BELL GULLY NATIONAL SCHOOLS WRITING FESTIVAL 28-29 AUGUST 2004

FEATURED WRITERS AND OTHER GUESTS

Hinemoana Baker Cliff Fell Lorae Parry

William Brandt Eirlys Hunter Susan Pearce

James Brown

Kate Camp Laura Kroetsch

Glenn Colquhoun Anna Livesey

Kate De Goldi Donna Wright

Ken Duncum

Last year we asked participating writers how they became writers, what the best and worst things were about being writers, and what their top tip was for young writers. The most common tip was read, read, READ! Last year’s comments are on the festival website at www.vuw.ac.nz/modernletters/festival03_writers.htm.

For this year’s programme we asked participating writers to tell us which books they wished they had written, why they avoided reading some books, and what they thought beginning writers should read.

HINEMOANA BAKER Mätuhi | Needle (poetry) will be published in November this year by Victoria University Press and Percival Press.

“I wish I had written 100 Poems (ed , Godwit, 1994). Which is cheating a bit because it’s an anthology, but features many of my favourite poems and poets. I’d be pretty stoked if I’d written any of them. Actually, I wish I’d edited it, too. I like how it avoids printing the author’s name beside the poem title – it encourages me to take each one on its own merits. I also like the decisions Bill’s made about which poem to put next to which other poem. I find it a satisfying whole book as well as a collection of great individual poems.

“I’ve never read Little Women. Why? Because of the title.

“Who ever reads the books they ‘should’ read? I sometimes try, but I fall asleep. They become that strange ‘thunk’ in the night when I turn over. They make the pile beside my bed another few centimetres taller.

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“I think we all end up reading whatever makes us feel excited about writing and reading. When I was a beginner writer I read a lot of song lyrics as well as actual books. I used to pore over LP covers – mainly the ones that belonged to my older sister as, unlike me, she had the budget to buy them. I was intrigued by the ways the words were transformed by the phrasings and melody once they were sung. I would feel an intense excitement listening to a song for the first time and reading the lyrics at the same time. I’d read ahead a bit and try to predict how on earth the singer would manage to fit those two lines into the rhythm they’d already made. My admiration was great.

“I didn’t grow up in a ‘literary’ household, but I had great English teachers. So my early adolescence was a kind of unholy soup of Leonard Cohen, , Kate Bush and David Bowie lyrics, Cilla McQueen, , poems in the Listener, Stephen King novels (my mother loves horrors), Sons for the Return Home, Pounamu Pounamu by , Elton John’s ‘Yellow Brick Road’ lyrics, Richard Bach and the Bible (I’ve somehow ended up with 5 of them, given to me by various family members).”

WILLIAM BRANDT The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life (novel) Victoria University Press 2002 Alpha Male (short fiction) Victoria University Press 1999

“I wish I had written The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I’ve chosen this one instead of War and Peace or Moby Dick or Rembrance of Things Past or The Bible or some other unbelievably well known classic, because, while The Master and Magarita is (let’s face it) a masterpiece and better than anything I’ll ever write, it has a sensibility which I (at least) think of as being close to my own. It’s a story which in a parallel universe I feel I could have written. Should have written. I muse about this book from time to time, and wonder if I could try something like it. I feel close to it. It even has some of the same weaknesses as my own writing. The book itself is a coded cry of rage against political evil, written by a desperate, doomed man, trapped in Stalinist Russia. What has this to do with my own blissfully easy existence? Nothing. How can I possibly feel close to this book? I don’t know. I guess that’s what they mean when they say great literature is universal.

“I struggle to think of a great book I have avoided reading in the sense that I’ve deliberately eschewed it. A great book I haven’t got round to reading – yet – is James Joyce’s Ulysses. Maybe that’s the same thing, I’m not sure. Technically it’s on the list, but then again, it has never made it to the top. I’d have to say I do have an underlying fear that it’s going to be boring and hard to understand. Worse still, boring because it’s hard to understand. I’m afraid I won’t get all the brilliant allusions and in-jokes and then I’ll feel like a putz. But I will read it. One day…

“I think a beginning writer should read widely. Find out what you like, and find out what is similar to the stuff you’re writing. Then read lots and lots of that.

2 (But continue to read widely as well.) For a beginning writer it will be a complicated sort of dialectic – in your reading you’ll be looking for work which resembles your own, while in your writing, you’ll be trying to produce work which resembles what you’re reading. Gradually, you’ll learn not only what makes you similar to the writers you like, but what makes you different from them as well. You don’t need to worry about being unique – you are that, automatically. It’s perfectly safe to seek writers to emulate, to look for role models, heroes/heroines. In fact it’s very healthy.”

JAMES BROWN Instructions for Poetry Readings Braunias University Press 2003 Favourite Monsters (poetry) Victoria University Press 2003 Lemon (poetry) Victoria University Press 1999 Go Round Power Please (poetry) Victoria University Press 1995

“I wish I had written Praise by American poet Robert Hass. The poems manage to be lyrical yet conversational, emotional yet intelligent, wise yet commonplace. I like poetry that hits the head as well as the heart and that does so without jumping up and down yelling ‘Look at me’. I’d also be very happy to have written The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice, and Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme, all of which show the value of humour when dealing with serious subjects.

“Which books have I avoided? Too many to choose from, but… Ulysses by James Joyce. I’ve tried. Perhaps there just wasn’t enough narrative – sometimes ‘literary’ books become so tied up in their words they forget one of the chief pleasures of reading is finding out what happens next. I suspect Ulysses might be one of those books that has to be studied more than read, which makes me long for school and uni and being forced to read books you’d never otherwise go near but, thanks to prodding, coaxing and guidance, ending up being really pleased to have read.

Beginning writers should read good anthologies. For example, An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English, The Picador Book of Contemporary New Zealand Fiction, or the annual Best American Poetry/Short Stories/Essays series. There are a lot of anthologies out there, and the best ones will introduce you to the top range of voices. Contemporary literary magazines like or Sport will do likewise. When you find someone whose work you like, investigate them.”

KATE CAMP (anthology of fiction) (ed) Exisle Press 2003 On Kissing (essay) Four Winds Press 2002 Realia (poetry) Victoria University Press 2001 Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars (poetry) Victoria University Press 1998

3 “I wish I’d written The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon because it is the kind of book I most love to read. It’s totally engrossing with an amazingly gripping plot, you really care about the characters, and the setting is so strong it’s like watching a movie … except with all the smells and tastes and feelings too. The book is about two cousins who write a comic book together in 1940s New York, called ‘The Escapist'. At the same time they’re trying to rescue their family in Europe from the Nazis. I am sick with jealousy when I think of this book

“I’ve never read Ulysses by James Joyce. It sounds really hard.

“I’m sure everyone is going to suggest that beginning writers should read everything and anything and lots. I think it’s good to read in the area and the era you’re going to write in. In about 1994 I decided to apply for the creative writing course at Victoria to write poetry. I realised I’d never read any poetry being written by people in New Zealand in 1994. So I got some books by contemporary poets and read those. Up until then my idea of ‘contemporary’ writing was stuff from the 1960s and 1970s – since that’s the most up to date stuff I’d studied.”

GLENN COLQUHOUN On Jumping Ship (essay) Four Winds Press 2004 Playing God (poetry) Steele Roberts 2002 An Explanation of Poetry to my Father (poetry) Steele Roberts 2000 The Art of Walking Upright (poetry) Steele Roberts 1999 Uncle Glenn and Me (children’s picture book) Reed 1999

“I wish I’d written Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone because now I would be rich. I wish I’d written Ngä Möteatea Vol 1 because it is my favourite book at the moment and it’s full of beautiful poetry unlike anything I’ve read before. It would also mean that I understood Te Reo much better than I do. I wish I had written The Oxford Textbook of Medicine because then I would know how to take out my own appendix if I ever needed to. And I wish I’d written My life with Anna Kournikova because it would mean that I had a life with Anna Kournikova.

“I haven’t read ’s The Penguin History of New Zealand yet because I am waiting until I have two weeks with nothing else to do. I want to luxuriate in it. And also because I just picked up the new Reed Book of Mäori Mythology and it has been too hard to put down.

“Beginning writers should read anything they want to. There is ammunition for writing in most things people read. It is always a good idea, of course, to read the style of writing that that person wants to write. If it is poetry then they should read poetry. If it is short fiction then they should read short fiction. But they shouldn’t be trapped into reading just that stuff. Anything that grabs their attention is a good idea. They should find out why it grabbed their attention in the first place and use those same qualities when they write. They should make sure that they leave time to write as well.”

4 Clubs; a Lolly Leopold story (picture book, illustrated by Jacqui Colley) will be published by Trapeze in November 2004 Closed, stranger (young adult fiction) Penguin 1999 Love, Charlie Mike (young adult fiction) Penguin 1997 Sanctuary (young adult fiction) Puffin 1996 like you, really (short fiction) Penguin 1994

“I wish I had written Anagrams by Lorrie Moore. I love that book and re-read it often. Moore manages the trick of being a clever, very literary and very ‘accessible’ writer; her work is full of games, references, jokes, startling imagery, new ways of looking, and, not incidentally, much playful writing about writing. Anagrams is especially attractive because it’s a fractured narrative (I like episodic, non-linear narratives; novels made up of inter-linked stories that rub up against each other, somehow creating extra stories and possibilities in the gaps between). But, as well as all the technical interest, the story itself – of a young woman struggling in a big, alienating, contemporary city – is absorbing – sharply funny much of the time, but full of a very modern sort of sadness, too. There’s a jaw-dropping surprise in it, as well; and the ending is quiet, wry, and unsettling.

“I’ve never read Anna Karenina. I think I’ve mostly avoided it because it’s big; in the past this hasn’t deterred me with other ‘great’ books, but in the past – ie when I was young – I seemed to have the kind of time that you need to commit to a big read. I assume I’ll like it a lot – and I’ve owned several copies at various times, thinking I’ll get round to it soon – but somehow…

“In theory it seems like a good idea to have a judicious mix of the kind of reading that has always attracted you – because that attraction will almost certainly tell you something about how and what you want to write – and reading that you resist, too – because that resistance usually contains some clues about your writing weaknesses. But, maybe just following your nose is a good rule – I read widely and quite chaotically for years – all fiction (short and long) because that’s what I wanted to write – and no texts about writing until I’d written my third book. The early lessons were all in the fiction and the doing.”

KEN DUNCUM Plays include Cherish, Blue Sky Boys, Horseplay, Flipside, Waterloo Sunset, andTrick Of The Light. Also TV writing for Coverstory, Duggan and Willy Nilly.

“I wish I’d written more – but not really anything by another writer. Harry Potter for the money? Citizen Kane for the glory? Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf for the pure genius?

5 “Book I’ve avoided reading: The Bible. Usually started from Genesis and got lost in the ‘who begat who’ section. Tried starting at the other end – that was a Revelation.

“A beginning writer should read everything. Good, bad or indifferent – it all teaches you something.”

CLIFF FELL The Adulterer’s Bible (poetry) Victoria University Press 2003 Also published in magazines, chapbooks and anthologies in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, including The New Exeter Book of Riddles and Turbine.

“Thinking about this I realise there are just so many books I wish I’d written that it’s really hard to choose only one. I mean, obviously there’s The Iliad or anything of Ovid’s or The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron or Dante’s Divine Comedy or The Complete Works – but they’re slightly beyond ‘I wish I’d written that’. Nonetheless, it’s something I often find myself saying. And over the years, I’d say that part of the ‘consuming purpose’ that has driven me to want to write – and I’m sure it’s true of many other writers – stems from trying to match that wish, or, more significantly perhaps, wishing to write something that talks to, in its own terms, the books or poems I wish I’d written.

“But there is one book – more recent than all of the above – that stands out as the special one that for many years I secretly wished I’d written. It’s Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations, in the Louise Varese translation, New Directions bilingual paperback edition. Until I was thirty I carried that book everywhere with me, overland to India, across Africa, through all the squats and palaces I found myself in. And over the years my beloved copy got dog-eared, beat up, thumbed, the cover’s lamination blurred to worn and unreadable. And I cried later to discover the front cover, with its gravure of the poet himself, pouting mysteriously into the half-distance, ripped off, literally, I reckon, by a young English poet, another Rimbaud freak, who nicked it when he was visiting one day. But still I had the wondrous text, that was mine to aspire to, the dazzle and surrealism of its prose-poems, hallucinated trips through cities and sideshows, personae and grotesque beauties and estranged states of mind.

“I first came across Illuminations when I was 18 – the same age as Rimbaud when he wrote it – and perhaps that has something to do with my fascination with it, and why I commend it to you now in the fleeting moments of your youth – to learn what an 18 year old can achieve – with a lot of bravado and a little ‘disordering of the senses’.

“Writing, as I did just then, of ‘the fleeting moments of youth’ reminds me of Milton’s poem on his 24th birthday, which begins: ‘How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth’ … which reminds me further that I still haven’t read Paradise Lost – and that’s mainly due to time as well, or lack of it. (Though it’s also partly due to how dauntingly dense it looks on the page). I suppose it’s a book you usually read at university, but as I read Archaeology, I didn’t make the

6 time for it then, either – but I have got a beautiful 1908 edition, inherited from an aunt, and it’s sitting on my desk, and it’s right in front of me now …

“Advice for aspiring writers? Two things, really. Give yourself the permission to think of yourself as a writer and to be a writer, but don’t tell anyone but those who really believe in you – not until you’ve got a piece of writing to submit to a magazine or publisher, I suppose. Maybe you can tell them then.

“And keep a journal, diaries – whatever – and always have a pen and paper handy – that’s where writing happens.

“And one more thing: read, read and read some more – books are where writing lives, and books will be your teachers.”

EIRLYS HUNTER Between Black and White (novel) Random House 2000 Finn’s Quest Trilogy (children’s fiction) Scholastic 2000, 2001, 2004 The Quake (children’s fiction) Scholastic 1999 The Robber and the Millionaire (children’s fiction) Scholastic 1996 The Astonishing Madam Majolica (children’s fiction) Scholastic 1996 Also short stories in various anthologies, Sport, Landfall and Radio NZ

“I wish I’d written Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. It’s as close to perfect as a book can be. It contains more meaning in fewer words than any other book I know; it’s a poem really, that addresses some of our deepest fears. It leaves space for the reader. It doesn’t explain. It’s redemptive. It works for anyone, of any age and probably of any culture. And last, but not least, because the text and illustrations are inseparable parts of the whole and I would love to be able to draw.

“I have a long list of great books I’ve avoided reading, but War and Peace is one of the more embarrassing titles. I started it when I was thirteen and eager to look like an intellectual, but I gave up after a few pages. Now I’m saving it for the Malvina Major Retirement Home book club (and in the meantime I’ve seen two movie versions so I know how it ends).

“A beginning writer should read the back of the cereal packet and fairy tales and CD liner notes and sports reports and myths and maps and memoirs and In Memoriams and short stories and long stories and new poetry and old poetry and the property press and the diary they wrote last year... See just how many ways there are of writing what is true, and how many ways there are to write what is not true.”

ANNA JACKSON Catullus for Children (poetry) Auckland University Press 2002 The Long Road to Teatime (poetry) Auckland University Press 2000 The Pastoral Kitchen (poetry) Auckland University Press 2001

7 AUP New Poets 1 (poetry) Auckland University Press 1999

“The book I most wish I had written is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. I think it is the perfect novel – it is drenched with sadness, and has such a strange use of tense, and is the most complete realisation of a character and her world and the shape of the story her life makes. It opens up Jane Eyre (the main character of Wide Sargasso Sea is the madwoman in Jane Eyre) in a way that seems to add meaning to every novel. I would rather be a novelist than a poet, if I could.

“I avoided reading Hamlet for many years because I thought I ought to see it on stage without knowing what was going to happen, so as not to spoil the suspense when I was watching it. But I think, in fact, I prefer reading Shakespeare to watching Shakespeare performed. I probably should have put off seeing Hamlet so seeing it wouldn’t take away from the suspense of reading it.

“I think as you begin writing seriously, you start to look less for books to absorb you as story, and more for a style that excites you, a style you can imitate. I was inspired by The Graduate – I found it as a book before I found out about the film – which was written in very short sentences and mostly made up of dialogue. It looked easy to write like this – which it was – but I liked the effect, as well – the kinds of rhythms – the very naturalistic and at the same time slightly tautened dialogue.”

LAURA KROETSCH Poetry and essays published in Turbine and Sport Book reviews in numerous New Zealand magazines and journals

“If I could choose to have written any book, I would choose one by the Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson, probably Autobiography of Red. Carson is a daredevil writer, one who combines a brilliant intellect with a reckless heart. She is difficult, engaging and wildly imaginative. Who else could write a novel in verse about a winged red monster falling in love?

“I’m actually pretty good about reading great books. Every year I pick at least one great book that I haven’t read before and I enjoy it. This year I’m reading Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote. After that I plan to read Montaigne’s Complete Works.

“Read as widely as you can, read across genres, read great writers past and present, and don’t forget works in translation.”

ANNA LIVESEY Good Luck (poetry) Victoria University Press 2003 Also published in Sport, Landfall, Takahe, Poetry NZ, Turbine, and by Propaganda and the Pemmican Press.

8 “I would be very happy if I’d written any of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. Vivid, odd and overwhelmingly true, they bring the South of the United States to life. I especially envy Flannery O’Connor her ability to create characters. Complex and interesting, they are never forced or made to do things they wouldn’t for the sake of the plot. The stories, although often strange and sometimes frightening, are not really about events, but about the nature of the characters: how they understand their world and how it changes them. The stories are magic and solid, beautiful and real all at the same time.

“I’ve never read Alice in Wonderland. The first edition I tried to read had very small print and I was only about eight, so I put it away. I’ve never been able to overcome the feeling I had then that it’s a bit difficult and boring. About once a month my husband tells me I can’t go on any longer without reading it, but so far his pleas haven’t had any effect.

“One thing that might be helpful for young writers is to find a writer they enjoy and then read several books they’ve written. It’s interesting to work out how the author’s work changes as they get older and more experienced. Some people write great stories and not very good novels, or they try their hand at poetry and sound like a different person. Also, reading more than one book by the same writer provides a glimpse into their life. I find it somehow comforting to imagine Jane Austen, having finished the manuscript of Pride and Prejudice, sitting down at her desk again and thinking ‘now what?’”

MARGARET MAHY Watch Me! (stories and poems) will be published by Orion in October 2004 Recent publications include: Notes of a Bag Lady (essay) Four Winds Press 2003 Alchemy (young adult fiction) HarperCollins 2002 The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom HarperCollins 2001 24 Hours (young adult fiction) HarperCollins 2000

“There are so many books I wish I had written. I wish I had written most of Shakespeare’s plays for example. However there is one book that I have chosen to deal with for these paragraphs, a strange book – officially a children’s book but one which simultaneously fascinates a lot of adults – The Mouse and his Child by Russell Hoban.

“The mouse and his child, heroes of the story, are made of tin. Wound up they dance in a circle with the father swinging his child up into the air. When the mechanism breaks down they are thrown out … but this is only the beginning of their adventures, for, in spite of their damaged mechanism, they are able to set out on a journey partly powered by the ambition to become self-winding. On this archetypal journey they have many adventures and meet many people some who help and some who hinder them. The villainous Manny Rat comes to see their persistence as a challenge. He cannot respect himself unless he destroys them. And in the end … but no reader would spoil the end of a story for any other possible reader.

9 “I wish I’d written this book because it is filled not only with adventures, but with ideas. I wish I had written this book because I like the way that the author takes his ideas serious and yet laughs at them too. I wish I had written this book because it is about toys and yet it can be savage too. It can be savage, and yet it asserts that, with courage and determination, something good can emerge triumphant. ‘Be happy!’ is the final instruction … and it seems that, in its very last line, the book is giving good advice … the sort of good advice I would like to pass onto people.

“If I say I have avoided reading a particular book, one must bear in mind that it might be exactly the right book for some other reader to enjoy. If I say I have avoided reading a certain book that is certainly not to suggest that other people should not read it as soon as possible. There are many wonderful books I have not read due to laziness of one kind or another. For example, there is a famous and wonderful book for adult readers by the writer James Joyce… Finnegan’s Wake I can sing the song from which it takes its name, but I have never read the book. For one thing it is very long, and a reader has to concentrate on every word of it, so it is the sort of book that seems to demand a big reading space … Christmas holidays perhaps. And it also seems to be the sort of book which it will be hard work to read. I know I have had times when I could have read it … but I have chickened out and probably read three or four detective stories instead. I understand it is an astonishing book and I still hope to read it some day when I have plenty of time and space – not only space around me but space in my head.

“It is hard to tell another writer what he or she should read … even when one is a very experienced writer and the other writer is only a beginner. The trouble is books work differently for different people. I began writing when I was seven, and believed I would grow up to write books for adults, but when I was about sixteen or seventeen I began writing stories for children, partly because this gave me the chance to write fantasy tales. There was very little fantasy written for adults in those days.

“I think every writer should be aware of folk tales. In folk tales one gets a feeling for simple, direct and well-balanced story structures and becomes acquainted with basic characters – heroes like Jack the Giant Killer and heroines like Cinderella. Some of these figures haunt adult literature as well as children’s books. Folk tales were, originally, stories for everybody, and in many ways they still are.

“Most people have read Grimm’s Fairy Tales but it is well worth reading Italian Fairy Tales – a big collection by the Italian novelist Italo Calvino, and checking up on Russian fairy tales too.”

EMMA NEALE How to Make a Million (poetry) Godwit 2002 Creative Juices (editor) Flamingo 2001 Little Moon (novel) Vintage 2001 Sleeve-notes (poetry) Godwit 1999

10 Night Swimming (novel) Vintage 1998

“I wish I’d written the collected stories of Alice Munro. Then I would have married an empathetic lyricism with a tart sense of humour, and concision with the depth of psychology usually associated with novels. I would have achieved exposition through subtle indirection; I’d know how to sidewind deliciously from what seems to be the main point, and yet manage to do so without disappointing the reader’s expectations.

“I’ve always felt vaguely ashamed that I haven’t read James Joyce’s Ulysses. But for years all the lit crit that mentioned it made it seem that to read Ulysses would be like having little splinters of glass inserted in my brain while several radios played competing foreign languages and someone forced me to do complicated algebraic equations in the midst of severe sleep deprivation. I’m relieved to say that I actually started to read it a fortnight ago, and it’s not as bad as all that. It’s still a cerebral yoga-thon, but there is enough poetry to keep me plugging away.

“A beginning writer should read far and wide, high and low, up and down: from literary classics to those of genre fiction, from prose to poetry, from song lyrics to newspapers. A good way to find authors that stimulate your own writing is to graze through anthologies (of short stories, poetry or essays) and then follow up the collected work of any writers whose individual pieces seem to you to be extraordinary. Reading local literary magazines and webzines is vital to a new writer: Landfall, Glottis, Sport, Takahe, Poetry New Zealand, Turbine – these will keep you in touch with what writers are producing here and now.”

LORAE PARRY Vagabonds (play) Victoria University Press 2002 Eugenia (play) Victoria University Press 1996 Cracks (play) The Woman’s Play Press 1993 Frontwomen (play) The Woman’s Play Press 1989

“A book I’d like to have written is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I was researching the material that Brown covers in 2002, when I was interested in writing a play on the subject. Brown has pulled together historic material about the role of women over the last two thousand years, in relation to the church, and he’s come up with a page-turning thriller. I’d definitely like to have written that one!

“I can’t think of any book I’ve actively avoided reading. Although if I really think about it, maybe Richard Prebble’s I’ve Been Thinking.

“A beginning writer should read anything and everything that interests them. Including the newspaper, which is full of daily drama. Large and small. Truth is definitely as dramatic as fiction! And if you’re at a loss for a story, the dailies abound with them.”

11 SUSAN PEARCE ‘The Surveyors’, ‘Mrs Methven’, ‘The Last Dream’ (short fiction) in Sport ‘Sand’ (short fiction) in Creative Juices (anthology) HarperCollins 2002 Also poetry in Joussour (Australia).

“I would love to have written Plumb. doesn’t do show-off writing. In all his books, and especially in this one, he just writes the truth of his characters without getting in the way. When I’m reading Plumb, the narrative sort of leaps through my mind. I don’t notice the dexterity with which George Plumb’s forthright and sometimes grumpy voice leads me through events and conversations.

“The worthy tomes I’m procrastinating over are Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and Danté’s Purgatorio and Inferno. They lurk, promising great rewards and lengthy, complex challenges. ‘Later,’ I tell them, imagining regular and uninterrupted reading time, and a life free(ish) of domestic responsibilities.

“If you’re compulsively drawn to any and every text, scanning cereal packets, detergent bottles, graffiti and restaurant signage and billboards and veiled imprecations to posties, then practice not reading. Notice what else is there to be noticed on streets where your usual experience is a half-conscious reading for the umpteenth time of ‘Power to the people, not the pigs … no junk mail (DOG) … Sale …”

CHRIS PRICE Husk (poetry) Auckland University Press 2002 Landfall (editor) Oxford/ Press 1993-2000

“Since it seems highly unlikely that I’ll ever write a novel, I could name any number of great novels I’d like to have written. If I have to choose one, then I’d love to have written Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion — not his most famous book, but my favourite of his ‘straight’ novels. It’s been quite some years since I read the novel, and I do wonder if I’d feel the same way about it now: sometimes a book speaks to a certain period in your own life. Nonetheless, it’s one of the few books I’ve read more than once. What I remember about it is Ondaatje’s elegant, resonant prose, his loving evocations of manual work on the Bloor St Viaduct in Toronto, and a man collecting vetch to feed his iguana (love that word, ‘vetch’). There’s a vein of romanticism – the best kind, not the sloppy sentimental kind – running through Ondaatje’s work that I find irresistible.

“I’m not sure I actively avoid great books, but I do passively resist some of them. Sometimes it’s best to wait until a book’s time has come and not swallow it just because you think it will be good for you. I tried reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace when I was 14, but found myself skipping over the lengthy philosophical asides. Have I really read it, then? Perhaps not, but I feel as if I have, to the extent of not finding the urge to tackle it again in adult life, even though I might appreciate it now.

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“Having read the other writers’ contributions to this programme, I feel tempted to crow, ‘I HAVE read Ulysses!’ – but only because it was a set text at university. Does this mean that no one will read Joyce in the 21st century?

“I also resist the thought of issuing reading prescriptions – but anthologies are great places to start exploring what kind of writing interests you. One of my all- time favourites is 100 New Zealand Poems (Godwit, 1993). It has a freshness and vitality that some of the weightier, tombstone-like anthologies can’t match.”

JO RANDERSON The Keys to Hell will be published by Victoria University Press in October 2004 The Spit Children (short fiction) Victoria University Press 2000 Short fiction published in The Picnic Virgin Victoria University Press 1999 Plays include The Unforgiven Harvest and Fold

“The only books that I wish I’d written are ones that I have inside of me and I haven’t had time or courage to write yet. For an example, I have a sci-fi novel that is formed in my head, but isn’t written on paper. If I die tomorrow, I will regret that I didn’t get it out there and that this thought will disappear into the grave with me. There are many books that I love to read. In particular, The Huey Williams Story by Andy Kaufman. It is an incredible, honest, beautifully- wandering novel written by a completely unique spirit and mind. I also like the Bible for its weirdness and poetic philosophy. And its structure.

“I tend to avoid anything which has a surplus of attention lavished on it. In The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham) the only survivors were those who didn’t do what the crowd had done (eg looked at the meteor shower). Evolution relies on creatures developing in their own unique ways, and as none of us can predict how the world will grow, it is essential that we allow ourselves to be the bizarre individuals (and writers) that we are. So in the interests of survival, I usually like to read/find out about stuff that is lesser known. If everyone is reading Shakespeare, then I figure that knowledge has entered our collective consciousness so I may as well focus on something else. Not just ‘to be different’, but to spread as much knowledge as far as possible.

“I don’t think there are any absolutes when it comes to writing. As soon as someone says, ‘All good stories have...’ or ‘all good writers must...’ I just want to prove this rule wrong. I think it is important to live fully and to experience the world and the people in it, and to try to be as much of yourself as possible. And this means different things for different people. Some people learn by doing, some by watching, some by thinking, some by not thinking. I read whatever interests me, or things that people who interest me suggest I read, or simply whatever arrives near me, and I try to be as attentive as I can. I try to stay awake.”

13 DAMIEN WILKINS When Famous People Come to Town (essay) Four Winds Press 2002 Chemistry (novel) Victoria University Press 2002 Nineteen Widows Under Ash (novel) Victoria University Press 2000 Little Masters (novel) Victoria University Press 1996 The Miserables (novel) Victoria University Press 1993 The Idles (poetry) Victoria University Press 1993 The Veteran Perils (short fiction) Heinemann Reid 1990

“It took the great American writer William Faulkner six weeks to write his novel As I Lay Dying. (Usually it takes a writer two or more years to finish a book.) But it’s not just the speed I admire. When I first read As I Lay Dying, I was still a long way from publishing my own stuff. Probably I thought there were lots of rules attached to writing. Faulkner’s book was nuts! It had a diagram of a coffin in the middle of one page. Another chapter consisted, in its entirety, of the following sentence: ‘My mother is a fish.’ And this was from 1929! Suddenly anything seemed possible.

“I’ve never read Persuasion by Jane Austen, though some critics think it’s one of the great novels. In fact, I’ve never read anything by Jane Austen, except Mansfield Park, which I had to read for university. Every so often I promise myself, this year I’m reading all of Jane Austen – because I’m sure she’s completely wonderful. And I never do. What is the problem with me and Jane Austen? Maybe next year …

“When I was beginning to write, I read a lot of interviews with writers. Sometimes they said strange things, such as ‘Never use a semi-colon’. Hunt out the Paris Review Writers at Work series. They’re full of mad pronouncements, and inspiring stuff too.”

DONNA WRIGHT Mumbo Gumbo (novel) Random House 2004 Spinning the Bottle (novel) Random House 2001

“I wish I had written Haiti: Best Nightmare on Earth by Herbert Gold. It’s an autobiographical account of a US journalist’s time living in Haiti during the fifties when people like Noel Coward and Truman Capote used to hang out there, and about the bloody ensuing Duvalier years. Gold completely immersed himself in Haiti and its culture, producing a fascinating account of his time there. What an interesting life I would have had if I was (were?) Gold.

“I’m avoiding reading Master of the Crossroads by Madison Smartt Bell, the second in a trilogy of the Haitian Revolution. Why? The darkest side of human nature portrayed in the first book, All Souls’ Rising, so profoundly depressed me that I’m too scared to read any more.

“A beginning writer should read Lonely Planet [insert country].”

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