Collaborating Goes On

Yesterday we did our final performance at the launch of Ika. It was nerve wracking, but fun at the same time. Kathryn came along and she enjoyed it. The singing from the performing arts students was really wonderful. I think it worked well to have them involved. Reconnected with Margaret Cammell and Lynn Tito.There was food and a marvellous cake made by Pare. A leaping fish, just like us writers taking a leap into the dark. Thank you Pare. I hope someone got photos. Kathryn got Albert Wendt to sign her copy of Ika along with some of the less famous contributors. Tom signed his first book and joked about practising his signature. He read his poem. I thought it was lovely. A young man with such a mature soul. Jill performed her poem and I thought it was the most polished performance she has given, and complimented her on it.

Rachel and I finally got together today to record her poems. I went to her house and we recorded her on her computer. I have saved them in Garage band and will edit them tomorrow.

Rachel is working on the Graphics side of it. I have sent a rough draft of how I would like my cover to look. I think we will be pleased with the results.

Randomly Interesting

Thank you very much to Jenny Hellen,Deputy Publishing Editor at Random House NZ. She came and spoke to us in class yesterday about the publishing business in New Zealand. She reminded us how tough it was to get published but gave us some really helpful tips about targeting our writing at the right segment of the market, and targeting our submissions at the right publishers. She very generously gave us her email address and said she was happy to give feed back if we sent her a submission. This is a huge thing because she is obviously a very busy person.
Publishing is a business, it is about taking books to"market" and making money. She emphasised what a big publisher like Random House, can do for a writer  in the marketing and publicity department: getting reviews published, getting interviews in the media and just generally creating a buzz. She encouraged us to keep blogging, as it is good practice and can create a ground swell. This works if your blog is been read by anyone other than your class mates and tutor. Both Jenny and Robert emphasised how important it was to be easy to deal with and not a Diva. I do not see myself as a diva, but maybe a bit more like J D Salinger.

Going Going Gone West

Yesterday afternoon we visited Henderson Library to take in their collection of audio files from the Going West Book Festival going back to the start in 1996. This made an interesting change fro sitting in our class. The very nice librarians welcomed us and played some recordings that Robert had requested. We started with an interview with Kate de Goldi just after she had published the 10pm Question. David Larsen was the interviewer. She sounds so warm and friendly with a real interest in understanding young people just before they enter puberty-  the time before "the fall" she refers to it as.
She says she had a very enjoyable childhood herself and she thinks writers of fiction have very good memories, especially those that write for children. She says her sister asks her to "Tell me again about our wonderful childhood".
She has a particular interest in how mental illness of a family member affects everyone in the family. She regards classrooms as a form of family.
Then it was Selina Marsh talking about her mother as the original "fast talking PI". She talked about poems not been fixed on the page, you can change them or grow them depending on your audience. Fast Talking PI is 14 minutes all up, but we got the 3 minute version. Go Selina. She talks about reclaiming the term Afekasi and becoming empowered. She believed in open access.
Micahel King was in discussion with Dorothy Urlich Cloher, talking about her just published biography of Hongi Hika called Hongi Hika: Warrior Chief, recorded in 2004. They discussed that vexed question of writing biography, of getting permission from descendants, how in Maori culture there is a concept of "ownership of ancestors". Her book was scrupulously researched and a riveting read according to Michael King and I have requested a copy from the library because it is such a fascinating period of our history.
Karlo Mila read a poem about the death of the Tongan King, and who had enough mana to douse the fire after his burial. It was a great commentary on colonialism and neo-colonialism. I would like to read it to get the full depth of it.
Finally we got to listen to the late, great Hone Tuwhare. Monologue was wonderful, the lovely Scots accent. I have worked with men that talk just like that. His wonderful warm wit and humour. The a very sensual poem based on the Song of Solomon, so wicked and warm.

Recording Re-ordering

I have recorded my poems for our collaboration on Garage Band on my mac and with Liam's help Ihave managed to make it sound acceptable. It has been quite fun. I am hoping Rachel will enjoy the process too and will have had time to look at what poems she is going to include. I will see her tomorrow after going to Henderson Library to check to their sound archive. I have asked to listen to interview with Kate de Goldi.

Ika (or is that EEEKa?)

Very excited to see the final printed version of our Journal, Ika One. My story is better than I remember it. Like meeting an old friend in print. We are doing our performance again at the launch on the 10th of November. It will be easier this time, but the audience might be bigger. I want to buy enough to give all my family one for Christmas:) Robert says the mightn't be enough. I will send some poems off to Tākahe this weekend when I have time to get sorted. Rachel wasn't in class today and I have sent her an e mail to see how she is getting on with the design for our booklet. Hopefully she will be in touch tomorrow. I want to have a go at recording our poems.

Alexa Johnston and Eleanor Catton Come to Visit This Week

We were very lucky this week to have a visit from New Zealand award winning authors Alexa Johnston and Eleanor Catton,
These two very different writers were both inspirational.

Alexa Johnston wrote her first book, a biography of Sir Edmund Hillary, after a long career as a Art Gallery Curator. She wrote it after curating the 50th anniversary show at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. It is a beautiful work that honours this great man's legacy. There are lovely photos and lots of information going back to his father and family. It gave her the standing with her publisher to get her first book of recipes, Ladies a Plate, which was also a book honouring people of another generation; in this case women and their baking. She took all the photos in the book herself and knew exactly how she wanted it to look. She has since written two more and is working on a fourth. Her advice was to write about what you felt passionate about, and to retain control if it was important to you.

Eleanor Catton is a young woman who has had a lot of success with her first book, The Rehearsal, which she wrote while doing the masters course at Victoria. She came to writing, through her hobby of film making.
She is now working on her second novel The Luminairies. It is set in New Zealand in the 1860s, in the Gold rush It will be published next year. She has done a lot of reading of novels written in this period to get a taste and feel for how stories were put together and told. From the small piece she read to us, it does seem to me as if she has captured that  sound. She writes about 1000 words a day and reads them aloud to her partner every evening. She says this is a great way of judging the text and getting rid of those errors of style that creep in.

Public Works

Thursday wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Poor Tom got Chicken Pox and couldn't attend. I felt mean telling him his headache was stress and that he should try shoulders rolls to release the muscles.
We all dealt with the stress in our own ways and in front of a small audience of family and friends we did our best. In some cases our best was very good.
Maurice recorded mine and Geraldine's performances. I have been unable to watch mine. Watching is  more embarrassing than actually getting up and doing it. I think I have some "Body Dysmorphia" thing that makes me think I look and sound different to what I do. It is very discomforting being confronted  by incontrovertible proof of what I am really like.
I am disappointed with my choice of poems and may learn a new one for the performance on the 10th if I have time.

Performance Anxiety

Well tonight's the night, it'll be all right, or all over, which is the same thing, in five hours time.
Dress rehearsal was a bit bumpy. Great to have Ngarangi, Wiki, Ron and Mafi, and of course Geraldine there with us to give us strength. Amber says it is all about the costume so I'd better go and get ready.

Thank you Mrs Topia

My older sister Kathryn was in the kapa haka group at primary school way way back in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Mrs. Topia taught the waiata and haka and my mother did the driving because Mrs Topia couldn't drive. Mrs. Topia and my mother became very good friends. They had a lot in common: lots of children for one thing, a love of netball,which the Topia girls and some of my sisters excelled at, and the pleasure of sharing stories.
I showed no talent for performance even then so I was never asked to join the haka group. I used to hang out with and semi supervise the younger ones, or walk home in a sulk because it was all so boring. I did help my sister make a needlework top to wear with her piupiu.
Anyway Mrs. Topia was my mother's friend and I remember the immense pride she felt when Pounamu Pounamu was published in 1972. She was so excited to read stories about her Maori world that she gave a copy of the book to my mother to give her some insight into that world. Of course I devoured it straight away. This was the first book I ever read by a New Zealand writer, and he described a world at once familiar and strange. So refreshing, no English boarding schools, no dragons,
no trips to the seaside to ride donkeys. New and fresh New Zealand.
I have already thanked Witi for all the pleasure this book and others he has written gave me, so this thank you is for Mrs. Topia. For her knowledge, her patience and her good humour in sharing with and teaching us. And we didn't even know she was doing it.
Tēnā rawa atu koe.
Aroha nui

Barbara

Umberto Eco for Inspiration

"When the writer says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules"
Umberto Eco

THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT

Yesterday in class Rachel and I spent time together about our book/digital production. We have a strong idea of where we are taking it. A cover containing a booklet of each of poems with our names on the front and a CD of the poems as spoken. We have chosen our poems and will each read the others final drafts and make editing suggestions. Rachel is keen to work on the design of the cover. We are using the themes Live, Love, Lust and Leave and are dividing our poems up as we see these themes reflected. Our writing and our life experiences are very different, that is clear, which is why we have gone for the separate booklets. By using themes we will allow people to see the similarities as well as been aware of the differences.

My Family

When my son Aidan was about 13 or 14 he wasn\'t interested in reading fiction. He liked history, or stories about machines. His English teacher said he needed to read more fiction, and I agreed, but what would he read. I went to a bookstore and browsed the YA section looking for the right thing. I came across a book by New Zealand author Kate de Goldi, "Closed Stranger". It was about two young men, their friendship, and the damage adoption had caused in one's life. I read it and gave it to Aidan. He loved the book, and it opened his eyes to the way fiction reflects and expands our worlds. I have wanted to thank Kate de Goldi ever since, so here it is.

Dear Kate,
Thank you very much for your books, all of them. You have given me hours of pleasure, but more than that you have given my young people a door into the world of literature. They are now avid readers and enjoy all that the world of books has to offer.
Thank you and warm regards,
Barbara

Collaborators Were Shot In The War

Rachel invited me to be her Facebook friend, and today she contacted me while I was online. We had a long chat about the artwork and titles for our project. Rachel is working on the cover and has also written new poems. She says she would like to record an artists statement so I am practicing on Garage band. Liam is going to show me how to use it. Aidan had sent me a photo he had taken on an electron microscope. I thought it might be good to use in the collaboration to illustrate my poem, Dark Matter. The universe in small things.

The tube at the top is testes, the pouch on the left is an accessory gland, and the bottom is part of the seminal vesicle. Red and green are two different parts of the cellular skeleton, and blue is DNA and RNA. It is a 3d reconstruction from a series of images taken at different focal depths through the tissue.

Featured at Frankfurt, while we were sleeping

On Thursday Robert shared with us his impressions of the Frankfurt Book Fair, where New Zealand had guest of honour status.
It is the largest industry event in the world.
The opening ceremony had lots of speeches, mostly in German, and as no-one had given Robert a translation headset he found this a bit tedious. He was therefore relieved when New Zealand's representatives, Bill English, Bill Manhire and Joy Cowley got up to have there say. He thought they all did really well but Joy Cowley was the stand out for him as she was so natural. The speeches had run over so it meant that most of the audience missed out on the next event.

Robert went to parties, gave readings, visited museums and hung out with other NZ writers. He thought the German culture was a very bookish one, even more so than New Zealand. He was sure that the money invested by New Zealand was well spent, and that there would be spin offs for New Zealand writers and for New Zealand in general.

Congratulations to Robert, whose German translation of his poetry book,"Star Waka" sold out.

Urbanlife 2012

Here I am on a windy Friday night, holiday weekend eve, in Papatoetoe. In a little while 7 young poets from schools in South Auckland will perform poems the have written in response to cultural artifacts they have seen at Auckland Museum. Not many people have turned out for the performance., mostly family members and representatives from the museum. Grace Taylor has been working with them for eight weeks and their performances will be displayed in Auckland Museum, with an opening on the 3rd of November. They look nervous but radiant.

I had to leave very quickly after the performances, but the energy, humour and passion of the young poets just blew me away. Maybe the future is in better hands than I think.

Man Booker

Hilary Mantel, the first woman to win the prize twice. She won in 2009 with "Wolf Hall" which was brilliant. "Bring Up The Bodies" which has been announced the winner for 2012, was even better. I was captivated from the first sentence, the prose on the first page was worth the price of the book. Maybe she  will win again when the sequel she is working on is published. I can't wait to read it.

Remembering

With a great deal of difficulty I am trying to remember my poem, "Dead Girl Dance" for performance next week. Grace taylor who is leading our workshops and has a great deal of experience working with new poets is very encouraging and patient but I am pretty close to giving up. It is so frustrating.I can remember poems I learned when I was 15 and now I can't get something I wrote to flow freely. Get older is obviously no fun.
The other poem I have in the recital is much shorter and easier to remember because I can see the pattern. I know that is the key, to recognise the pattern and then I will have it, but what if there is no pattern? Also I think my poem is not working with the other poems in the group, it is too sombre.

My partner in crime was not in class last night so we did not work on our  collaboration.

HDSPNS

Went to see my son Liam's band perform at Golden Dawn in Ponsonby last night. If you follow the link the red shoes are Liam. I was pretty tired and really wanted to go to bed early. They played just after 10.00 so not too late.  They got a really good reception from the sizeable crowd. I had a really good time but came home straight after because I have a busy weekend to get through

Performance Poetry in Motion

Grace Taylor certainly has her work cut out getting me ready for a live performance in a few weeks time. I am having difficulty remembering my own poem and I am going to be working hard on that today. Then I have to work at getting some movement into my performance. I wish I was good at this, I would love to be a performer, but by the time you get to my age you certainly start knowing the things you have no aptitude for, and performance is one of those for me. It is harder to recognise the things I do have a talent for.
Rachel and I got together on Thursday after class and talked about our project. We decided that we would sort our poems into 4 sections. Life, Love, Lust and Leaving, and maybe call the whole project re:Generate. Rachel had some lovely drawings of herself to illustrate her half and is going to work on the title page. I will have a look at some photos to illustrate my poems. We might do a recording as well.

Thirty Years Ago

I went to see the time traveller movie Looper on Saturday night with some friends. The film stars Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt. Its pretty smart and has an interesting philosophical bent and the ending has a redemptive feel. The main character is sent back 30 years in time to be murdered by his young self. It made me think about what I might tell my younger self if I could go back thirty years and meet her. I am not sure that I would even recognise her, but I sure hope she wouldn't want to murder me.
Its been said youth is wasted on the young and maybe thats true but I don't envy my young self, nor would I change much in my life if I did have that power.  I certainly would not like to be young again now. We are entering a very challenging time, economically and environmentally, and I feel that young people are going to have to have tougher futures.

Coast to Coast

Yesterday I walked the Coast to Coast Walkway with my friend and neighbour, Ann. We took the bus from Onehunga to Britomart and then walked home.  The weather stayed fine and it wasn't too hot so it was a pleasant way to explore Auckland, get some exercise and share views and news. The flowers in Albert Park were very pretty and the gardens laid out in very formal way. The views from Mt Eden were refreshing after the sweaty climb to the top. We didn't climb to the summit of Maungakikie as this is something we do often on our walks and we wanted to get home and reward our efforts with a nice glass of wine.

PERFORMANCE

Our first workshop with Grace Taylor went really well. She is a lovely young woman experienced in dealing with reluctant performers so by the end of the session most of us had decided we could get up in a few weeks in  front of an audience a have a go. Amber was so excited she wants us to do two poems each! I don't think I could memorise two but I am happy to give it a go. The world won't end.
It is difficult, but probably not impossible, to die of embarrassment.
We watched several performance poets on youtube, which was great. But I remembered how easy it is to get lost in youtube where one link follows another and I end up like poor Alice, disappearing into the rabbit hole.
Grace shared with us a poem she had written in 2008 about her experience of being an afekase. I have seen her perform before and she is just so refreshing. She has offered to take the stage with us for our performance in November. Thank you Grace.

O for Orrsome

Rachel' drawing from Sue's Workshop

I am working on some truly awful puns.

Sue Orr came to class today to talk about writers at work. Sue has published two collections of short stories and is currently working on a novel. She says her work is very character driven. A character gets in her head and when the character starts driving her crazy she knows it is time to start writing. She takes herself to her quiet secret place and writes for about two hours uninterrupted. She aims to write 1000 words a day and finds that this is about the limit of her concentration. She trusts her character to take her somewhere interesting, lead her on an adventure.


Other writers map out the story right from the start. Some just start writing a scene and see where it goes.
Sue shared with us a list of famous writers and what they have say about the process. The one I liked the best was Octavia E. Butler. I haven't read any of her work but she says "First forget inspiration. Habit s more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you whether you are talented or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. Forget talent. If you have it, fine. Use it. If you don't have it it doesn't matter." I have been very good at developing bad habits, so I will see if I can carry that talent over into creating some good habits.

Rachel and I are in a group together to produce a collaborative publication of work we have completed in the class. This will be interesting because I think we are quite different in our writing styles and point of view. We got together last night at the end of class and decided we would go with poetry and see if between our work we can't find a cohesive vision. I am going to find what I consider my most interesting poems and send them to her to look at.

Plot Slob

I have not written anything creative since the beginning of  term. I think blogging is gnawing my brain. There is such a thing as too much connectedness. I am hoping to be inspired by Sue Orr tomorrow night.
We went to see Moonrise Kingdom yesterday afternoon. What else to do on the only sunny day we have had on a weekend for months? There theatre was nearly empty. Still the couple behind us thought they were in their living room and therefore talking in loud voices and rustling lolly bags wasn't going to be a problem for anyone.
The movie was strange and interesting. Nostalgic in the best way, a boy's adventure story set in an America that has never existed except in story books.

Bog Splot

It has taken some time to find everyone and"follow" them. Not helped by the fact that I kept typing bogsplot instead of blogspot. I think there is something freudian in that. I do feel it would be easy to get lost in the night mare of cyberspace. Real space time is challenging enough at times.

Gertrude Gotz

Amber asked why I had chosen such an ugly name for my blog and she is right it isn't the prettiest name in the world. The Gertrude is for Gertrude Stein of course. I doubt the Gertrude Stein was ever called pretty either, but pretty isn't everything. The Gotz is harder to explain even to myself. My father's surname was Stanley, but on his birth certificate it says Gotts.  I don't really like the idea of a surname. You are either named for your father or your husband, and I'd rather stand on my own merits. I am not a famous footballer or pop star  and therefore can't get away using just one name. So Gotz is sort of a family name that isn't really. G G has a nice ring to it. It might end up my pen name.
Becalmed is creative use of the initials in my family so reminds me that family is what counts.

Inspiration

         Louise Tu'u came to class tonight to share with us her experiences as a successful playwright. She talked to us for over an hour. She is a Samoan New Zealander.
Louise had worked as an actor and after seeing a play she really hated she decided she could write something better. She applied for funding and after receiving a grant sat down and wrote a play about the experience of young Samoan men growing up and straddling palagi and pakeha culture. She set the play in the competitive world of Polyfest. She felt that urban Pacifika youth could really relate to this setting. She had represented her school on stage there so it was a milieu she knew well.
She has since written several plays and has been selected for several major international residencies.
One of her plays is about homelessness, Providence. She spent several years researching the issues of living rough in Auckland, and was committed enough to spend a night or two sleeping up by St Benedict's Church. She says that she was surprised that all minimum wage work, including street prostitution had strong resonances.

       So what is she like? She's funny and confident, with the linguist ear for accents. ( She speaks at least four languages, Samoan, English, Italian and German). She has the ability to laugh at herself while still taking herself seriously. She has confidence in her abilities and her voice and values herself as a professional. Her work is often about the 'broken' aspect of language and the difficulty of communicating. She say writing dialogue is hard, you need to listen well. When she wrote Providence she spent a lot of time researching, going undercover, which she said wasn't hard because she is brown. She shows a lot of commitment to her art.
Her inspirations, without wanting to sound like she was giving an "Oscar acceptance speech" were her parents. They are a close family and her mother has appeared in her work. Then she mentioned poets, philosophers, and writers, Maurice Blanchot, Charles Bukowski, David Sedaris and Jacques Derrida amongst others. She wasn't sure why she found angry white (possibly drunk) men inspirational, but that's how it is sometimes.

      She is running a workshop for playwrights and writers on how to apply for international residencies. Grants too are a good way of keeping going. She encouraged us to work on getting published and on self promotion. It was great having her in class and I look forward to seeing her work in the future.

     

Today is the first day of my blogging life. Eight weeks should be just enough of this.

Term has started and we are doing Writers at Work. I have set up a blog and now I do feel becalmed. I had to leave class early because of a prior engagement. I hope I have not missed anything too vital and that Amber can catch me up in the car trip tomorrow. I will re-read course description and note anything that I need clarification on. I will do some research on Louise Tu'u who is coming to class tomorrow. It will be fun to meet a young playwright.
I like the idea of working on something we have written earlier in the year. It seems some of these things have been abandoned when they had some life still in them, orphaned children.