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Writers on Mondays
Media Release
For three months from mid-July each year, the International Institute of Modern Letters, home of Victoria University’s renowned creative writing programme, runs a series of events highlighting writers active in and around Wellington as well as guests from further afield. In 2006 the popular series returns to City Gallery Wellington to brighten up the start of the week.
A strong season of poetry starts with 12 of the best: 11 Wellington poets whose work appears in Best New Zealand Poems 05 read their work on 17 July, followed a week later by Auckland art writer and poet Wystan Curnow, whose work also appears in the anthology. The focus shifts briefly to film as Taika Waititi and Loren Horsley preview their upcoming feature Eagle vs. Shark, then there’s a trip back in time to the literature of ‘Maoriland’. There are flying visits from Dublin and Bluff by a physicist who’s also a poet (Professor Iggy McGovern), and a poet with a long-standing interest in physics (Cilla McQueen). Canterbury poet Bernadette Hall lets us in on her work in progress as Victoria University Writer in Residence, and then we offer a glimpse of the future with four events that showcase the e merging talent of the MA (Script and Page) programme at the IIML. The Next Page and Short/Sharp/Script events have always been among the liveliest and most enjoyable in the series, and a great way to get a taste of writers you’re likely to hear more from. The series concludes with two visitors bringing news from across the Tasman – Adelaide writers Ken Bolton and Cath Kenneally wrap up in style.
Writers on Mondays is a stimulating way to start the working week – and it’s free!
All Writers on Mondays events take place at City Gallery Wellington, Civic Square, 1pm. Admission free.
For three months from mid-July each year, the International Institute of Modern Letters, home of Victoria University’s renowned creative writing programme, runs a series of events highlighting writers active in and around Wellington as well as guests from further afield. In 2006 the popular series returns to City Gallery Wellington to brighten up the start of the week.
A strong season of poetry starts with 12 of the best: 11 Wellington poets whose work appears in Best New Zealand Poems 05 read their work on 17 July, followed a week later by Auckland art writer and poet Wystan Curnow, whose work also appears in the anthology. The focus shifts briefly to film as Taika Waititi and Loren Horsley preview their upcoming feature Eagle vs. Shark, then there’s a trip back in time to the literature of ‘Maoriland’. There are flying visits from Dublin and Bluff by a physicist who’s also a poet (Professor Iggy McGovern), and a poet with a long-standing interest in physics (Cilla McQueen). Canterbury poet Bernadette Hall lets us in on her work in progress as Victoria University Writer in Residence, and then we offer a glimpse of the future with four events that showcase the e merging talent of the MA (Script and Page) programme at the IIML. The Next Page and Short/Sharp/Script events have always been among the liveliest and most enjoyable in the series, and a great way to get a taste of writers you’re likely to hear more from. The series concludes with two visitors bringing news from across the Tasman – Adelaide writers Ken Bolton and Cath Kenneally wrap up in style.
Writers on Mondays is a stimulating way to start the working week – and it’s free!
All Writers on Mondays events take place at City Gallery Wellington, Civic Square, 1pm. Admission free.
PROGRAMME
17 July: Best New Zealand Poems 05
In the lead-up to Montana National Poetry Day, 11 poets put their best feet forward at City Gallery Wellington to kick off the 2006 Writers on Mondays series. Michele Amas, Angela Andrews, Jenny Bornholdt, James Brown, Geoff Cochrane, Mary Cresswell, Anna Livesey, Stephanie de Montalk, Gregory O’Brien, Vivienne Plumb and Ian Wedde read work chosen by editor Andrew Johnston for the anthology of Best New Zealand Poems 05 (www.vuw.ac.nz/modernletters/bnzp). The readings are chaired by Bill Manhire, whose book Lifted appears on this year’s Montana Poetry Award shortlist.
24 July: Modern Colours: Wystan Curnow
Art curator and writer Wystan Curnow also features on the Best New Zealand Poems 05 hit-list for 2004 and 2005 with work from his recent collection Modern Colours, in which he nimbly re-imagines the world of early modernist painters. Over his many years as a commentator on New Zealand art and culture and as a cultural practitioner himself, Curnow has never been content to stay within the boundaries of the ‘ruling forms’. He will read from and discuss his work with Wellington art writer and Playmarket director Mark Amery.
31 July: Eagle vs. Shark – Taika Waititi & Loren Horsley
Taika Waititi has been an actor, comedian, painter, photographer, writer and (perhaps most famously) director of the Oscar-nominated short film Two Cars, One Night and the internationally acclaimed Tama Tu. Actor/director Loren Horsley has appeared in Insiders Guide to Happiness, The Strip and Kombi Nation, and shares the writing credit with Waititi for the forthcoming feature film Eagle vs Shark. They talk about the experience of making their debut feature with filmmaker and lecturer Lee-Jane Bennion-Nixon.
7 August: ‘Maoriland’ revisited – Jane Stafford & Mark Williams
The literature of Maoriland, as New Zealand was popularly known from the 1880s to the beginning of the First World War, remains the ‘black hole’ in New Zealand’s literary memory. In the 1930s Allen Curnow and Denis Glover associated the Maoriland writers with sentiment, gentility and colonial deference, their world one in which Maori warriors in heroic attitudes and Maori maidens in seductive ones inhabited outmoded Victorian literary forms, while at the same time the business of settlement sidelined and dispossessed actual Maori. Jane Stafford and Mark Williams argue for a more complex reading of our early literature. They are introduced by publisher Fergus Barrowman.
14 August: The King of Suburbia – Iggy McGovern
Iggy McGovern is an associate professor of physics at Trinity College Dublin, where he researches the structural and electronic properties of semiconductor surfaces. He is also a witty, playful poet whose first collection, The King of Suburbia appeared in 2005, and was quickly reprinted. The Irish Times reviewer wrote: ‘He’s a master of the ironic, the pun, the innuendo, and such feats of wordplay as will keep a smile on any visage but that of the most incorrigible cynic’. He appears in conversation with Bill Manhire.
21 August: Wind and Fire – Cilla McQueen
Cilla McQueen is a three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for poetry. Her latest work includes a book of poems, Fire Penny, and a CD (A Wind Harp) that features McQueen reading a selection of her work backed by Dunedin musicians The Blue Neutrinos. She was a lynchpin of the poetry symposium held this April in her home town of Bluff, and she flies in from the deep south to perform and discuss her poetry with Bernadette Hall. Presented in association with the New Zealand Poetry Society, with the support of Creative New Zealand.
28 August: The Merino Princess – Bernadette Hall
Bernadette Hall’s selected poems (The Merino Princess) appeared in 2004, and she is the current Victoria University/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence. ‘Hers are poems whose technical finesse resonates and performs,’ writes Vincent O’Sullivan. ‘They are the work of a questing, generous, civilised mind.’ The Canterbury poet and playwright appears in conversation with publisher Fergus Barrowman to discuss recent projects such as her collaboration with sculptor Llew Summers on his controversial (in some quarters) Stations of the Cross and offers a preview of work-in-progress, including a novella with poetry and pictures that she describes as ‘a gothic romance’.
4 September: The Next Page (1)
Our quartet of new work by writers from Victoria University’s MA in Creative Writing begins with readings of fiction, poetry and memoir from Sarah Barnett, Amy Brown, Pip Desmond, Robert Egan, Rebecca Lancashire, Therese Lloyd, Michelle Arithimos, Amanda Samuel, Rachael Schmidt and Nicholas Stanley, chaired by Damien Wilkins.
11 September: The Next Page (2)
Our season of emerging talent continues with another ten writers for the page: this week Craig Cliff, Giovanna Fenster, Tom Fitzsimons, Emma Gallagher, Anna Horsley, Mary Macpherson, Kate Mahony, Lucy Orbell, Sue Orr and Abby Stewart read, chaired by Bill Manhire.
18 September: Short/Sharp/Script (1)
Scriptwriting is in the spotlight this week as professional actors give rehearsed readings from plays by writers taking the MA (Script) workshop, chaired by Ken Duncum. Five scripts, one lunch-hour, and always one of our fastest-moving and most unpredictable events! This session features work by Veialu Aila-Unsworth, Mike Borgfeldt, Sam Bradford, Katie Conaglen and Ben Hutchison.
25 September: Short/Sharp/Script (2)
This week five more scripts are given the once-over by the actors and director. Edwin McRae, Branwen Millar, Rebekah Palmer, Benedict Reid and Brendon Simpson are the writers whose work is performed.
2 October: Two Australian writers – Ken Bolton & Cath Kenneally
Ken Bolton and Cath Kenneally last performed in Wellington at Writers and Readers Week ten years ago. Since then Cath has continued to work as an arts broadcaster and has published more poetry and a novel (Room Temperature) about memory, time, and the struggle to break away from a vicious family cycle of abuse. Ken Bolton’s energetic output as a poet, art critic, publisher, and editor continues unabated with Little Esther Books and Adelaide’s Lee Marvin Reading series. He also manages the Dark Horsey Bookshop at Adelaide’s Experimental Arts Foundation. Cath & Ken update us on their work in readings and conversation with Gregory O’Brien.
17 July: Best New Zealand Poems 05
In the lead-up to Montana National Poetry Day, 11 poets put their best feet forward at City Gallery Wellington to kick off the 2006 Writers on Mondays series. Michele Amas, Angela Andrews, Jenny Bornholdt, James Brown, Geoff Cochrane, Mary Cresswell, Anna Livesey, Stephanie de Montalk, Gregory O’Brien, Vivienne Plumb and Ian Wedde read work chosen by editor Andrew Johnston for the anthology of Best New Zealand Poems 05 (www.vuw.ac.nz/modernletters/bnzp). The readings are chaired by Bill Manhire, whose book Lifted appears on this year’s Montana Poetry Award shortlist.
24 July: Modern Colours: Wystan Curnow
Art curator and writer Wystan Curnow also features on the Best New Zealand Poems 05 hit-list for 2004 and 2005 with work from his recent collection Modern Colours, in which he nimbly re-imagines the world of early modernist painters. Over his many years as a commentator on New Zealand art and culture and as a cultural practitioner himself, Curnow has never been content to stay within the boundaries of the ‘ruling forms’. He will read from and discuss his work with Wellington art writer and Playmarket director Mark Amery.
31 July: Eagle vs. Shark – Taika Waititi & Loren Horsley
Taika Waititi has been an actor, comedian, painter, photographer, writer and (perhaps most famously) director of the Oscar-nominated short film Two Cars, One Night and the internationally acclaimed Tama Tu. Actor/director Loren Horsley has appeared in Insiders Guide to Happiness, The Strip and Kombi Nation, and shares the writing credit with Waititi for the forthcoming feature film Eagle vs Shark. They talk about the experience of making their debut feature with filmmaker and lecturer Lee-Jane Bennion-Nixon.
7 August: ‘Maoriland’ revisited – Jane Stafford & Mark Williams
The literature of Maoriland, as New Zealand was popularly known from the 1880s to the beginning of the First World War, remains the ‘black hole’ in New Zealand’s literary memory. In the 1930s Allen Curnow and Denis Glover associated the Maoriland writers with sentiment, gentility and colonial deference, their world one in which Maori warriors in heroic attitudes and Maori maidens in seductive ones inhabited outmoded Victorian literary forms, while at the same time the business of settlement sidelined and dispossessed actual Maori. Jane Stafford and Mark Williams argue for a more complex reading of our early literature. They are introduced by publisher Fergus Barrowman.
14 August: The King of Suburbia – Iggy McGovern
Iggy McGovern is an associate professor of physics at Trinity College Dublin, where he researches the structural and electronic properties of semiconductor surfaces. He is also a witty, playful poet whose first collection, The King of Suburbia appeared in 2005, and was quickly reprinted. The Irish Times reviewer wrote: ‘He’s a master of the ironic, the pun, the innuendo, and such feats of wordplay as will keep a smile on any visage but that of the most incorrigible cynic’. He appears in conversation with Bill Manhire.
21 August: Wind and Fire – Cilla McQueen
Cilla McQueen is a three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for poetry. Her latest work includes a book of poems, Fire Penny, and a CD (A Wind Harp) that features McQueen reading a selection of her work backed by Dunedin musicians The Blue Neutrinos. She was a lynchpin of the poetry symposium held this April in her home town of Bluff, and she flies in from the deep south to perform and discuss her poetry with Bernadette Hall. Presented in association with the New Zealand Poetry Society, with the support of Creative New Zealand.
28 August: The Merino Princess – Bernadette Hall
Bernadette Hall’s selected poems (The Merino Princess) appeared in 2004, and she is the current Victoria University/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence. ‘Hers are poems whose technical finesse resonates and performs,’ writes Vincent O’Sullivan. ‘They are the work of a questing, generous, civilised mind.’ The Canterbury poet and playwright appears in conversation with publisher Fergus Barrowman to discuss recent projects such as her collaboration with sculptor Llew Summers on his controversial (in some quarters) Stations of the Cross and offers a preview of work-in-progress, including a novella with poetry and pictures that she describes as ‘a gothic romance’.
4 September: The Next Page (1)
Our quartet of new work by writers from Victoria University’s MA in Creative Writing begins with readings of fiction, poetry and memoir from Sarah Barnett, Amy Brown, Pip Desmond, Robert Egan, Rebecca Lancashire, Therese Lloyd, Michelle Arithimos, Amanda Samuel, Rachael Schmidt and Nicholas Stanley, chaired by Damien Wilkins.
11 September: The Next Page (2)
Our season of emerging talent continues with another ten writers for the page: this week Craig Cliff, Giovanna Fenster, Tom Fitzsimons, Emma Gallagher, Anna Horsley, Mary Macpherson, Kate Mahony, Lucy Orbell, Sue Orr and Abby Stewart read, chaired by Bill Manhire.
18 September: Short/Sharp/Script (1)
Scriptwriting is in the spotlight this week as professional actors give rehearsed readings from plays by writers taking the MA (Script) workshop, chaired by Ken Duncum. Five scripts, one lunch-hour, and always one of our fastest-moving and most unpredictable events! This session features work by Veialu Aila-Unsworth, Mike Borgfeldt, Sam Bradford, Katie Conaglen and Ben Hutchison.
25 September: Short/Sharp/Script (2)
This week five more scripts are given the once-over by the actors and director. Edwin McRae, Branwen Millar, Rebekah Palmer, Benedict Reid and Brendon Simpson are the writers whose work is performed.
2 October: Two Australian writers – Ken Bolton & Cath Kenneally
Ken Bolton and Cath Kenneally last performed in Wellington at Writers and Readers Week ten years ago. Since then Cath has continued to work as an arts broadcaster and has published more poetry and a novel (Room Temperature) about memory, time, and the struggle to break away from a vicious family cycle of abuse. Ken Bolton’s energetic output as a poet, art critic, publisher, and editor continues unabated with Little Esther Books and Adelaide’s Lee Marvin Reading series. He also manages the Dark Horsey Bookshop at Adelaide’s Experimental Arts Foundation. Cath & Ken update us on their work in readings and conversation with Gregory O’Brien.
