INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MODERN LETTERS Te P¯utahi Tuhi Auaha o te Ao Newsletter – 21 November 2011 ISSN: 1178-9441 This is the 175th in a series of occasional newsletters from the Victoria University centre of the International Institute of Modern Letters. For more information about any of the items, please email modernletters. 1. A real e-book ........................................................................................................... 1 2. Making Baby Float ................................................................................................. 2 3. Bernard Beckett ....................................................................................................... 2 4. A possible Janet Frame sighting? ........................................................................... 2 5. A poetry masterclass ................................................................................................ 3 6. Awards and prizes ................................................................................................... 3 7. Eric Olsen meets the muse ..................................................................................... 3 8. The expanding bookshelf......................................................................................... 4 9. Best New Zealand Poems ....................................................................................... 4 10. Peter Campbell RIP ............................................................................................. 4 11. Gossipy bits ............................................................................................................ 5 12. Tattooed poet at Lembas ....................................................................................... 5 13. Writing space in downtown Wellington .............................................................. 5 14. Recent web reading ............................................................................................... 5 15. Great lists of our time (1) ..................................................................................... 6 16. Great lists of our time (2) ..................................................................................... 8 _____________________________________________________________________ 1. A real e-book It's been a while a-coming, but at last it's on its way. The Exercise Book is now at the printers, and will be widely available in December. Big thanks to all our distinguished contributors – their generosity means that any profits from the book will go into the IIML's scholarship fund. We have immortalised them as a Great List later in this newsletter. We're also about to launch a blog, based around The Exercise Book, which will offer 1 regular thoughts about writing and the teaching of writing. We aim to post a range of exercises from the book itself, but we also have a lot of other stuff stashed away, and we'll be bringing some of that into the light, too. More on this next time - and via our Twitter account. 2. Making Baby Float The Making Baby Float project finally makes its way into the world with a CD (with bonus DVD) via a launch at St Andrews on the Terrace at 6.00 pm this Thursday. Here’s more about the launch. And here’s more about the album and the original show. And you can see and hear the title track here. 3. Bernard Beckett We're a little late with the news, though we did tweet it happily a couple of weeks ago: our 2012 Writer in Residence will be the YA author Bernard Beckett. He is best know for his novel Genesis, but is also the author of Falling for Science: Asking the Big Questions (2007), a non-fiction exploration of the relationship between story- telling and science. During the year Bernard will be working on a new novel, Lullaby. We're especially pleased because a) we know he'll be very good company and b) we've always been very proud of our Children's Writing workshop, led by Eirlys Hunter. 4. A possible Janet Frame sighting? Literary spies of our acquaintance recently visited the St James Station woolshed, a huge 1870s structure, pit-sawn timbers, on the banks of the Clarence River, North Canterbury. The interior is full of shearers' graffiti - names carved, stencilled and written, dating from 1877 to 2008. Writes our correspondent: 'Among the shearers' stencilled graffiti, by a ladder leading to the loft, I found "J. Frame. 1940 41". This was written in red sheep raddle in a cursive style, below it in capital letters was "J. FRAME. 1940" and below that also in the red sheep raddle which is unique in the graffiti, "Pte Adams 1940 OAMARU" and below that deeply carved in half inch letters was "J. FRAME. 1940". Could this be Janet Frame at 16?' Our verdict? Could be. 2 5. A poetry masterclass In a first for New Zealand, Bill Manhire will lead a public poetry masterclass at next year's Writers and Readers Week. Three budding poets will join him on the rostrum at the Embassy Theatre and have their poems workshopped before the festival audience. Bill has led similar masterclasses in the UK, at Scotland's STANZA poetry festival and at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. If you'd like to be considered, there's more information here. 6. Awards and prizes Congratulations to Rosabel Tan, of this year’s MA programme, who has taken first prize from a field of 42 entries in the inaugural NZSA Asian Short Story Award for her story Paper Butterflies. Her prize of $3,000 was awarded at a ceremony in Auckland on Friday evening. It was announced on Saturday at Dunedin's ScienceTeller Festival that Helen Heath has won the inaugural ScienceTeller Prize. Our congratulations - Helen completed the MA with us in 2009, and we now await her first full collection of poems which will be published next year by VUP. A chapbook, Watching for Smoke, appeared last year from Seraph Press http://www.seraphpress.co.nz/watching.html Congratulations to Tina Makereti who has won the first-ever Fiction award for Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa, Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards . Tina's winning book began life as her MA thesis at the IIML, and she has continued with us as a PhD candidate, working on a novel that explores the history of Rēkohu. Congratulations, too, to Eleanor Catton who takes up the 2012 University of Auckland residency at the Michael King Writers’ Centre. The winners of the Royal Society's Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing were named at last week's Research Honours dinner. For the first time both categories - fiction and non-fiction - were won by scientists. Congratulations to Susanna Gendall (MA class) – second place in the Takahe Poetry Competition, and third place in Sunday Star-Times Short Story Award. She also has a new baby. Big year! And we were very pleased to see novelist Raj Chakraborti (MA supervisor) as runner-up in the same competition. And Catherine Chidgey's off to Foxton. Stop Press: It’s just been announced that Emma Neale has won the $16,000 Kathleen Grattan Award for her collection of poems, The Truth Garden. More here. 7. Eric Olsen meets the muse We rather liked this recent take on inspiration and the writing experience, from 3 Eric Olsen as posted on Writerhead. Eric is co-editor of We Wanted to Be Writers, a beautifully choreographed selection of interviews with graduates of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. 'You’re standing by the side of a two-lane country road out in the middle of nowhere, thumb out, waiting for a ride, and along comes a 1957 Cadillac convertible, pink, and driving it is a beautiful young woman (the Muse, of course), and she pulls over and tells you to get in, and you ask, “Where you heading?” and she says, “We’ll see.” So you get in and you’re not sure where you’re going but you don’t care because it’s wonderful to go along for the ride, and you settle back into that plush leather seat and watch the countryside flow past through half-closed eyes. But it doesn’t last long. Just as you’re getting comfy, the beautiful young woman pulls off the road and parks in front of a rundown one-pump gas station with a big, faded Coca Cola sign on top and goes inside, and a couple minutes later she comes out with a bag of butter-toffee peanuts. She tosses the car keys to you and tells you to drive. She gets in on the passenger side and opens the bag and starts eating the peanuts. She doesn’t offer you any. You’re driving now, but you have no idea where you’re going.' 8. The expanding bookshelf Joan Fleming's first book was launched last Friday. Rachel Bush's new book was launched last Monday. Paula Morris talks to Lynn Freeman about Rangatira the novel based on her ancestor Paratene Te Manu Barbara Strang's new (earthquake-interrupted book) has now been launched by novelist and poet Helen Lowe. 4th Floor 2011 has just been launched. Quite a few people we know in there. 9. Best New Zealand Poems Submissions for the 2011 issue of Best New Zealand Poems close on December 19th. All the information publishers and poets need is here. The 2011 editor is Bernadette Hall. You can check out the Best New Zealand Poems website and you can read about the book of the website, The Best of Best New Zealand Poems, here. 10. Peter Campbell RIP Like many others, we were very sad to hear of the recent death of Peter Campbell. Peter was one of New Zealand's best kept export secrets – a Victoria graduate who became a significant writer and artist, best-known to most of us through his work for the London Review of Books. There is a nice story about his birth which may be, as they say, too good to check, but you will find it