Books & Writers Weekend - Details for Saturday

Going West Books and Writers Weekend

Saturday 11th September

From cooking [Silver service and salads] and gardening [Turning the sod] to fashion [Putting on the style] and the old fashioned art of storytellingpoetry [Once upon a time] via [Off the cuff] and creative writing [Body English] to how to do it [Which way please?], not to mention, an hour with Bill Direen and 'The inner music the words make...' this year's theme is Right Word, Right Place, Right Time

Read on for the full programme for Saturday of the Going West Books and Writers Weekend.

9.30–10.15am: Silver Service and Salads
So you think restaurant food in New Zealand in the ‘80s was all shrimp cocktails, shredded salads, bad coffee and soggy chips? Myth buster Perrin Rowland shares her research into our culinary past and in her just released book Dining Out shows that amongst the silver service and salads of the New Zealand restaurant experience lies a great story about the way our peoples and cultures have changed over the last 150 years. A Kiwi-American scholar, Perrin discusses the important questions: How did international trends – from hamburgers to nouvelle cuisine – shape the restaurant experience? How have New Zealanders reconciled a culture of the ordinary bloke with the luxury of dining out?  Perrin is in discussion with Herald on Sunday restaurant reviewer Peter Calder.  

Perrin Rowland
Perrin Rowland is an experienced chef who has cooked (and eaten) her way through restaurants around the world from Italy to Ireland and across the Pacific. She has an undergraduate degree in anthropology from the United States and a Masters degree in history from The University of Auckland. Her first book, Dining Out: A History of the Restaurant in New Zealand delivers a riotous feast of gusto and history from the 19th century to today. From oyster bars to BYOs, from chop suey to pork larb, the restaurant experience has changed repeatedly over the last 150 years.

Peter Calder
Peter Calder is old enough to remember an embarrassing number of the eateries mentioned in Perrin Rowland's book, though on the money he earned cooking everything but the steaks at Tony's, he couldn’t afford to eat in the flasher joints. He suspects he was born critical, but only since 1985 has he been paid for his opinions on everything from theatre and books to restaurants and first drafts of scripts submitted to the Film Commission. He is currently chief film critic for the New Zealand Herald and he reviews restaurants in its stablemate Herald on Sunday. He wants to lose weight.

10.15­–11.15am Turning the Sod
Gardening is big business in New Zealand, and in straitened economic times it gets even bigger. But recession or not we could fairly accurately describe ourselves as a nation of gardeners – be our passion a vegetable patch or a flowerbed. Bee Dawson’s new lavishly illustrated book A History of Gardening in New Zealand explores the development of our gardening fascination from pre-European contact times, through the efforts of the missionaries and settlers to the Dig for Victory campaigns of the 1940s.  She discusses what she discovered in researching and writing her book with Christopher Johnstone, author of The Painted Garden in New Zealand Art.

Bee Dawson
A one-time RNZAF psychologist, Bee Dawson turned to writing in her early 40’s. A few articles for NZ Gardener later, she wrote her first book, Lady Painters, and has been writing social histories ever since including one on the seaplane station at Hobsonville. Her most ambitious project to date is the recently published A History of Gardening in New Zealand. When time and weather permit Bee is to be found gardening outside her eccentric Roger Walker house on the top of a windy Wellington cliff. Bee is also part of a small team who work on the heritage garden at the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace in Thorndon.

Christopher Johnstone
Christopher Johnstone’s most recent book, The Painted Garden in New Zealand Art, was a Montana Book Award finalist last year. Its publication by Godwit/Random House in late 2008, coincided with Christopher’s appointment as Fundraising Manager at the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Born in Sydney, Christopher was brought up in England and Ireland and graduated from Bennington College, Vermont, USA. His career as an art museum curator and administrator began as a curator at the Tate Gallery, London in 1972. While Director of the Auckland Art Gallery (1988-1995) he was responsible for the Picasso, Gauguin and Rembrandt to Renoir exhibitions and the establishment of the New Gallery

11.30–12.10pm Once Upon a Time…
“ …long, long ago before time was caught and put in clocks, in a time when magic was easier to find… there was a story. Do you mean like a book? No I mean like a story. A book story? No… a story-story like the first stories.” So begins the homepage on the website of storyteller extraordinaire Tanya Batt. Tanya joins forces with English lecturer Dr Claudia Marquis to tell tales and consider the big questions: Why are some stories recounted across the centuries while others sink without trace? How do they change over time, and what fires the imagination across generations and cultural boundaries?

Tanya Batt
Tanya Batt, is a self confessed story-o-phile and frock-o-holic. Travelling the world as a storyteller, arts educator and writer she visits places both on and off maps. Her work is characterised by lively interaction and sumptuous frocks. “Stories are my habit,” she says. Tanya is based on the enchanted island of Waiheke Island, Aotearoa New Zealand, where she is the director of the Once Upon an Island Centre and Storytelling Festival.

Claudia Marquis
Claudia Marquis is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Auckland.  She teaches a range of courses across a range of periods – Renaissance, Nineteenth Century, African and Caribbean Literature, but mostly importantly for this audience, she teaches folklore and folktales at both Stage 3 and postgraduate level.  She feels that the folktales of a country tell a great deal about its history and its culture.   She is also hugely interested in the way folktales have migrated across cultures that appear to have no apparent connection.

12.10– 12.55pm Putting on the Style
New Zealand Fashion Design is described as the first comprehensive book on the creative world of contemporary New Zealand fashion. Fashion pundits sing its praises, welcoming the book as long overdue. In this capacious publication, fashion curator Angela Lassig, recently of Te Papa, interviews and profiles 25 of our leading fashion designers, giving insights into their methods, design philosophy and inspiration. Among the designers featured is the founder of the newly launched New Zealand Fashion Museum, Doris de Pont. Together Angela and Doris discuss the evolution of New Zealand fashion over the last 30 years, illuminating their discussion with a presentation of stunning images featured in the book.

Angela Lassig
After twenty-five years working as a curator in the museum sector in Australia and New Zealand, Queensland-born author Angela Lassig now works in Auckland as an independent fashion historian, writer and curator. Until last December, Angela was Senior Curator of History at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa where she specialised in fashion and textiles; building the collection, curating exhibitions and lecturing extensively on the subject. 'New Zealand Fashion Design' is the first of many books on aspects of New Zealand's rich and largely unexplored dress and textile history that Angela hopes to write.
 
Doris De Pont
Following on from 25 years as an important part of New Zealand’s creative high fashion design landscape, Doris de Pont is now turning her talent and experience towards the establishment of the New Zealand Fashion Museum, which will be the world’s first on-line fashion museum. She has been described by Angela Lassig, in “New Zealand Fashion Design”, as ‘one of New Zealand’s most audacious and inventive fashion designers’. Her career has been characterised by the pursuit of a distinctive local idiom, by the use of non-traditional materials and by a talent for collaboration.  These characteristics are again in evidence in the unconventional form and practice of the New Zealand Fashion Museum.  Its inaugural 'pop-up' exhibition, “Looking Terrific: the Story of El Jay”, has just opened in Wellington following a hugely successful first outing in Auckland in June and July this year. The Fashion Museum and its exhibition programme is the new focus for this experienced designer.
 
12.55–1.10pm Off the Cuff
Poet Courtney Meredith is already familiar to Going West audiences. In 2008 she won the Going West Poetry Slam. From Samoan, Cook Island and Irish ancestry she always has one or 20 poems up her sleeve. Enjoy 15 minutes of spontaneity with Courtney.

Courtney Meredith
Her first poem was in awe of suspended inferno (stars) at the bright age of five, almost twenty years later the poet Courtney Meredith is still moved by phenomena, especially love. The daughter of a writer and a sailor, she is swimming with words in search of her true north. Pleased with her degree in English and Politics from the University of Auckland, where she co-edited Spectrum 5 under Emily Perkins, Courtney began performing her poems in 2008.
 
2.00–3.00pm Body English
Len Lye is widely acknowledged as one of New Zealand’s most experimental artists and according to his biographer Roger Horrocks, his ideas are just as relevant today even 30 years after his death. Lye took a lively, original approach to every area of the arts, including literature. Roger has recently edited a collection of Len’s creative writing (Body English), and will introduce us to some of the artist’s previously unpublished poetry. He will also talk about Len’s study of movement and of the give-and-take between body and mind – lifetime interests that shaped his films and sculptures, as well as his writing. The session will include clips from Lye’s films. Presented by Peter Simpson.

Peter Simpson
“Peter Simpson knows all about McCahon and Bensemann and many other things about our cultural history. He used to be a teacher at Uni but now reads, writes and looks at stuff. He was the first face of Going West in 1995 when I lacked the confidence. He has been the backbone of the festival in many ways ever since. Thanks Pete.” – Murray Gray

Roger Horrocks
Roger Horrocks’ film about the great New Zealand artist Len Lye has recently won the Van Gogh Award at the Amsterdam Film Festival. Roger worked as the artist’s assistant during the final year of his life (1980), then wrote a biography (Len Lye) in 2001. His latest book, Art that Moves, discusses Lye’s highly original art of motion. Roger would like to make Lye’s creative writing better known and he’s just edited a volume of his prose and poetry – Body English.

Len Lye
New Zealand artist Len Lye is best known for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture and his films are held in the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkley. Born in New Zealand in 1901, he became a naturalised citizen of America in 1950 and taught at New York University for three years. Len Lye produced a body of work as a writer and was a friend of Dylan Thomas and Robert Graves. His writing explored his theory of IHN (Individual Happiness Now) and includes letters and poems. He was also known for his colourful personality, amazing clothes and unorthodox teaching style.

3.00–3.45pm Which way please?
Many of us aspire to read poetry regularly, especially New Zealand poetry, but don’t know where to start. We feel intimidated, or unsure about how to approach a poem, how to make sense of it, what to do with it. It was sentiments like these that inspired poets Paula Green and Harry Ricketts to edit and write 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry. Paula and poet and creative writing lecturer Jack Ross share their ideas about the many avenues available for finding our direction in New Zealand’s poetic landscape.

Paula Green
Paula Green lives inland from Bethells Beach with her partner, artist Michael Hight and their two daughters. Michael did a series of paintings for her most recent children’s book, Aunt Concertina and her Niece Evalina. She has spent the past two and a half years working on 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry (with Harry Ricketts) and is now looking forward to the challenge of new projects. She is the poetry reviewer for the New Zealand Herald and enjoys visiting schools through the NZ Book Council and independently. Her new poetry collection (Slip Stream) will be published in October.

Jack Ross
On the one hand I’m a writer. I’ve published several books of poems, three novels, a novella, and a book of short stories. Another collection of stories, Kingdom of Alt, is due out from Titus Books in late 2010. I’ve also edited a number of books and journals, including (with Jan Kemp) the trilogy of audio / text anthologies Classic, Contemporary and New NZ Poets in Performance (AUP, 2006-8). On the other hand I’m an academic. I have a PhD in English from The University of Edinburgh and lecture in Creative Writing at Massey University's Auckland campus.

4.00–5.00pm An hour with Bill Direen
One of New Zealand’s ultimate cultural cult figures Bill Direen divides his time, since 1997, between New Zealand and Paris. A poet, musician (long associated with Flying Nunn records) and writer, Bill is currently based in Devonport on a six-month residency at the Michael King Writers’ Centre. He describes himself as obsessed with both words and music and trying to break down the distinction between them. On stage, with post-modernist and translator of Ancient Greek poetry Ted Jenner, Bill will read selections from his prose, a section of the long poem ‘New Sea Land’ and add in a little pinch of a song or two accompanying himself on acoustic guitar.

Bill Direen
Bill Direen is a writer who makes use of musical elements and a musician for whom literary content is of paramount importance. He has written many music-plays, songs and poetry. He is also a researcher and experienced university tutor, and these academic skills have helped him to develop a trans-generic novel form which is his point of focus while resident at the Michael King Centre as University of Auckland/Creative New Zealand Resident for 2010.

Ted Jenner
Born in Dunedin in 1946, graduated from Otago University with MA degrees in Classical Languages. Have written a number of essays and translations in the field of Greek lyric poetry and am at present engaged in writing a book about the Gold Leaves which have been found in tombs throughout the ancient Greek World in tombs; they are incised with verse which gives the souls of the dead directions on which paths to take in the underworld. My other interest is in Modernist and Postmodernist literature in English and French, and as a creative writer have concentrated on prose poems and fiction which delight in pulling the rug from under the feet of creative writers!
 
5.00–6.00pm ‘The inner music the words make…’*
The first of its kind in New Zealand in nearly two decades, Words Chosen Carefully brings together 15 New Zealand authors in discussion about their work and craft with 15 New Zealand interviewers. Partly inspired by The Paris Review, where literary reviews placed writers’ own words at the heart of how present and future readers might understand their work, the book offers a ‘distinct form of cultural conservation’. We bring together featured writers Fiona Farrell, Jenny Bornholdt and interviewer Iain Sharp to discuss their writing and the interviews, with the book’s instigator and editor Siobhan Harvey.
 [*Truman Capote]

NB: Photographic portraits of the book’s featured authors and interviewers by Liz March, that appear in Words Chosen Carefully, are the subject of an exhibition at Lopdell House running from September 9 – October 3.

Siobhan Harvey
It has taken Siobhan Harvey more than 30 years and 19,000 kilometres to be here. Until her son was born six years ago, she carried knowledge of her unknown whakapapa and a pen every step of the way. Today she’s a consulting editor of the International Literary Quarterly and Poetry Editor of Takahe and when she’s not writing poetry, stories, literary interviews and book reviews, she is letting her son teach her that nephology hold the key to their future. A first New Zealand poetry collection is forthcoming.

Fiona Farrell
Fiona Farrell was born in North Otago, limestone country. She studied drama at the University of Toronto and began writing plays for children with lots of parts for talking trees and chatty rabbits. Since then, she has published three collections of poetry, two collections of short stories and six novels, four of which have featured in the New Zealand Book Awards. Her first won the award in 1993, and her most recent, Limestone, was shortlisted this year. She has held various residencies including the Mansfield Fellowship in Menton and the  Rathcoola Residency in Donoughmore, Ireland, but usually she can be found writing in a hut in a remote bay on Banks Peninsula. In 2007, she received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement. 

Iain Sharp
Iain Sharp was born in Glasgow in 1953, but he has lived in New Zealand (mostly in Auckland) since 1961. He has a PhD in English literature from Auckland University. A qualified librarian, he has worked in the Special Collections Department of Auckland Central City Library since 2000. In 2007 he compiled the text for Real Gold, an illustrated book about the treasures held in the Special Collections Department, which include medieval manuscripts, hand-written letters from Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale and Hone Heke, and first editions of works by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, William Blake and Jane Austen. Iain’s recent book, Heaphy, an illustrated biography of the 19th century artist and explorer Charles Heaphy, was a finalist in the 2009 Montana Book Awards.
 
6.00pm Book Launch: Words Chosen Carefully
Publisher Cape Catley is pleased to launch Words Chosen Carefully – New Zealand Writers in Discussion, edited by Siobhan Harvey. Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey will speak. Wine and nibbles will be served. All welcome.