Poem of the Week: University Song by James K Baxter with music by Douglas Lilburn

This alternative Otago University anthem written by Baxter and composed by Lilburn had its first public recital in nearly 65 years at the university earlier this week.

University Song

Among these hills our fathers came
By strength of eye and hand alone
They build: and murmur loud as flame
Their voices from the living stone.

Forget not those whom Scotland bred
Above whose bones our cities stand:
Forget not them! nor the unknown dead
Whose broken veins flow through our land.

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Press Release

Belich turns focus to global history as Stout Research Centre celebrates quarter century

New Zealand’s best known living historian, Professor James Belich, will officially launch his fifth book at the 25th Anniversary Conference of the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies.

Entitled Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1783-1939, Professor Belich’s new book marks his first foray into global history, exploring the explosive historical process that now sees English as one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

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Poets for Princess Ashika: Love, Loss and the Sea

Paekakariki fundraiser for the victims of the Princess Ashika Ferry Disaster in Tonga

Featuring: Glenn Colquhoun, Karlo Mila, Apirana Taylor, David Geary and the Paekakariki School Kapa Haka group.

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31 August: Screen Dreams – Philippa Boyens

Philippa Boyens, MNZM, co-wrote the screenplay for the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, for which the trio won an Oscar in 2004. She also worked on the screenplay for King Kong and the adaptation of Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones, and is collaborating on The Hobbit. She talks to Ken Duncum about her scriptwriter’s dream run.

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By Denis Welch

‘I’ve got this strong sense of self-preservation,’ Alistair Te Ariki Campbell told me when I interviewed him for the Listener in 2005. ‘I don’t fly apart—I get my forces together.’ At the hot gates of Thermopylae, he said, when the Spartans were about to go into battle with the Persians, ‘they just leisurely groomed their hair. So I would call on these Spartans when I was getting very depressed—“Come, I need your help. Start grooming yourself, start brushing your hair, come to my rescue!”’

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Writers on Mondays

John Newton’s book The Double Rainbow: James K. Baxter, Ngati Hau and the Jerusalem Commune is ‘a work of cultural history that aspires to be a work of bicultural history’. He talks with publisher Fergus Barrowman about his pilgrimage to uncover what life was really like for Maori and Pakeha communities in Baxter’s Jerusalem.

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Justice Joe Williams with Commissioner John Cullen looking over his shoulder

Justice Joe Williams launched Mark Derby’s The Prophet and the Policeman: The Story of Rua Kenana and John Cullen at Wellington’s Unity Books on Wednesday night.

The former lead singer of ’80s reggae group Aotearoa sang the praises of the book saying it painted a highly nuanced picture of its two protagonists.

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Press Release

The Extinction Gene by Robert Gross

IS NATURE PULLING THE PLUG ON HUMANKIND?
– New book reveals that Homo Sapiens may be on the way to joining the 99% of species already extinct

The end of the Dinosaur era occurred about 65 million years ago. Theories abound as to why, and how, they became extinct. The one thing scientists agree on is a catastrophic event is to blame. Along with dinosaurs about 70% of all species on Earth became extinct. Could humans be next?

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Press Release
Much-Loved Writer Barbara Anderson Honoured

Barbara Anderson will receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from the University of Otago this weekend. This degree marks her enormous contribution to New Zealand literature.

She has written eight novels including the award-winning “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife” and as well as collections of short-stories beginning with “I think we should go into the jungle” in 1989.
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Creative New Zealand mourns the loss of iconic New Zealand writer

Creative New Zealand mourns the loss of iconic New Zealand poet, playwright and novelist Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1925–2009). The author of numerous poetry collections and works of fiction from the mid-twentieth century onwards, his work is amongst those writers that characterise the rise of a New Zealand literary tradition.

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