The Same As Yes by Joan Fleming (Victoria University Press, 2012)

Reviewed by Lindsay Pope

This slender book of poems is Joan Fleming’s first. The layered effect of Denise Nestor’s cover image signals that there is not a singular viewpoint from which to visualize the world. There are layers. It is an appropriate and portentous indicator of the enclosed work.
All of the poems in each of the three sections, Blue as the Eyes of her Mother, He and She and A Mirror and the First Face, are conversations written in a prose poem format. All are brief. One contains three sentences and none stretch beyond a page. Read more »

Writers and Readers 2012

The Art of Translation: Jenny Erpenbeck, Michael Hulse, Karen Leeder, Marco Sonzogni

Reviewed by Bill Nelson

Jenny Erpenbeck Image Credit: K. Behling

At one point Marco Sonzogni waives a question away and responds to Michael Hulse’s answer to a previous question. Hulse said that translating something like a legal document can be taught, but translating literature is a different beast altogether, inherently unteachable. You can almost see the hairs on Sonzogni’s neck prick up. He rises to what he sees as a challenge, valiantly defending the art of translation. He mentioned earlier that he continually battles the notion that translation isn’t a real academic pursuit, even from his colleagues at Victoria University.

His view is that it can be taught and that a translator is like a ‘musical instrument’ who’s job it is to play the melody of the original text as best they can. It was a stirring argument and met with murmurs of approval. Translation is writing after all, he says, and reading and writing can be taught.
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This City

By Jennifer Compton (Otago University Press, 2012)
Reviewed by Lindsay Pope

This is a handsome book, a strong handsome book. Within the warmth of its hardback covers a body of poetry rests inviting the intrepid reader to explore cities that have accommodated the poet and triggered her imagination.

While the book has three geographical divisions, in Italy, In New Zealand and In Australia, Compton’s inquiries transcend borders. She does not opt, like Cavafy, to “find another city better than this one.” She declines to “moulder”. Rather her preoccupations are to record the experiences and observe the people and spaces she occupies with a sensitive, honest resolve.
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Birds of Clay

By Aleksandra Lane Published (Victoria University Press, 2012)
Reviewed by Lindsay Pope

Aleksandra Lane’s first book of poetry in English, Birds of Clay, is captivating and startling, both in its production and content.

The cover painting by Andy Leleisi’uao, Oacarus Part I, portends a narrative that is fragmented, dynamic, complex and abundant with metaphor, human endeavour and symbolism. After a brief introductory sequence of five poems there are seven self-contained sections that echo ideas and themes that bind each to the authoritative spine of the book.
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Writers and Readers 2012

Germaine Greer: Shakespeare’s Wife

Reviewed by Sarah Lang

I spied Germaine Greer on my way to this session, waiting for the green man to flash before crossing the road. Surrounded by a posse of acolytes, the famed feminist was saying something about a disappointed, neurotic woman, and I wondered if she was talking about Shakespeare’s wife, the name of her 2007 book and the topic of this session.

I have to admit that I didn’t enjoy the book, a sort of speculative history reimagining the life of Anne Hathaway and censuring the historians who belittled her. It was too dense, too hard to get into, and after a while I gave up. But this session still beckoned, because I’m a Shakespeare fan and figured hearing rather than reading about Anne might be the best way in for me. Also, though I’d read Greer’s infamous feminist tome The Female Eunuch, I’d never heard her speak. This was my chance.

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Writers and Readers 2012

Chris Bourke And What Music Used To Be

Reviewed by Megan Doyle Corcoran

Walking into the Embassy to hear Chris Bourke and Nick Bollinger in conversation, I was immediately hopeful that we’d hear more of the ukulele and scratchy vinyl playing for the audience. No such luck. Still, I couldn’t be disappointed. Because of Chris Bourke, author of Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964, I’ve got something new to imagine in place of the normal, inebriated chaos of Courtenay Place. Now, I can substitute the ghosts of all the musicians who came to record and play at burgeoning recording studios like Tanza (To Assist New Zealand Artists), which, by the way, recorded Blue Smoke in 1948. It was the first record wholly processed in New Zealand. I realize that my new ghosts may not be any less raucous than the crowds generally assembled, and that’s fine. If anything, they’ll add a little flavor.

Bourke and Bollinger are clearly music nerds. They love and live music, and earn their keep in music-writing. Fortunate guys. Chris got his start early. As a fan of Mad Magazine, he wanted to write something comparable. He was 10. It was the height of his devotion to The Beatles. He started his own magazine and called it Seltaeb. He says he liked the way the name looked sort of Latin, but I wonder if it was also a tribute to The Beatles’s backward instrumentation on Revolver. There was no time to ask. Sigh.
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Writers and Readers 2012

Harry Ricketts: Strange Meetings

Reviewed by Pip Adam

A couple of years ago I became a little obsessed with Rudyard Kipling. My PhD focuses on the language of structural engineers and Kipling kept coming up as ‘the engineer’s poet’. I bumped into his poem ‘Sons of Martha’ again and again in discussions about the intersection of engineering and imaginative literature.

They say to mountains “Be ye removèd.” They say to the lesser floods “Be dry.”
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd—they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit—then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.
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Writers and Readers 2012

Why is Theatre Not Dead Yet?

Reviewed by Bill Nelson

Why is Theatre not dead

THE PLAYERS

Playwright 1: Robert Shearman

Playwright 2: Dave Armstrong

The Devil’s Advocate: Ken Duncum
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Writers and Readers 2012

Where Were You in 72? Germaine Greer, Sandra Coney and Marilyn Waring

Reviewed by Sarah Lang

It’s no exaggeration to say this panel session on women’s issues was one of those-once-in-a-lifetime moments. It was uproariously funny, incredibly interesting, electrifyingly educational, terrifically thought-provoking – and it ended with a standing ovation from a full house (and the Embassy isn’t a small theatre).

First, I have to admit I wasn’t anywhere in 1972. I didn’t arrive until 1980. So I didn’t know it was a year of landmark steps forward for women – or a year that saw Germaine Greer arrested in Auckland for saying the words “bullshit” and “fuck”. That sparked street demonstrations and social debate, with Greer sacking her assigned lawyer and leading her own defence during her obscenity trial. “She was acquitted on bullshit and convicted on fuck,” deadpanned chair Judy McGregor, whose amusing quips and inspired questions saw her do much more than “stir things up and keep the peace”.
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Writers and Readers 2012

Time and Memory (and Place)

Reviewed by Lynn Davidson

We were only a couple of minutes into the session with Kate Grenville and Alan Hollinghurst when the chair, Linda Olsson, suggested that if time is up for discussion, then place needs to be there too. She was right of course – ‘Nothing happens nowhere’ as Elizabeth Bowen famously said. Both Grenville and Hollinghurst write novels that draw the past onto the page. Both resisted the rather stodgy description ‘historical fiction’. Hollinghurst said, ‘I actually rather hate research’. He said what he finds most effective for getting inside the past is to find an historical detail that is suggestive of the time he is writing about, and he went on give an example of a wonderful elaborate phonograph player he had come across with little doors you could open and look inside, and as he described some of this with his hands you could see him opening the little doors and stepping into the past. Isn’t this the greatest thing that these Writers & Readers Week events offer: to see the writer disappear inside their work and their process. What a gift.
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