Jackie Kay – ‘What you can survive makes you stronger’

One of the highlights of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 2013 for me has been discovering the work of British author Jackie Kay. How did I manage to live so long and not come across this woman? She is a multi-award winning poet, short story writer, memoirist and novelist. She writes for children. She’s also one of the most endearing, funny, exuberant people I have come across. When she walks in a room, the energy lifts. You can’t help but be drawn to her bright smile and her genuine warmth.

Jackie Kay’s writing contains the bittersweet wisdom of someone who’s faced big challenges in their life. She was born to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father then adopted by a white couple with Communist Party affiliations. In 1960s Glasgow this was unusual to say the least. This, together with her candid sexuality, means she’s faced prejudice from many quarters. Throughout it all, she’s stood by what she believes in. Jackie Kay is one amazing woman.

Her latest collection of short stories, Reality, Reality is brilliant. You’ve just got to read it. I bought it off the stand at the Festival and wolfed it down. The title story introduces a woman who performs daily cook-offs against imaginary competitors to the blinking red eye of her security alarm. At her session, Kay read from ‘Those are not my clothes’, a tragically funny story of an elderly woman in rest home. The author says she’s drawn to older women characters because their stories tend to disappear under the radar.

When I spoke to Jackie Kay, she told me she was on her way down to Christchurch on a kind of pilgrimage. Her adoptive parents met in Christchurch at the Coffee Pot above the Communist Party Bookshop. She was looking forward to finding the street they lived in which has apparently just been released from behind the Red Zone. In addition, her old neighbour from Glasgow is a psychologist and is now living in our fair city.

If you see Jackie, make her welcome. You’ll be very pleased you did.

 

En Route to Venice – Bill Culbert: Ian Wedde AWRF 2013

Bill Culbert is a New Zealand artist possibly better known in Europe than in his native land, but that should change in 2013. In April he was awarded the first  honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Canterbury and on his return to England he set to finalising the plans for his representation of New Zealand at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

Making light work is the first  substantial work on “the ideas, materials and conditions that have formed Culbert’s art for the past fifty years”. It’s the closest most of us will get to Venice and should help the reader to opine in an informed manner when the Biennale works are unveiled.

Anna Hodge, an editor at Auckland University Press, described it as an expansive monograph and a meticulously researched feat of scholarship and friendship.

Ian Wedde is the author and he is just the man for the job of explaining Culbert’s art; Wedde is the Poet Laureate, a fiction writer, essayist, curator and critic who worked closely with Bill Culbert on the book.

Incorrigible eavesdropper that I am I was riveted to hear from behind me that “Ian’s really loosened up, I find his poetry a lot more accessible” and the response “the skill is the rendering down, not the bulking up”. Indeed.

Wedde pointed out that this was a talk about getting to Venice. If you’re not going, you can see the Creative New Zealand Road Show (if it comes to Christchurch). The trajectory of Culbert’s practice has taken him from learning about light at Hutt Valley High to creating works with salvaged materials; from  perforations on the wall with light shining through them, to floor mounted works, to installations of light.

In his long career, Culbert has asked the same questions although he has answered them in different ways; questions about patterning, about where is the surface, about what is depth and not depth and what is movement.

At the session question time Wedde got the question he was expecting – “can you give us a hint of what will be shown at Biennale?” He answered that  it will be a walk through space including some of the space used when et al represented New Zealand. Audible gasps from the audience. There will be objects and at the end there will be a structure. So far so good. Wedde speculates that this will be a 3-D hut structure made of flourescent tubes that can be stood in and the viewer will be able to look up and see the sky. Which he hopes will be blue.

So now you know.

• Visit the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival website.
• Follow our Festival coverage on the blog.

 

“No moa, no moa…”

…in old Aotearoa. Can’t get ‘em, they’ve et ‘em, they’ve gone and there ain’t no Moa.”

Would I be able to resist the overwhelming urge to quote, or worse, sing those lines? Surely Quinn Berentson would have heard them many times before? The man has a Masters in Science Communication and those lines communicate the science of extinction in a commendably pithy way, so perhaps he would be understanding.

Moa the Life and Death of New Zealand’s Legendary Bird takes a bit longer to explain how “first we killed them, then we ate them, and then we forgot about them”. In 2009 Berentson set out to follow the trail of the creature that became so large and strange that they were almost as much mammal as bird.

He discovered that there was far more to the story of the moa (it should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘more’, not ‘mower’ – who knew?) than he had ever imagined.  It’s not just the story of the birds, but also of the scientists who ‘discovered’ them and what we know about them now.

Berrentson pointed out that this was not as easy as it might seem as everything about the giant birds, from their biology, to their evolution and then to their extinction has been argued over and re-examined for the last 170 years.

The moa story came along at just the right time. It had been newly discovered that the world had once been dominated by huge creatures that no longer existed. When moa remains were first discovered the public’s imagination was captured by it as a bizarre and grotesque monster. They featured on the front page of popular  newspapers and were world famous; often the first thing people had heard about New Zealand.  They were one of the first museum specimens to be photographed and every museum had its own skeleton.

While this was all very interesting the real fascination of this session was the personalities of the men who made the moa. Richard Owen , the ‘father of the moa’ was ‘extremely malignant’ according to mild-mannered Charles Darwin, who wrote him out of history after a long and acrimonious relationship. Talk about survival of the fittest.

It’s hard to feel much sympathy for Owen though, as he stole the credit for the work and ideas of Gideon Mantell, an amateur whose wife found the ‘Mona Lisa of fossils’  - considered to be the first dinosaur fossil found. This treasure happens to reside at Te Papa, although it is not on show. Snarky comment resisted.

Mantell’s obsession with fossils lead to his wife and his son severing contact with him. He suffered a terrible accident which resulted in his becoming a hunchback and was in such pain that he self-medicated, becoming an opiate addict. He was a Dr. so access to the opiates was not a problem.

Then his son Walter Mantell came out to New Zealand. He found moa bones that he sent back to his father in an attempt at winning his approval. But Mantell Snr had to give them to that evil genius Owen. When he sent his last batch back Owen’s perfidy was no longer a problem because Gideon Mantell was dead of an overdose.  You couldn’t make it up.

This was a great session and I could go on but really the best thing is to read the book. Although I must add that the moa is close to the top of the list of animals that could be cloned because we have recovered so much DNA. Coming soon to a swamp near you?

And I did resist singing.

• Moa has just won the Royal Society of New Zealand’s 2013 Science Book Prize.
• Visit the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival website.
• Follow our Festival coverage on the blog.

 

Writers for young and old: AWRF 2013

“Shall I tell you a story? A new and terrible one? A ghost story? Are you ready? Shall I begin?” This is a quote from Libba Bray’s A great and terrible beauty but it could apply to any of the four Young Adult writers who read from their work.

Apparently Bray loves to curse and I love to hear unlikely people curse so I had high hopes for this session. Admittedly the only reason I thought she was an unlikely four-letter word flinger was her appearance as seen on her blog (wholesome) and the fact that she is a P.K (Preacher’s Kid).

Bray was introduced as Super-Vixen because she has always wanted to be introduced as Super-Vixen, there was no cursing but she did do a great reading from her book Beauty Queens (“like Lord of the Flies only with sequins”).

There was a killing imitation of a former Vice-Presidential candidate, and Governor of Alaska, and a very funny parody of a feminine products ad.

Patrick Ness came to the stage bemoaning having to follow Bray but he had us rapt with a world-premiere reading from his new book More than this. No it’s not from the Roxy Music song, nor is it from the One Direction song. It’s from the Peter Gabriel song. It’s not published until September and I for one cannot wait.

I’ve seen Kate de Goldi lots of times at festivals  and I hold her in very high esteem. She’s a great writer but I think she is the best chair ever; a model of intelligence and acute observation without being a pill about it. I’m not going to get the chance to admire her chairing skills this time, so hearing her read from The ACB of Honora Lee was the next best thing.

Paula Morris is also a non-pill when she could so easily be one. She’s won awards for her short stories and her fiction for adults, now she has a very successful series of supernatural mysteries for Young Adults. She also has degrees from Universities in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Sigh. Morris’ first YA novel “went gang-busters in the U.S.” and it’s easy to see why if the bits she read are any indication of how compelling her YA work is.

This session gladdened this old librarian’s heart. It was a nice ‘mix-mash’ of young and old. Actual young people attended. They appeared to have made their way there under their own steam, not dragged along by adults. They were willing to stand at the back or sit on the floor. Full heads of naturally dark, red and fair hair could be seen, instead of rows of  greys and expensive dye jobs.

And they talked about books. They had opinions on the alternative ending of A Clockwork Orange. They were planning Alice in Wonderland themed birthday parties. Some of them ran to get their books signed at the end of the session. You won’t see that in a William Dalrymple crowd. Discreet but determined pushing is more their style.

Word(s) of the session: mix-mash.

• Visit the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival website.
• Follow our Festival coverage on the blog.

 

Return of the King: William Dalrymple AWRF 2013

Since he first went to India in 1984 at the age of 18 William Dalrymple has been hooked on Delhi. This fascination lead to City of Djinns, White Mughals and The Last Mughal; books that both Salman Rushdie and the New York Review of Books called “compulsively readable”. Max Hastings, another big name at the festival, called him “an outstandingly gifted historian”.

In Return of a King he has turned his gifts to the 1837 British invasion of Afghanistan, an invasion launched by Lord Auckland, the man who gave his name to the city where the audience to hear Dalrymple formed itself into a large crush  in the foyer of the Aotea Centre.

Bad manners abounded in the queue to get through the doors and secure a good seat. Discreet and then overt queue jumping, gentle then firm pushing;  they were all on full display. The only relief came from eavesdropping on conversations about booking a villa in Tuscany for this Northern summer.

In a way it’s a shame we weren’t assembled outside the Aotea Centre as apparently there is a municipal flower bed featuring a statue of Lord Auckland. It stood in Calcutta until 1969 when the Bengalis decided Auckland was a much more suitable place for it.

Dalrymple was urbane, he was  entertaining, he had a lovely voice, he had fascinating things to say. The crowd loved it although the laughter at the folly of the English died out as the session went on and the dreadful suffering and losses of the defeat became evident.

As for the future of Afghanistan in the world? Not cheery.

For those who like to know who writers rate and read, Dalrymple’s list of the best books about Afghanistan includes:

• The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
• Taliban: the story of the Afghan warlords, and Descent into Chaos: Afghanistan, Pakistan and the treat to global security by Ahmed Rashid
• Cables from Kabul: the inside story of the West’s Afghanistan campaign by Sherard Cowper-Coles

Dalrymple’s favourite travel writer is Patrick Leigh Fermor, Artemis Cooper‘s biography of Fermor was one of Dalrymple’s best books of 2012 and he thinks Robert Macfarlane is Fermor’s heir.

The For Later list grows ever longer.

 

Boys at War: Jane Tolerton AWRF 2013

It’s a terrible thing to talk about what I’m talking about, you know. But I saw it. I was there.

So said one of the 84 veterans of the First World War interviewed for the World War One Oral History Archive, which Jane Tolerton helped to set up in 1987.

In An Awfully Big Adventure Tolerton revisits these recordings and puts the reminiscences into a chronology for the present-day reader.  When the words “we will remember them” were intoned on ANZAC Days after the First World War, it was the fallen rather than the survivors who were being remembered.

The convention was that the New Zealand division was  ‘the silent division’. However, when researching her book on Ettie Rout, Tolerton discovered that those who had returned were willing to talk, but they had to be asked.

Just as well somebody did ask, as the World War One recordings are the most used part of the Oral History Archive. There were 84 interviews over three years and most of the men had never talked about the war.  Tolerton played some of the recordings and the voices came down all the years; vivid, candid and humble (the worst sin was to be a ‘skite’).

For an idea of what those at home were being fed about the war, Tolerton recommends looking at Papers Past. Small wonder civilians asked returned soldiers “did you have a good time?”  and no-one ever said “you must have had a crook time”.

Word of the session: tough.

Follow our Auckland Writers and Readers Festival blog posts.

 

Remarkable Women AWRF 2013

Jolisa Gracewood had an unenviable task wrangling, in the nicest possible way, three strong, singular women who ended up running over her in the nicest possible way.  Or actually two of them did.

Aorewa McLeod is one of those simultaneously inspiring and daunting people who has a long and distinguished career and then on retiring starts another, equally successful enterprise. In McLeod’s case a Masters in Creative Writing led to a well-reviewed ‘autobiographical fiction’ or ‘fictional autobiography’, Who was that woman anyway? The book ended up at the top of the biography best-seller lists, then moved to fiction.

All the reviewers who met Meme Churton when her extraordinary memoir Meme: the three worlds of an Italian-Chinese New Zealander came out noted her chic, so, irredeemably trivial as I am, I was very keen to see her. And she did not disappoint. Churton has Chinese and Italian ancestry; she ran some of Auckland’s earliest dealer galleries and cafes; she knew everybody and had an extensive art collection, but she did not have a happy marriage. Meme claimed to have brought the first espresso machine to Auckland; Jacqueline claimed to have ruined one of the first in Wellington.

Jacqueline Fahey has written two volumes of memoirs that are not only insightful descriptions of of an artist’s thought and practice, but are also vivid snapshots of what life was like at a time when clever women were expected to help their husbands in their careers, look after the children and never ever show any signs of doing anything for themselves. Fahey’s voice came through the books so strongly I expected her to dominate proceedings totally.

And she pretty much did. Meme gave her a good run for her money, but Aorewa could barely get a word in, despite valiant attempts at talking about sex and destiny.  She did a bit better with fashion, but on the subject of hating her mother Fahey topped her again – “It’s the most natural thing in the world”.

What they all did agree on was telling the truth about one’s life can only ever be one version of the truth.  One woman’s truth is another woman’s lie, all memories are true but within families they can be hopelessly at odds.

Word of the session? Barbarous.

Follow our Auckland Writers and Readers Festival blog posts.

 

Anticipated highlights #3 – AWRF 2013

The last of my anticipated highlights is also one of the last sessions of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. It’s a panel made up of two authors I know and admire, and two I have never read. By this stage of the programme difficult choices have been made, bargains have been struck with colleagues and panic that you’re going to miss an author you really want to see starts to set in.

This is why writers festival panels are a great invention. Festival-goers can cram a viewing of several writers into one session time, they can see unfamiliar writers (always good for the For Later list), check up on old favourites,  and the speakers change before concentration can flag.

What the writers choose to read is another great thing about panels – for this one they will “read selections from their work that reference the repeating of history”. This is the only time I will get to see Kate Atkinson and Charlotte Grimshaw, both writers I really like. I’ve seen them before so traded their main sessions for writers I hadn’t, but  the way history tends to repeat is fundamental to their work, so their choices should be very interesting.

Hamish Clayton’s Wulf features terrifying old Te Rauparaha – the possibility of his history repeating itself  is not an inviting prospect – but of course Clayton doesn’t have to read a published work; it could be something to add to the much later/eagerly awaited list.

Tanya Moir studied at Christchurch’s very own Hagley Writers’ Institute and has moved from straight historical fiction in La Rochelle’s Road, her first novel, to a mix of contemporary and historical elements in Anticipation, her latest. Both books have very well reviewed, which sometimes influences me and sometimes doesn’t.

Do reviews influence you?

 

Anticipated highlights #2 – AWRF 2013

My paper copy of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival programme is a sea of pink as the highlighter continues to get a work-out.

My second most anticipated event features Rosemary McLeod; cartoonist, journalist, collector and all-round great writer whose work has been entertaining, annoying and making me think since I was a teenager. Actually that may be something of an exaggeration because she’s not much older than me, but then she could have started working on Thursday magazine when she was a teenager.

I still look for her column first in The Press on a Thursday and her book Thrift to Fantasy is one of my favourites, so I’m really excited to hear her talk about The Secret Life of Aprons and her new book With bold needle and thread.

The occasion may call for the wearing of a very special ceremonial apron. Like a female Mason, if there was such a thing.

 

Auckland Writers and Readers Festival – Anticipated highlights # 1

Now that I know I am really going to the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, the time has come for a detailed examination of the programme while wielding a fluorescent marker. They don’t call them highlighter pens for nothing;  highlighting my anticipated highlights is in itself a highlight for me. Tragic.

Number one on my giddying up list is Don McGlashan and Sylvie Simmons singing their own songs and the songs of Mr Leonard Cohen. I am not familiar with Simmons’ work, as I still languish low on the holds list for I’m Your Man, but the combination of Cohen and McGlashan is unmissable.

Are you going to the Festival? What are your anticipated highlights?