POETRY ON POSTERS RECLAIMING THE WORLD.

Giving poetry the street visibility of punk and rock’n roll, Phantom Billstickers is once again launching a new series of poem posters in late April 2010. Placing poems on the walls of cities across New Zealand, the United States and towns and cities everywhere, the intent is to bring poetry to the attention of the world. This will be Phantom Billstickers fourth run of Poem Posters.

THE LAUNCH

The ten new poems will be launched at a ceremony on the 28th of April at the old Government House, University of Auckland, Princess Street and Waterloo Quadrant, Auckland, New Zealand. The event will take place from 5pm until 7pm. All are welcome.

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21 September: Short/Sharp/Script (1)
One hour, five different dramas: actors perform rehearsed readings of work produced by MA (Script) students at the IIML. This week Ken Duncum introduces scripts by Amy Rountree, Sugu Pillay, Matthew Nagel, Gwyneth Hyndman and Colin Hodson.

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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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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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17 August: Angel in America – Elizabeth Knox

Elizabeth Knox’s best-selling novel The Vintner’s Luck is soon to hit the big screen as a film directed by Niki Caro. The Angel’s Cut, Knox’s sequel to The Vintner’s Luck, relates the further adventures of the fallen angel Xas as he passes through late 1920s Hollywood and beyond. She reads from and talks about the novel with Jane Stafford.

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This Place You Return To – Kirsty Gunn

Kirsty Gunn’s 1994 novella Rain catapulted her to literary prominence, and in 2007 The Boy and the Sea won Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. Although she has lived and worked for many years in the UK as a writer, reviewer and writing teacher, Kirsty Gunn’s work continues to be informed by her New Zealand past. She’s back in Wellington as Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at the Randell Cottage, and appears in conversation with Bill Manhire.

When: 3 August
Where: The Marae, Level 4, Te Papa (please note that no food may be taken onto The Marae).
Time: 12.15 – 1.15pm

The Writers on Mondays series is presented by the International Institute of Modern Letters and The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
It is open to the public and free of charge.

27 July: Poetry and Publishing – Christopher Reid

Award-winning British writer Christopher Reid is the author of 13 collections of poetry and a former editor at Faber & Faber, where he edited the Letters of Ted Hughes and worked with many major poets. He is often cited as co-founder with Craig Raine of the ‘Martian School’ of poetry, which employs exotic and humorous metaphors to defamiliarise everyday experiences and objects. He talks with Bill Manhire about his career.

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13 July: Dare, Truth or Promise – Paula Boock

Victoria University Writer in Residence Paula Boock talks with Kate De Goldi about her novel-in-progress and her work as both an award-winning writer for young adults (Dare, Truth or Promise), and as a scriptwriter whose credits include Insiders Guide to Love, bro’Town and the recent tele-feature Until Proven Innocent.

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Talk in Wellington on Wednesday 1 April

Four men and a dog in the Denniston Hotel on the West Coast. The original caption read, 'Some find their recreation in the pubs where beer is the staple drink'. Photo: Te Ara

But the beer stopped flowing in 1947 when coasters banded together in an act of consumer solidarity that has been described as the country’s most successful consumer boycott.

On Wednesday Scoop Review of Books reviewer and author Simon Nathan will be giving a talk in Wellington on the history of the West Coast and in particular the little remembered Greymouth Beer Boycott which saw coasters forego their daily jug in protest at the local hoteliers’ decision to increase their prices in a cartel-like fashion.

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Victoria University’s Stout Research Centre is hosting an international conference on the relevance of nationalism in today’s literature later this week.

Conference organiser Professor Lydia Wevers says cultural nationalism has been at the centre of literary history in New Zealand, as in other literatures. Read more »