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.

 

It’s (pretty) easy being green

Why is a Writer’s Festival like a box of chocolates? Because there’s something inside for everyone.

Today I saw Tony Murrell, from Radio Live’s garden programme, host a lively session with The Gardener magazine editor Lynda Hallinan and sustainable gardening writer Janet Luke. All three are highly regarded gardening experts. They’re passionate about plants and their enthusiasm was infectious. I’ve never seen the microphone passed to so many people so quickly. It seemed everyone in the audience had a question to ask or a comment to add.

Tony Murrell has noticed a huge resurgence in interest in growing food at home in recent years. He laments the fact that many of today’s gardeners have lost the skills needed to grow veges successfully and have to spend money on re-education, tools, catalogues, fertilisers, etc. This results in expensive crop of perpetual spinach, lettuce and tomatoes which people get bored with and ‘turn back into camellia hedging’.

His panelists disagree. “It’s not all about money, Tony,” said Janet. “You are such an Aucklander!”

Linda said, “Don’t spend anything! Don’t build raised beds, don’t hire a garden designer, don’t buy a tonne of compost. Just buy a spade, dig a hole and plant things.” She believes gardening journalism has made it sound difficult and it’s not. “It’s natural. Plants grow and produce fruit because they are fulfilling their biological function. People think it’s harder than it is.”

Some sustainable gardening tips:

• Lasagne your compost heap
• Pile fallen leaves into a black polythene bag, tie it off, punch a few holes in it and store behind your garden shed for a year. It makes great compost.
• If your plants look great above the soil but have nothing beneath, your garden has too much nitrogen and not enough potassium.
• Blue flowers attract bees. Plant rosemary and borage to help pollination.
• Chop out the middle of your lemon tree and prune to a vase shape.
• Avoid systemetic sprays – they hurt bees.

If you’d like to know more, visit your library and check out Linda Hallinan’s Back to the land and Janet Luke’s Green Urban Living. They’ll give you plenty of helpful advice on how to get your garden doing what comes naturally.

 

Scarlett Thomas – Tapping into Creative Writing

Scarlett Thomas teaches Creative Writing at Kent University in England.  She has written eight novels including Our Tragic Universe and The End of Mr Y which was longlisted for the Orange Prize.

Who better to write a book about how to write?

Her latest work, Monkeys with Typewriters, is a guide to creative writing and contains Scarlett Thomas’ best advice. In conversation with Paula Morris, she said this is the book she wishes had been available when she started out.

The title comes from the Infinite Monkey Theorem which puts forward the proposition that a monkey, hitting keys at random on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, could almost surely type the complete works of Shakespeare. Let’s just say it’s a long shot. According to Thomas there’s a one in 15 billion chance of a monkey typing the word banana, but this isn’t the point. The point is that it’s the words on the page that matter because they are the story. What was going on in the writer’s mind or life when s/he wrote them is irrelevant.

A couple of writing tips:

1. Make the task seem manageable. The Hound of the Baskervilles is a short novel of 60,000 words. Break that down into 3,000 words a day and you’ve written a novel in 20 days – doesn’t seem so hard now, does it?

2. The only thing that drives characters are desires and objectives. Like people they act for a reason. Find the one key driver that is a superobjective for your character, it could be the need for comfort/control/balance/fame/popularity, and you have the beginnings of a believable character.

Some authors moan about the difficulties of being a writer. Thomas believes this is because they haven’t worked at Pizza Hut. Her advice for discontented writers? “Do some rubbish jobs so you appreciate how wonderful being a writer really is.”

 

Carlos Ruiz Zafon – Interview with a true storyteller

Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a publishing legend. He has published three novels out of a planned four that centre around the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a metaphor for all the forgotten ideas from the world of thought, a depository of collective memory. He has sold 25 million copies and been translated into over 40 languages.

The author is passionate about storytelling, stage craft and the imagination. In his work he uses what he calls trickery or stage craft to enable his readers to ‘internalise history and feel they were there’. He is a highly visual person and says his stories unfold in the theatre of his mind.

I had the opportunity to talk to Carlos Ruiz Zafon (pinch me – it really did happen!) after his book signing session. I had to wait some considerable time. The queues of people waiting to see him looped around the auditorium like a restless python. His readers greet him like an old friend. Whatever Carlos Ruiz Zafon does, he connects with his audience in a way that touches people deeply. Finally, I grabbed my moment:

The books you wrote around the Cemetery of Lost Books have become international best sellers. I know our customers at Christchurch City Libraries love them. Why do you think they’re so popular?

I think what makes books, movies or any piece of creative fiction  popular can be for different reasons. In general, I think when things are popular they are popular over time. They are not just the hype of the moment, or a fad. I think stories are about the way they are told… It’s the language, the story telling, the way things are staged. This is what the reader wants to experience. I think if you can enjoy that, then you want to share it with your friends… In this case, with my perception over the years and listening to readers, I think it is the way in which these stories are told… that provides excitement and engages readers and allows people to enjoy them and this is what lies at the bottom of their success.

Paula Morris referred to the four books as a cycle rather than a series. You referred to each book as a door into a central labyrinth. Each book reveals a different part of the story, the puzzle. Has this always been your intention?

Yes, that was my intention from the beginning. What I wanted was to create some kind of world that would allow people to explore the stories and the characters and the themes from different directions and to have a series of books in which a reader would read one of the books then perhaps two or someone would read them all and in any order and the experience of them all would be different…

Barcelona has become almost a character in your books. It is complex. It is full of dark forgotten places, mystery and intrigue. I come from Christchurch, a city that has has been virtually destroyed in our recent earthquakes. I’m missing our dark places. Where can I find them?

Every place has its own memories. Some cities are very old. Some are very modern. I spend a lot of time in Los Angeles which feels like a very modern city although it is much older than it seems. I’m intigued by cities. I see cities as if they were creatures. For me they’re organic. I look at them and I’m intrigued by their history and how they’ve become what they are. Every place, every city has its own history, its own soul and many, many cities have been destroyed many times… but still you can go there and you can smell the weight and the haunting of history. Your home place has been obliterated by an earthquake but I think there is a way – a city, the stories, the memories of people survive and if you’re there and you listen, the stones will talk.

I love the image of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. On Gala Night you spoke of the labyrinthine Acres of Books bookstore in Los Angeles. These containers of memory are like libraries. As a child, did you have much to do with libraries?

For me libraries and bookstores are kinds of repositories. They are a place for people meet books and for me that is what is important about libraries… because people are going to meet books they didn’t even know existed. This is a chance encounter. People may find a book that can change their lives and open their mind to many things and that wouldn’t happen if that place wasn’t there… Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by places where the books are. It’s important to have places where people can find an old issue and this can’t happen online or at an algorithm at a company that wants to sell you what they decide you should run into. No. You just walk into a library or a bookshop and you find books and one of these books talks to you. Why? We don’t know why it is one book or the other but when you read it things happen and I think that’s important.

• Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s website

 

The Gentle Wisdom of Anita Desai

“I never considered doing anything else but writing. It was all I ever wanted to do.”

When I saw the name Anita Desai on the AWRF 2013 programme, I knew I’d move heaven and earth to get to Auckland to see her. I first discovered her work in my 20s and have pounced with delight on any new title that’s appeared since. I find her gentle wisdom captivating and her point of view intriguing. To think I’ve had the opportunity to talk in person to one of my favourite authors still hasn’t sunk in yet. I’m so in awe of her!

Anita Desai was born in pre-Partition Dehli to an Indian father and a German mother. Although she didn’t realise it at the time, her home life was different to others around her. She listened to music from around the world and there were books on the shelves. She describes Indian culture as ‘rich, loud and complex’ with a strong oral tradition of storytelling in which it was considered rude to withdraw with a book.

She learned English when she was at school and chose to write in the language she considers more flexible, more elastic than other languages. English contains many different influences and can be adapted to suit an author’s needs. When she started to write those around her saw this as ‘a harmless eccentricity, a nice quiet thing to do, not like being a dancing girl.’

And thank goodness she was given the opportunity to write. Anita Desai has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize, with Clear Light of Day  (1980), In Custody (1994) and Fasting, Feasting (1999). She has set the bar high for new Indian authors who are receiving attention from the western publishing world today.

The Artist of Disappearance is the author’s latest work. It contains three novellas and proved to the ‘the most intense writing process I have ever been through’. The stories came to her virtually complete in themselves.

The novella form enables an author to take a section from the lives of the characters in which they undergo change. Unlike the short story, the form requires no neat conclusion. Novellas are like a slice of time from which readers draw their own conclusions.

Western literature is often preoccupied with the triumph of the individual over circumstances. The work of Anita Desai tells a different story. Her characters are not in control of life and her stories contain the awareness that ‘one is swept along by the tide of one’s own temperament and of history which is more powerful that you or I.’

My conversation with Anita Desai will follow.

 

A bevy of remarkable women

Jacqueline Fahey at the book signing.

Remarkable women featuring Meme Churton, Jacqueline Fahey and Aorewa McLeod was riotous. The session was an exercise in frustration alongside hilarity. If you had come along wanting to know more about their biographies then you would have been sadly let down, if you had come along to hear three extremely different but wildly interesting and sometimes outrageous women aging in range from 72 to 87, then you would have been very satisfied.

I fell somewhat in the middle, but did leave with a renewed fascination for all of them and will definitely now read their biographies. Each woman could have had a one hour session in their own right I feel.

Next up was Ramona Koval, an Australian journalist who fronted the ABC’s Bookshow for many years and has interviewed everyone who is anyone in the book world.  She left the show as although she had always been extremely passionate about the show and the authors and books she read, the directors were suggesting changes such as no biographies, and only reviews of fiction and arts. She felt it was time to go and write her own book, By the book.

Her fascination and enthusiasm for books knows no bounds, books are “an archeology of the self”. Her bookshelves reflect her own journey, the titles show what she had been interested in at the time, what ones have moved her, or had been read at the important junctions of her life. She also sees them as ” time machines and empathy machines”, they open the mind, take you places you can’t be and are immensely liberating.

All of this of course warmed a librarians heart!  The Bookshow proved to be sadly missed and Koval has started her own page via the online Monthly magazine…

From Monday, 25 March 2013 you can explore with me the world through books right here at the Monthly. We’ll look at the most interesting books being published in Australia, and you’ll be able to see my interviews with their authors and have engaging conversations with other readers. You can join the conversations each month, live as they happen, while you sit at home or in your office or wander the world with your mobile devices.

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

 

Afghanistan is “a crossroads for every nation that comes to power”: William Dalrymple

First things first. You might like to get yourself a copy of Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan by William Dalrymple. I ended up having two separate late-night discussions about this session. The book uses Afghan sources for the first time to tell the story of the first Anglo-Afghan War:

In the spring of 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed shakos, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk. On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into violent rebellion.

William was a brilliant storyteller, he moved swiftly from behind the lectern and strode the stage. He used slides to demonstrate the characters and location, and covered the story of the war from its origins, and repercussions, and linked it into today’s situation – and the similarities were chilling.

Lord Auckland, in Auckland.

Here are some of the interesting facts and observations that you will find in the book. I am only giving a sampling – there was lots of detail and information in this session (heck I took 13 pages of notes!):

• In 1837 The East India company had the largest standing army in Asia. The modern equivalent would be Microsoft with nuclear weapons.
• The British and Russians were both advancing, and “were going to meet in the unmapped territory – Afghanistan”.
• A British intelligence officer saw Russian cavalry in a valley, riding into Afghanistan, and this incident “was the weapons of mass destruction of its day” – “a dodgy dossier equivalent” – using a single piece of intelligence to misrepresent what was going on.
• Lord Auckland wasn’t a great leader.
• Troops began assembling in 1839. Their kit included 300 camels carrying the regimental wine, 30 carrying cheroots and cigars, one carrying eau de cologne. “The only thing they didn’t think of bringing was a map”.
• Afghanistan is very expensive to hold. They stopped paying off border tribes, and roads were cut off, postmen killed, and no merchants got through.
• Sleeping with Afghan women does not go well. Alexander Burns picked the wrong woman to romance, and ended up with his head used as a football and his torso strung up in the bazaar. One of the Afghans said the fraternisation must stop “otherwise these English will ride the donkey of their desires into the fields of stupidity”.
• On 6 January 1842, 18,500 men, women and children left their camp and walked out into the thick snow of the passes.
• The death rate was appalling – by the second night only 10,000 are left alive. They walk up the pass in a blizzard and only 5000 come down.
• More hideous ambushes and deaths occur.
• One Dr Brighton gets through, the only survivor until later some Gurkhas and a Greek merchant get through.

The details of this story are known by Afghans, it is part of their national belief that they can repel all invaders.

Dalrymple had a lot to say on present-day Afghanistan: “There is nothing you can do in the world more expensive than war.” What then is the alternative? Dalrymple suggests “Capitalism creates a set of incentives that stop people going to war”. Some local Afghans have said “These are the last days of the Americans, next it will be China”. China has bought a lot of mineral rights. Afghanistan is “a crossroads for every nation that comes to power”.

• William Dalrymple at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival
• Search our catalogue for William Dalrymple
• Visit the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival website
• Follow our Festival coverage on the blog

 

Tattoo you: Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 2013

New Zealand tattoo: in the home of the tattoist’s art by Chris Hoult and Steve Forbes is a beautiful book: “a snapshot of the tattoo scene in 2011 and 2012″. Photojournalist Chris and writer Steve have made something rather special. Their session managed to convey the richness of the tattooing culture even though as they said “We’re photojournalists, we’re not noted for our oratory”. They showed a series of striking images as part of their presentation.

The book’s genesis was in an observation of Europe’s keen interest in ta moko. A sample chapter was created for the Frankfurt Book Fair, and it proceeded from there. Just after the book was given the go-ahead, the biennial tattoo convention in Auckland took place – so they had the potential for new material for their book.  After the convention, they decided focusing on a dozen artists wasn’t enough.

Steve Forbes then explained more about the history of ta moko and tattooing in New Zealand. Tattoo chisels have been found in our oldest archaeological dig sites. Mokomokai (preserved tattooed heads) once became a macabre commerce. Some chiefs who signed The Treaty of Waitangi drew their distinctive moko patterns as their signature. But as time moved on and ta moko declined, the last bastion was the kuia who wore the chin moko.

He delved more into the history including the Samoan influence, and the controversy around non-Maori like Robbie Williams sporting traditional designs.

So how many Kiwis are tattooed? Apparently we are the most tattooed people on earth – in 5 Kiwis are inked. 22% of women, 17% of men. Interestingly, only five of us in the crowd ‘fessed up to being inked – and neither of the two writers are.

The more recent tattooists and their business was explored with lots of great examples. Many of the current crop of tattooists are art school graduates and young, keen and smart business people.

Chris had some top tips if you are thinking of getting inked:

1. Choose your design carefully.
2. Don’t get tattooed under the influence of drink, drugs, or strong emotions.
3. Get inked after New Year’s. Lots of people book in November, but then spend their holiday pay so often tattooists have free time early in the new year.
4. “Beware because they are artists and they are looking for fresh, blank canvas – you”
5. Cheap tattoos aren’t good, good tattoos aren’t cheap.

 

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.

 

Fleur Adcock returns to poetry and New Zealand: an interview

Fleur Adcock is a legend in New Zealand literary circles. She is one of our favourite poets and, although she has spent much of her life in England, her popularity is as strong as it ever was judging by the long queues at the book signing session.

For ten years Fleur Adcock didn’t write poetry. Instead she ’fell in love with facts and wanted to extract them and not deal with any of that airy fairy stuff you think up in your head.’ Her latest collection, Glass Wings, marks the end of this creative drought.

I was lucky enough to grab a few minutes of her time after her session.

Are you glad to be back on New Zealand soil?

I’m feeling rather overwhelmed at being back in New Zealand. I’ve been here for about five weeks so I’ve had time to get to know it again and get to know people again and remember how beautiful it is. Auckland is so beautiful – all the trees and the vegetation – and Wellington is kind of home so I do have those connections. Then I’m off again but this time I’m definitely going to come back sooner.

I really enjoyed your latest collection of poems, Glass Wings. Ancestry is an important theme running through your work?

Yes, it’s becoming more and more so in people’s lives but this happens as people get older. They start taking an interest in their ancestors. I often find when people say the kids aren’t interested, just wait twenty years. They’ll get around to it.

In the session you read your poem The Chiffonier which was published in 1986 and at the time hit a chord with many people who went out to buy The Listener especially to read this poem. It deals with the idea of rootlessness and being torn between places.

You realise you can’t substitute things for people but things are important too because they are symbolic of people. They remind us.

You spoke about the state of the libraries in England. Since the earthquakes in Christchurch, libraries have proved to be important places for people to come to. The thought that many libraries in England closing is quite frightening to me.

It is appalling. I suppose it will start creeping back again and they’ll realise what they’ve done. I think they’re trying to find substitutes and set up places in supermarkets and things but not in actual library buildings. These are often listed buildings, buildings that have been donated. There are so many other uses libraries can be put to. They can always extend their range and find ways of keeping them going - if they wish.

You said searching though the internet or on a computer is very different from searching for books in the library.

Just browsing you suddenly see an interesting looking volume down on the bottom shelf and you pick it up and you open it and it hits you with a new experience, a new realm to explore.

Did you enjoy being a librarian?

Some of the time, yes. I got stuck in cataloguing for six or seven years in the Foreign Commonwealth Office and that was very depressing because we had to keep training new, young cataloguers and I was the only one who could do it until I  finally trained someone who really liked it and she took over. Then I went into the reference section and I could do research and the things I like doing now. Answering questions from readers who had written it. That’s what I like doing – finding things for people.

Are you writing poetry now?

Yes, well not at this moment. I haven’t written anything for the last month. It’s impossible because I never stop talking. I’m in the middle of a new sequence and I’ve been doing some research for that about my father’s early days in New Zealand as a teenager so when I get home, as I have to call it, I’ll get on with that.

You mentioned the term ‘reclusive’. Is it difficult for someone who loves to spend time quietly working on their own, to come out to writers festivals?

No, I like doing things like that as long as there’s a home to go back to in the end. As long as you don’t have to get back to the husband. I can’t deal with that. I can’t wake up in the morning and have someone around the house because a lot of my thoughts, my ideas and impulses occur when I’m fresh when I wake up in the morning. It just wouldn’t work if I had to converse over breakfast.

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