. I like Wellington, too, and I think it has a good vibe, more Poly than flat old Christchurch!

Some questions from Secondary School students

How did you get started?
I started by writing stories at primary school. Then I did a poem when I was 12 and wrote more poems at high school. I’ve always written something — even letters, even when I wasn’t consciously thinking that I wanted to be a writer.

Who inspired you when you were getting started?
My English teacher, Peter Hooper, who was also a writer, inspired me. I met him in 1963 in my fifth form English class. He brought some of his poems to school and showed us drafts and alterations. He was teaching us that poem, and all writing, consists of beginning with drafts and then constantly revising. ‘Get it writ, then get it right’. It took me ten years to catch on (I didn’t publish my first book until over ten years later) but Peter showed me you could be a writer, just by writing. I knew somebody who was a working writer, and believe me, in 1963 they were pretty hard to find in Greymouth. Peter supported my aspirations from then until his death in 1991. He touched so many lives, and is more or less forgotten now by the literary world but his influence as a friend and mentor lives on.

What advice would you give an aspiring young writer?
See above! You need support, you need to write, you need to read, and get involved, in some small way to begin with, in some kind of mentoring relationships. You need to read lots and not just Harry Potter, although that’s great for now. The more you read, the more styles and influences you will absorb, and that will help you to find a genre (or two) that you enjoy working with. You need words that you can use to dramatise your experiences and imaginary worlds. Read more books and watch less TV — unless you want to be a scriptwriter, but then you should be making notes on how they make your favourite TV show. Most programmes start life on the page or on the word processor not with a camera in a paddock (ask the woman who wrote the scripts for Lord of the Rings!)

Is it hard to make a living as a writer in New Zealand?
I wouldn’t know personally because I’ve never given up my day job. There’s not much money in poetry, folks, or short stories. Even well known writers like Maurice Gee just get by. You have to be able to do all sorts of writing jobs and plenty of Kiwi writers try everything like plays, poetry, novels, short stories and reviews. I do a bit of reviewing but as I’m a doctoral student right now, studying 19th century cultural history, I am putting lots of energy into that. I’m on a scholarship so I guess I’m getting paid to write. Many writers go for residencies in the main New Zealand universities and get around $40,000 but there’s only so many of those to go around. Money is great when you get it — even a paltry $30 for a review, and people like me will write whatever, I guess. I’d like to be in the position to write full time and live off it one day but I think being such a late starter means that’ll be a hard ask (I’m 55).

What were you like as a teenager?
I was a bit introverted. I was also a bit of a loudmouth and quick with my tongue — I’d tell lies if I thought I’d make a good story. I spent a lot of time down the bush and up the creek, with my dog or a couple of mates. I read everything I could get my hands on and then fell in love with all these impossible high school queens who were way out of my class. My ex-wife used to say I was the school intellectual, a kind-of angry young man, mixed-up kid. I had a big chip on my shoulder and left school in the seventh form for a job in a sawmill. That shocked everybody, including me! Working in tough hard jobs for a few years made me see how brutal the working life can be for a lot of people. I guess it put the meat on the bones of my working-class coaltown politics. I didn’t know who the heck I was, really, let alone what I wanted to be. Bob Dylan saved my life — you can laugh but somebody had to do it!

Is there anything else you can tell children about yourself?
I really like Don McGlashan and Dave Dobbyn as songwriters and I have managed to get to each of them a copy of my second book, Flood Damage (1998). I sat beside Don McGlashan on a plane to Paris in 1999 and recognised his name in his passport. I got his address and sent the book on to him. Dave Dobbyn was talking and performing in Christchurch Cathedral last year and, after he finished, I shot up and tapped him on the shoulder before he could slip away. It felt really good giving something of mine back, like we’re all writers together … but hey, who knows if they ever read them?