Janna Levin at AWF 2016: Gravitational Sensations

Looks like Gareth from Digital Services did well in his choice of AWF session -- and also in writing it up for us! Here's his definitely not-boring post:

Janna Levin's talk was a nice break from the usual panel discussions and one-on-one interviews that customarily fill up the schedule of a book festival. Instead she presented an audience-friendly lecture on modern physics - in particular the recent breakthrough recording of gravitational waves washing over the planet earth from the collision of two black holes in a distant galaxy.

Sound boring? Fortunately it wasn't, since Levin chose her metaphors wisely and had plenty of video clips to bring her monologue to life. Though you might have to excuse my ignorance as I breeze over the highlights of her talk (without much knowledge of physics to back me up!).

Levin spent the first half of the lecture just trying to open up the audience's mind to what gravity actually involves. Rather than being an all-powerful force that holds us to the ground, she asked us to imagine first that our natural state was weightlessness - it was actually the objects in our way (the ground beneath our feet) which stopped us drifting in one direction or another. To illustrate this point, she played a segment of an OK Go music video, which was filmed on an airplane in free-fall, allowing the band to move about in weightless suspension:



It was nice to have moments of levity like this, though her point was more subtle - she was gradually building a picture in our minds of Einstein's view of physics, which portrays gravity as curves in space-time that gradually pull on our otherwise weightless position. Hence, if you are in an airplane traveling at the same speed as this pull, you achieve the zero gravity as in the video above.

All this was a nice prelude to the actual subject of her talk - the scientific attempt to record the gravitational waves that hold us down - a subject covered in more detail in her book, Black Hole Blues and other Songs From Outer Space. It follows the path from Einstein's first theory of gravity through to the creation of one of the world's most sensitive scientific measurement instruments, which was created specifically to test one of the predictions of the theory. In particular, Einstein's theory suggested that a large enough cataclysm in the universe might cause a ripple big enough to "pluck" the gravitational curves that cross over our own planet.

In order to record such an event, scientists created LIGO - a four-kilometre long section of concrete pipe, with lasers running between tiny mirrors at each end, which would then be able to track a movement in the earth's gravitational field. In fact, there were two sister sites - each on opposite coasts of the US, so any instantaneous changes could be detected. The price tag? A cool US$620 million!

Fortunately they actually achieved their goal late last year and announced their finding in February of this year! You can hear their result in the following little clip - a fairly unassuming little sound for all the build up Levin had given it!




What is possibly more interesting to the lay reader is the personal stories of the scientists who made this discovery possible. The first idea for this experiment came in the fifties and it has taken decades of argument to convince the wider scientific field that such an experiment was useful or even likely.
Levin has the skill to interweave the science and the story of the scientists together in a way that is very approachable to a general audience and hence her talk made me very keen to check out one of her many books.

It was great to see that she also had quite some skills at handling left-field questions from the audience. In the midst of a run of serious questioners, one chap stood up and asked how it was that a beautiful woman such as herself decided to get into the unusual career of astrophysicist.

There were jeers from the audience, but Levin simply smiled and said that it was better that such ideas were brought out into the open, given that some members of our society do believe that a women's main goal is to be beautiful. In contrast, she said her parents were feminists and that she therefore didn't believe in such a goal from the outset. Her response was a final display of her sharp intelligence, which is able to cut through to the truth of the matter no matter how complicated or how banal!

-- Gareth

Fiona Farrell, Brian Turner and Joe Bennett in "Another country?" at AWF 2016

Is the South Island "another country"? Carolyn from Regional Collections knew there would be no one answer from the panellists at the eponymous AWF session, but also that all the answers would be interesting. She tells us about them here:

Brian Turner (photo: Declan Wong)

I joined the long queue of people waiting to hear Fiona Farrell, Brian Turner and Joe Bennett talk about what it is like being a South Islander in a country where they are a minority (only 23% of the population) with some trepidation - I was born and bred in Auckland, but know from living in Hamilton for 12 years that Aucklanders are often the butt of cruel jokes from those living south of the Bombay Hills, let alone the Mainland. However, I was eager to attend, largely due to a long-standing respect and love for the artistry and intelligence of Southern wordsmiths and artists. Moreover, as a teenager I found refuge, enlightenment and entertainment in the works of many Te Wai Pounamu writers including Ruth Dallas, Keri Hulme, Owen Marshall and Janet Frame.

The session commenced with a brief introduction by the chair, Jesse Mulligan (a Hamiltonian), followed by readings.

The first reader was Fiona Farrell, born in Oamaru but now predominantly living in Christchurch. She read an excerpt from her latest book, The Village at the Edge of the Empire (2015), which was shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. This factual work, the first of a planned two volumes of which the second will be fictional, looks at the rebuilding of a city (in this case Christchurch) and explores the themes of nostalgia and lost landscapes. She encouraged the audience to bask in the familiarity of local places like their corner dairy. She knows from bitter experience that you never know when they might be gone.

Brian Turner (born in Dunedin), poet, author, environmentalist and an expert in many fields including rabbiting, cycling, playing hockey (he played hockey for New Zealand in the 1960’s) and mountaineering – took the floor next. He is also by his own admission a political being and is not shy about chastising the North for its culpability in the ‘despoliation’ of the South in the name of progress (the proposal for increased daily helicopter landings on Mt. Tutoko Glacier and the trend towards lifestyle blocks were among those cited). He read an extract from his book: Boundaries: people and places of Central Otago and then quoted environmentalist Paul Kingsworth in The Guardian online (17 August 2009):

“Yet very few of us are prepared to look honestly at the message this reality is screaming at us: that the civilisation we are a part of is hitting the buffers at full speed, and it is too late to stop it. Instead, most of us – and I include in this generalisation much of the mainstream environmental movement – are still wedded to a vision of the future as an upgraded version of the present….”

Turner also referenced A short history of progress by Ronald Wright from The Massey Lectures (2004) in which the author discusses the impact of technology, population and consumerism on nature. In closing, Turner quoted from Margaret Atwood’s Payback: “Nature is calling in her debt, and nature calls last.”

The final reader was Joe Bennett, born in England, but who has lived in New Zealand since 1987 and who now resides, with his dog, in Lyttelton. He continued Turner's theme, asking the audience to indicate if they believed that the human species would be around in a million years. No one raised their hand.

Bennett believes that the South is not visceral to home, but that through reading and literature we know we are not alone. He read from the short story ‘Cabernet Sauvignon with my brother’ by Owen Marshall.

After the readings, throughout the session, Jesse Mulligan acted as Devil’s advocate, asking the panel a series of provocative questions, including:

"Why don’t you move to Auckland?"

Turner replied that he panicked too easily to live in Auckland, and that although he enjoyed walking around cities he needed to hear the silence and sounds of the open country and breathe in proper air. For him two of the most affecting words in the English language are love and home, and home is where the heart is. Fiona Farrell commented that she loved the diversity of New Zealand and that she split her time between Christchurch and a beach in the Banks Peninsula. She also mentioned her strong bond with Oamaru and in particular the limestone cliffs, which had deep historical significance and gave her a sense of belonging. Lastly Joe Bennett noted that it had never crossed his mind to move to Auckland, sharing an entertaining story of how he came to live and work as a teacher in the South Island.

Discussion continued about the unbalanced portrayal of the South Island in the media – that it was often depicted in a patronising manner as a beautiful place, not often visited and that even the word “South” had negative connotations – as it is always referring to down (Down South). One of the panellists mentioned how one of our most widely-read national magazines failed to properly cover the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquake, instead focusing on public health and other miscellaneous issues.

"Is there a South Island personality?"

Brian Turner began by saying yes and referred to the poem ‘Country Pub”. He described Southerners as being more taciturn than their northern counterparts, and more pessimistic, but genuine – they listen with sincerity and are more humble and less expressive (although he did concede that some of these expressions can relate to other people besides those from the South Island).  Later he read out examples from a list given to him by his son which include a few disparaging characteristics his son attributes to Aucklanders, such as that Aucklanders are condescending and disconnected…. Hmm…. 

Fiona Farrell then talked of clichés about the South Island, and gave the example of television advertisements that use the image of the South as a natural paradise to push their products. She mentioned one cheese advert in particular, where the beautiful lake depicted was in reality a toxic wasteland in need of urgent care. She added that there is a myth about the South which is comforting to urbanites, but that we must all fight to keep the clichés a reality.

As always Joe Bennett added a bit of humour and common ground to the discussion. He began his response with a few rhetorical questions. Are South Islanders grumpier than North Islanders? Are the two islands becoming more homogenous? He believes that New Zealand is less dogmatic than some countries about what our distinct characteristics are, and he believes that it is not necessary a bad thing. New Zealand is an immigrant, multicultural country, as evidenced by Auckland City. He said he did not want to make generalisations about the North or South, believing there were no distinctive differences between them.

The discussion moved to Southland art and artists, and exhibitions important to them. Graham Sydney and Tom Fields were mentioned several times, and also the rock drawings on the limestone outcrops in South Canterbury. Jesse Mulligan asked what the South Island offers the artist. Fiona Farrell talked about the positive impact of low rents in Dunedin and the resulting artistic output. Joe Bennett mentioned that he didn’t have a particular artist in mind but mused on the possibility of someone capturing the vista of Burke’s Pass in painting.

The session concluded with questions from the floor and it was here that Brian Turner confided that it was James K. Baxter‘s poetry that inspired him to start writing.

At the end of the session, Jesse Mulligan asked the audience if they thought you could still be a Southerner and live in Auckland. Many raised their hands.

I stepped out into the familiar space that is Aotea Square feeling a little chastened, enlightened, challenged, and irritated. Not bad for a one hour gathering.

-- Carolyn

Jeanette Winterson at AWF 2016: The Gap of Time

Renée from our Sir George Grey Special Collections spent Sunday morning in the company of Jeanette Winterson and... over a thousand fellow Winterson enthusiasts gathered in the ASB Theatre. Here's "The Winterson's Tale" as told by Renée:

Well, Jeanette was amazing.

It was a sunny and fresh Sunday morning and the festival atmosphere was suitably sparkly out on the café terraces, but the crowds were nevertheless eager to get inside to hear Jeanette Winterson talk about her latest book, The Gap of Time. But this was no ordinary talk – and I’ve had this confirmed from Festival goers more experienced than myself – Jeanette’s event was really more of a performance, and a wonderfully engaging and uplifting one too.

She appeared onstage alone, sans interviewer and comfy chairs, to Cyndi Lauper’s "Time after Time". Next came some thundery audio snippets of what must have been Leontes raging in The Winter's Tale – a little hard to follow, to be honest, but I forgave it because I knew her novel is a retelling of the play and we all love Shakespeare in Auckland right now. And then she began to talk about Shakespeare, in a wonderfully anecdotal, digressive, and poetic way, about why The Winter’s Tale was the only possible choice of plays for her to retell in the Hogarth Shakespeare series. Because of her own adoptive history; because it has an abandoned baby “at the shining centre of it”.

So she talked about Shakespeare, and how he also loved to rework and re-tell his stories, and how in The Winter’s Tale he takes the themes of betrayal, revenge and tragedy from Othello and King Lear and instead of devastation and loss, creates an opportunity for the restoration of love through forgiveness.

And then she read from the book, and at first I found it odd, because the Jeanette Winterson I remember loving as a teenager was all poetic and oblique (think The Passion and Sexing the Cherry) but this was an action scene, set in a fictional New Orleans, with tyres squealing and gunshots. And with onstage sound effects! Surprising, but she really did bring it to life.

And that was just the fish-hook. What she read next (Chapter Two) was a perfect description of love and loss as experienced by the narrator: the life-changing experience of a first baby and the impossible fact of his wife dying. I cried, and if you’ve loved or experienced grief you might have too.

After that it was questions, which Jeanette also somehow managed to make transcend the ordinary. The first one asked about Shakespeare and how difficult was it to turn the high drama of the play into a novel. Jeanette cleverly used this as a jumping-off point for another passionate monologue, about the importance of language in allowing us to express our thoughts and feelings “because when we can’t find the words, that’s when we really struggle”. Woven into this was the importance of education…. and so she brought it back to Shakespeare, whose work gives us the big words and the big stories, so we can give voice to our big thoughts and feelings.

It was clear to me that what I was enjoying was a pretty polished performance - after all I’d heard Jeannette herself deliver some of the same lines in her radio interview with Kim Hill just the week before. But this didn’t diminish the experience at all. She came across as a smart, funny, sincere and feeling person, and she inspired her Sunday morning devotees to a standing ovation.

-- Renée 

Michel Faber at AWF 2016: "Strangely Human"

Todd from Central City Library chose Michel Faber's session, 'Strangely human'. Here's his account:

 

As I watched the irreverent author Paula Morris – here in her role as interviewer – struggle to attach the battery pack of her over-the-ear microphone to her person, I noticed that the two chairs and table that furnished the stage were positioned between two giant potted plants. Faber sat down in his chair and clasped his hands across his lap and waited for Morris who found her seat still clutching the battery pack. When she remarked that the blame for her blunder lay squarely with the one-piece dress she was wearing, I could’ve been forgiven for believing that the ‘Between Two Ferns’ universe I’d just stepped into was quips all the way down.

Yes, the quips did come – mostly from Morris, who, at one point, went to that ANZAC place Kiwis inevitably go when they come face-to-face with an Australian (Netherlands-born Faber did a stint in The Lucky Country before moving to Scotland with his late wife Eva). I don’t recall the specifics of the jibe but something about Australia’s convict past comes to mind.

Faber, good-natured and warm, went along with this, as he did with all of Morris’s questioning. In fact, what became quite clear to me during the hour-long interview was just how good-natured and warm Faber was. Sure, he’d written numerous well-loved books and short story collections (his first novel Under the Skin was published in 1998 and adapted for the screen in 2014) and much had been made of them (Faber’s publisher urged him to apply for British residency to be eligible for the Booker Prize pending the release of his critically-acclaimed tome The Crimson Petal and the White in 2002). But what I got from Michel Faber was much more than just his writer self; more than the author reading (quite entertainingly) from his most recent – and stated, last – novel, The Book of Strange New Things.

We got deep into the world of Faber: his time spent as a nurse; his attitude to religion (he’s non-religious but fascinated by what religion provides for people in times of “un-endable grief and suffering and nightmare”); insight into his marriage to Eva with anecdotes including one about Scotland’s constant cloud cover being the couple’s dream weather scenario; his pastime of composing music, and even the existential wall he hit during the Abbott era in Australia, when he questioned literature’s ability to bring about meaningful change in the world, when no one with any real power seemed to read or value reading.

Fortunately for the book lovers of the world, Michel Faber worked through this crisis of faith. He mentioned that he now believed literature’s value lay in its ability to affect the reader in modest ways like in the quiet of an afternoon. None of this sounded trite or maudlin passing Faber’s lips. Nor was it saccharine when he read three heartrending poems from his forthcoming poetry collection, Undying, about his life with Eva just before she died from cancer in 2014, to an audience of complete strangers. I can say without a doubt that Paula Morris’s tears weren’t the only ones shed in the room. The tenderness of this final five minutes was sanctioned by everyone present – no doubt due, in big part, to the openness and affability of this former recluse named Michel Faber.

As the session concluded, Faber hugged Paula Morris, and I thought about how good he is at the end. About when I read the final sentence of The Book of Strange New Things, exactly the kind of asphyctic line that made the time spent inhabiting the world of the novel worth it – even if it was only in the quiet of an afternoon.

--Todd

John Boyne at AWF 2016: The narrative of history

Chelsea from Central City Library is a huge reader of YA fiction and her mission for AWF 2016 was to see John Boyne and Michael Grant. Here's number one accomplished:

As way of introduction to this stand-out event which had quickly sold out its smaller venue and been relocated to the ASB Theatre, Guy Somerset read out some harsh criticisms of Boyne, that he is full of himself, and is a 'knob'. This drew laughter, as this smiling, youthful, bald-headed man in his jeans and t-shirt appeared to be quite the opposite of a knob, and indeed spent the next hour proving that criticism wrong.

The Irish accent is undoubtedly the most musically beautiful to listen to, which endears you to Boyne even more. He began by introducing his new collection of short stories, Beneath the Earth. Boyne joked that he had amassed enough good will with his publisher after ten years to be allowed to publish it as short story collections are notoriously risky. His short stories revolve around the unifying themes of betrayal and isolation. Those familiar with his work will know that he does such emotions well and with authenticity.

Somerset asked Boyne a few brief questions about his earlier novels which pleased long-term fans such as myself, and hopefully interested others in reading them. Boyne was not afraid to be himself, switching between talking seriously about which emotions drive his writing to joking about his dislike for Hugh Grant films.

Somerset then moved on to the main feature, Boyne’s 2015 novel A History of Loneliness, set in his native Ireland. Boyne explained that in many small countries, such as Ireland and New Zealand, authors are expected to write about their own countries, in a way we don’t expect from American authors. Boyne refused to, however, until he had a story he felt strongly about, and that came in the form of a novel about child abuse in the Catholic Church. Growing up in the Catholic Church and school system, Boyne comes from a place of knowledge and emotion, and he is not afraid to mention the abuse that he suffered and the resulting impact it had on his life. Because of this, he found that this story just flowed out of him.

Boyne read aloud two extracts from the book, his accent bringing the characters to life. Well adept at reading aloud, he looked up constantly and remained in eye contact with the crowd. The first extract was funny with black humour, the second was extremely sad and shocking, leaving the whole theatre silent. Boyne explained that he wasn’t trying to bring down the church, but rather bring light to this problem, and open a conversation on how it can be stopped. He interviewed many priests for this book, and found that they all suffered from loneliness, going home to empty houses. He wonders if this loneliness lends itself to being perverted into abuse.

He then briefly touched on his books for young people, the most famous being The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Fans will be pleased to hear that a tenth anniversary edition is to be published in November, illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. Many of these novels are set in wartime, as he likes to explore what role children play in war. Characters from ‘The Boy…’ have cameos in his new YA book The Boy at the Top of the Mountain, a quirk he also likes to do with his adult novels.

Finally came question time, the most poignant of them coming from a young woman who, with a trembling voice, admitted that she had been abused as a child. She asked for advice from Boyne on how to deal with her feelings and form relationships. He replied that if you can admit that in front of all these people than you are stronger than you think. Don’t allow those who have hurt you in the past to still have power over you. A sentiment that we can all do with remembering.

-- Chelsea

Jean-Christophe Rufin at AWF 2016: The Immortal Way

Our Research Centres Manager Jane Wild went to hear Jean-Christophe Rufin, doctor, co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontières, former ambassador, prize-winning novelist, and author, most recently, of The Santiago Pilgrimage: walking the immortal way, which I just discovered was subtitled in the original French "Compostela in spite of myself", demonstrating perhaps why we English speakers find ourselves resorting to French to express the concept of  'nuance'. But I don't want to keep you from Jane's interesting and nuanced post about the session. Here it is:

c. Editions Guerin

The capacity crowd in the ASB Theatre grew quiet to focus on two men on the stage. In conversation with Geraint Martin, Jean-Christophe Rufin outlined his personal track to enlightenment along the well-trodden Camino de Santiago. He had the full attention of the masses – many of whom will have been fellow pilgrims, and many of the others, certainly, potential pilgrims.

Rufin took his path following a stint as French Ambassador in Senegal. The lifestyle contrast would have been extreme, but I sense that Rufin possesses a natural level of enlightenment to start with. His accent is beguiling too.

A doctor by training, Rufin explained that the Camino is a virus – “Touch it and you will be contaminated”. The preparation for the walk starts with your backpack. The larger the pack, the more anxieties you are carrying. He was clear -- he didn’t take a water bottle, he didn’t carry a journal and he kept his pack light. His memories are the thoughts which returned, unbidden, once back at home, triggered by the experience he gained.

Here are his three stages on the way:

Step 1 – Focus on your body and most particularly your feet. The walk requires attention to the physical. Walking eight hours a day takes its toll. Sleeping close together does too. The goal each night was to get to sleep before the snorers.

Step 2  -- Observe the places you see and allow this to connect you to the past. This walk has been taken since the ninth century and covers mountains, forests and cathedrals. Rufin chose the more mountainous route to avoid some of the high season's foot traffic.

Step 3 – This occurs when you are on your way as a pilgrim and it takes you by surprise – the simplicity of being in the present and relating to others as fellow pilgrims. Questions on the route are reduced to: “Where did you start the way?” which must be followed by, “How many days?” These may be skewed by human competition – including the taxi after nightfall.

The arrival at the destination must be a shock. St James in the Cathedral is where the trail ends. The lesson learned on arriving at Santiago presents another challenge. The much anticipated arrival – “It is nothing”. The learning gained – “the aim of the way is the way”. For some, this becomes a pause before starting a repeat pilgrimage.

And with this the hour is up, and the lights come up for the inevitable irrelevant question before the thoughtful crowd moves on to their next event and the possibility of the book.

-- Jane  

Herman Koch at AWF 2016: Hearts of Darkness

Ana from Readers Services remembers "The dinner" as one of the reads which got the most thumbs-ups from the members of the Central City Library book club -- it may even have been unanimous, though that doesn't sound like a book club worth its salt, which "her" book club certainly is. Here she tells us about seeing the author of "The dinner" live at the Writers Festival.

author photo credit Mark Kohn, Hollandse Hoogte

Herman Koch came across as really nice, funny, and very natural. From time to time we got little nuggets of information about him. He told us his wife was Spanish, and that when he was in Colombia recently, he saw his books (in Spanish) in the shop windows, and was thrilled. We also learned that he has Asperger's, like some of the protagonists of his novels.

His book The Dinner was introduced by session chair Stephanie Johnson as a satire, and indeed, it is a satire of bourgeois attitudes, and it is brutal. The aspect of autism and Asperger's cropped up immediately and the novel was compared by Johnson to We need to talk about Kevin, as the children (but also the father) obviously lacked empathy and were, like Kevin, completely indifferent to the suffering they inflict on other people. The children in The Dinner don’t take any responsibility for their actions and let their parents arrange everything for them. Furthermore, the parents are delighted to do so.

Herman Koch didn’t really want to elaborate much on the Asperger's aspect. He thinks it is a complex issue and lends itself to misunderstandings. However, there was quite a lot of laughter as Herman Koch confessed he had Asperger's. Apparently he had problems when he was at school and was sent, with his parent’s consent, to a psychologist for a series of sessions. He poured out his feelings and confessions about everything that was bothering him to the psychologist in the first session, but when he phoned for a second appointment, he found out that the psychologist had died.

The discussion passed to his second book Summer House with Swimming Pool, which is even bleaker than The Dinner. Critics labelled it a black comedy. Black comedy and satire seem to be Herman Koch’s trademark. Koch said he had a lot of fun writing it. The doctor in the novel is repulsed by the human body and some critics are saying that the book is making fun of the medical profession. Herman Koch says his doctor was always a bit worried about him, because he is a writer. When Koch finished the novel and went to give him a copy as a present, the doctor told him he had already bought one and read it – he was suspicious of having made an appearance in the book and wanted to check.

The setting of the novel is France, where a Dutch family have bought a house where they go to spend the holidays. The French hate the Dutch: Koch explained that when the Dutch go on holiday they take everything from home - even the potatoes and margarine, so the camping ground managers, as well as everybody else, know they won’t make any money from them.

Koch's latest novel will be released in a few months. It’s called Dear Mr M. and guess what? Its distinctive feature is black humour. As in his other novels, an ominous threat runs all through the book. He describes it as “musings on writing”. Koch does not like the modern or postmodern style of writing where the author calls attention to her or himself, or to the story. They can write well, he says, but the story is not interesting. He goes back to 19th century writers like Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Chekhov where, he says, you are in the story. He thinks the writer should be completely forgotten by the reader.

I found it a bit disappointing that he didn’t elaborate very much on his novels as I would have liked to know his opinion on several passages; but he made up for this by his great sense of humour and simply by being himself.

-- Ana

Auckland Writers Festival Gala Night "True Stories Told Live"

Our first dispatch from the Auckland Writers Festival Ocean Liner! Yes, because every year when I head over from the library to the Aotea Centre where the Gala Night is about to take place, when I see it loom up before me in the dark, all levels ablaze with light and teeming with people, wine glasses in their hands, I'm always reminded of the magical scene in Fellini's Amarcord of the fabled ocean liner Rex passing like a dream in the night, on its way to fabulous places.

Festival Director Anne O'Brien welcomed us all to this 16th Auckland Writers Festival with her usual élan. If last year she had given us a pang with her reading of an excerpt from Oliver Sacks’s essay “My Own Life”, written shortly after his diagnosis of terminal cancer, this year she enticed us with an excerpt from Neil Gaiman’s Fragile things.

“Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas --abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken -- and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.”

The theme for the small stories, eight of them, told to us by eight Festival writers in the True Stories Told Live format which is by now the signature of the Gala night, was Altered States. I’m sure everyone in the audience had their own favourites; I had four.

Petina Gappah (“rising Zimbabwean star”) had Spirit with a capital S and her jaunty lines included “As a Marxist-Leninist my drug of choice was vodka”, and her finale: “If one dream dies, I’m going to dream another dream and I’m going to dream it bigger!”.

Poet Tusiata Avia came out of the wings looking for all the world like a Minoan priestess with her mysterious archaic smile and regal countenance, and took her shoes off and spoke to us, in line with Minoan priestesses, about altered states originating from her epilepsy-- auras, and a thing called “Jamais vu”, never seen, the opposite of the better known “Deja vu”, already seen: “I don’t recognise where I am or who I am with”, and about the tumour next to her pineal gland, known as our “inner eye”. Her closing, testifying to the role of the unknown, had a hint of the oracular. “I don’t know what the ending is” she said, and exited.

I am very fond of New York Jewish humour and enjoyed both Vivian Gornick (“New York woman of letters”) and her story about Daniel and the effect he had on her F.I., or "Feeling Intelligence", which was to stop it from working, making it impossible for her to process the discrepancies between what he told her (My parents live abroad) and what she observed him doing (visiting them in Kansas City).

And finally, Jeanette Winterson. “My mother was a flamboyant depressive”, she began, who read the Bible to her every day. “Books were banned, except for the Bible. I asked her why and she said, 'The trouble with a book is that you don’t know what’s in it until it’s too late'". She found the books Jeanette was hiding under her mattress (apparently you can hide 72 books under a standard mattress) and took them outside and poured kerosene over them and burned them.

Watching the bonfire, Jeanette realised two things: “One, only the things inside us are ours -- I can memorise them! And then I thought, I CAN WRITE MY OWN!”

“It’s about the place we make in our imaginations, because the imagination is where everything begins.”

Could there have been a better send-off for a festival of writers and readers?

Popping up for refugees on World Poetry Day

As World Poetry Day rolled around this week I was taken aback to read on the website of its founder, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO for short, that one of its aims is to ensure that "the art of poetry will no longer be considered an outdated form of art". What? Someone thinks poetry is like hair jewellery? Who are these people talking to?

"Encourage a return to the oral tradition of poetry recitals" on the other hand, is an aim I am happy to get behind.  Although "poetry recital" does sound -- if not quite outdated, perhaps overly quaint, evoking the poetry pursuits of school-days (of which, please note, my memories are all good) -- I am a huge believer in poetry being shared not just through books but by being spoken, performed, read aloud, and slammed.

The descendants of Homer who make up the Poets Circle in Athens also believe in the power of spoken poetry. They invited poets around the world to join together this World Poetry Day (also the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) in performing readings calling attention to the cataclysm of our time, the refugee crisis.

It is so natural, so unsurprising, that this idea saw the light in Greece. Or better, under the light of Greece -- that incandescent, supernal light, as Henry Miller described it in the best book ever written about Greece by a non-Greek, The Colossus of Maroussi. "One would have to be a toad, a snail or a slug not to be affected by this radiance which emanates from the human heart as well as from the heavens," he writes. "Wherever you go in Greece the people open up like flowers".

Travelling in Greece and experiencing the same extraordinary hospitality fifty years after Henry Miller -- years in which the Greeks had suffered through occupation by the Axis powers during World War Two, a bloody civil war, and a repressive military dictatorship -- we used to say that it must have been because of the strength of their age-old tradition of having gods who were always popping down to earth in human form, so that any stranger knocking at your door could have been a god in disguise.

And the tradition continues:

Photograph: Kostis Ntantamis/AP via The Guardian

This is a photograph of local people on the Greek island of Lesbos helping bring migrants to safety after their arrival by boat. "Refugee Crisis: how Greeks opened their hearts to strangers" is the title of the article in The Guardian which this photograph accompanied. "Despite six years of economic hardship, ordinary people have shown astonishing generosity in helping the 42,000 migrants stranded in their country".

In Auckland poets Ruby Porter, Gregory Kan, Ole Maiava, Mohamed Hassan and Siobhan Harvey responded to the invitation of the Athens poets by sharing their poems in a pop-up reading on the steps of the Central City Library, hosted by Auckland Libraries in association with PEN International and the World Poetry Movement.

(clockwise from upper left: Gregory Kan, Ruby Porter, Mohamed Hassan, Ole Maiava)

How do you measure the weight of a human life, asked Ruby Porter, in a poem which caught at me with its mix of combativeness and eloquence:


How to weigh a life

The weighing of a human life:     like smoke       hard to measure.

Andrew Little says       seven-fifty

Joyce       two to three hundred

the government     under pressure     agree to six.

                        (A number     not necessarily divisible     by families.)

What then? Do a Winston Peters &     send back the men?

And you? You move freely   intake sharply        flame racing   to your

                                                                                                        fingertips           

falls away.

We watched smoke last time you were up       Harvey Keitel &

                                                                                              Forrest Whittaker.

That first scene     where they discuss     the bet

            Sir Walter Raleigh made with     Queen Elizabeth     the First

                                              you can’t do that     that’s like weighing     air.

The weighing     of a human life: like          gallons of water. How many is there    

                                                                                                         between us?

The ocean is made up of          two hundred and sixty four million.

       Oceans away    (you are)

                                            land locked but still you   fly   over   sea to get here

taking off     & landing        at will.

If I could swim to you       I would.

       Oceans away

it’s easy    to turn from them.

The TV flickers blue and grey but       that’s all       that happens.

It’s easy to turn it off when it’s on TV

       (I can’t turn it off with you.)

Weighing a human life: like     the sea that holds them down

& out

           side    turn on it

 I want to spoon you

                  spoon fed our news in two minute sound bites

                                    one for the refugee crisis

                                                       three for the flag.

The difference    William Hurt’s character said

                                        was the weight    of the smoke.

You said you signed every petition you found online &

you wanted to go to the protest but you were working     that day.

The weighing      of a human life: like      tapping out the parts of bodies onto scales

            sad solo in A minor

this much will overbalance our          rockstar economy

this much will overflow our          state housing – isn’t it    already?

(I don’t know which city you call home anymore & it bothers me.)

I guess we have many.

                  You are a kind of home      to me.

Sometimes      after you leave

I sleep on your side

                         of the bed – it still smells of you

                                                   for a night or two.

Musk incense coconut perfume      smoke.

The counting of human lives:       like drops of water

running

down

my

window     at night

when you are here       you say

                  it always rains when we’re together.

As if you can just     tally it up     lives     like numbers on a       spreadsheet.

What’s your value? Reduce it down & export to excel.

On screen          William Hurt’s character said

        I’ll admit    it’s strange         

                                      it’s almost like weighing    someone’s  soul.

The weighing of a human life:      like   each head has a cost & we can just      assess it.

                                      How many refugees could      twenty six million save?

You smoke it till it’s all gone      then you weigh the ash.

Like weighing a human life

falls away.

Right now      you are not beside me

but rain is still running

down 

& out

           side.

The credits were running & you said

I knew there’d be a Tom Waits song

            sad voice in     F major.

       You stub out your smoke.

We turn off the TV.

Ruby Porter

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Ruby will be one of the readers taking part in Central City Library's upcoming "A day in their shoes: the refugee experience" (Friday 29 April, 11am-2pm).

Review Revue for Pride 2016: podcast and... poem!

Following on our last post, where we enticed you with a transcript of one of the six reviews performed in our rainbow Review Revue, we can now offer you the podcast of the full line-up:

 Michael Giacon on Young Robert Duncan: portrait of the poet as homosexual in society by Ekbert Faas

 Jade du Preez on How to be both by Ali Smith

 Richard Galloway on Mary Renault, author of The Charioteer and many other works of LGBTQ fiction

 Morgan Borthwick on Cinnamon toast and the end of the world by Janet E. Cameron

 Christopher Dempsey on Hear us out: conversations with gay novelists by Richard Canning

 Carole Beu on Lucky us by Amy Bloom

I loved it when Michael launched the evening by confessing "I have had this book since 1989 and I have just started reading it".   I trust we all have our own versions of this confession.

What we probably all don't have is the experience of having read Robert Duncan's revolutionary love poem which Michael refers to, "The Torso". I hadn't, but I hunted it down, and now that I've read it and found it as amazing as Michael gave us to believe, I want to give you the chance. I am not sure what year it was written, but it was at least 50 years ago, and it would be daring stuff even now.

The lines Duncan put in italics are quotes from "Edward II", Christopher Marlowe's tragic drama about the king who "cares for poetry, philosophy, and the commoner Gaveston more than war, statecraft, and his politically advantageous wife" as one of the writers on the University of Illinois page about this poem puts it. Attention to the last line, though: Duncan has altered one word from Marlowe's text, and with that changed everything. "The King upon whose bosom let me die." wrote Marlowe. "The King upon whose bosom let me lie." wrote Duncan, throwing off the death sentence of the homosexual.

Most beautiful! The red-flowering eucalyptus
                    the madrone, the yew
                    Is he...

       So thou wouldst smile, and take me in thine arms
       the sight of London to my exiled eyes
       Is as Elysium to a new-come soul

              If he be Truth
              I would dwell in the illusion of him

  His hands unlocking from chambers of my male body

            such an idea in man's image

       rising tides that sweep me towards him

              . . .homosexual?

                 and at the treasure of his mouth

              pour forth my soul

                 his love   commingling

  I thought a Being more than vast, His body leading
            into Paradise,   his eyes
              quickening a fir in me,   a trembling

            hieroglyph:   At the root of the neck

       the clavicle, for the neck is the stem of the great artery
         upward into his head that is beautiful

                 At the rise of the pectoral muscles

       the nipples, for the breasts are like sleeping fountains
         of feeling in man, waiting above the heat of his heart,
         shielding the rise and fall of his breath, to be
         awakened

                 At the axis of his mid riff

       the navel, for in the pit of his stomach the chord from
         which first he was fed has its temple

                 At the root of the groin

       the pubic hair, for the torso is the stem in which the man
         flowers forth and leads to the stamen of flesh in which
         his seed rises

  a wave of need and desire over   taking me

              cried out my name

       (This was long ago.   It was another life)

                        and said,

            What do you want of me?

  I do not know, I said.   I have fallen in love.   He
     has brought me into heights and depths my heart
             would fear   without him.   His look

       pierces my side . fire eyes .

     I have been waiting for you, he said:
                 I know what you desire

            you do not yet know   but through me .

     And I am with you everywhere.   In your falling

     I have fallen from a high place.   I have raised myself

            from darkness in your   rising

                      wherever you are

       my hand in your hand   seeking   the locks, the keys

     I am there.   Gathering me, you gather

            your Self .

       For my Other is not a woman but a man

       the King upon whose bosom let me lie.

--Robert Duncan, The Torso




You can listen to Review Revue via Soundcloud below or search for "Auckland Libraries" in iTunes or on your favourite podcast app to download the episode.

Celebrating Pride 2016 with a rainbow Review Revue

 Auckland Museum lights up for Pride 2016

Yesterday evening at Central Library we celebrated Pride 2016 with our annual Review Revue, an evening of stand-up reviewing with a focus on the world of GLBTIQ literature. "You get up with a book and you have seven minutes to make it notorious" is how we describe it to people we invite to join our line-up of reviewers. And no one says no, which gives you an idea of the atmosphere.

And for an idea of the content, well, you're in for a treat! One of last night's reviewers is a fellow librarian, so he also couldn't say no when I asked him to turn his notes into a post for Books in the City. Here he is and here you go!

                        


Morgan Borthwick on Cinnamon toast and the end of the world

I have never been to a Review Revue before. When my colleagues discovered an ancient book review of mine and asked me to speak, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to sit here and listen to me waffle on about that book I read one summer that I sort of liked because it had a hot guy in it. But hey, I’m here and I’m queer and I’m here to talk to you about a book! 

I thought long and hard about a book to read, do I go the popular route and review a classic you’re probably pretending you’ve read? Do I choose a best seller like A little life (which by the way, is totally fantastic and everyone should read)? Do I spend all night extolling the virtues of Maggie Smith (hint, it’ll be longer than 7 minutes)? Do I get up on my soapbox about the gay erotica that the library stocks and why I find it hideous (the inability of so many writers to accurately write gay sex scenes)? Or do I find a hidden gem that many people wouldn’t have heard about and bang on about it for seven minutes until I’ve convinced you to read it?

You guessed it. I’m going to speed review for you a hidden treasure of a book that I read in one night, with lots of tears and smiles, Cinnamon toast and the end of the world by Janet E. Cameron.

Picture yourself as a Russian-Ukrainian Jewish gay teenager in a dead-end small town in Nova Scotia 1987. Can’t do it? Well, meet Stephen Shulevitz, our hero. Three months before graduation he realises that he is in love with his best friend Mark. Mark is straight, dyslexic, from the wrong side of the tracks and doesn’t know what he’d do if he ever met a queer. ‘Probably kill them if they touched me’ is one of his many sweet lines in the book.

What follows from this realisation is Stephen’s coming of age, interspersed with flashbacks to his childhood, to his adolescence with an absent father, and to his ever changing relationship with his dreamy mother.

I don’t really want to tell you any more than that, because it is a fucking fantastic book that should be read by as many people as possible. At times hilarious, at others heartbreaking, it never fails to be unflinchingly honest. From Stephen’s experiences with sex to the horrors of -- and attitudes towards -- AIDS in 1987 to the clichéd but ever fascinating topic of gay men and their mothers, this book covers it all in vivid, graphic detail.

What I do want to focus on in this review is the truth behind this book. I have read many, many novels about gay teenagers discovering who they are, starting at around age 12 when I was first discovering who I was beyond the Saddle Club novels and Cleo magazines. They veered between two extremes.

Some were nauseatingly cutesy romantic (Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the Universe, Fan Art, Rainbow Boys, Simon vs The Homo Sapiens agenda) where funnily enough, the best friend is in love with them or SHOCK GASP the cute guy at the back of the bus is actually gay and has been stalking them too. This is heart-warming to read but it is simply not true. These books should come with a "Don’t try this at home" warning, as they’re setting poor questioning teenagers up for failure or worse.

One the other end of the spectrum there is a range of teen reads where life is shit, high school is shit and the focus is on themes of suicide, depression, prostitution and runaways (Money Boi, Bait, Suicide Notes). While again a very real thing in the world for many gay teenagers, it is not always like that, nor is it helpful for books to perpetuate stereotypes and offer ideas like the ones some of these do.

Very few books find that rarely discussed but commonly experienced middle ground in exploring what being a gay teenager is like, and for me it's important to get up on my soapbox about one that does. I find it ironic that I had to go to a book set in 1987, in the middle of the AIDS crisis to do so, but there you go. Without spoiling it for you, it is an open ending, it has a bittersweet tone and it showcases that life for gay teenagers isn’t always about extremes. Often, writers forget that with gay teenagers, and trying to describe their life experiences, the drama is already there, honey. You don’t need to add to it, we’ll do that for you. I love books that focus on the character, rather than the circumstances surrounding them and this book nailed that.

For me, that was my life. As a gay teenager, I didn’t struggle, there were problems, bullies, unrequited crushes and awful experiences with girls -- I won’t lie. But there was no happily ever after as a 15 year old with that cute guy at the back of the bus; there were also no suicide attempts or drug overdose and years in rehab. That’s not to say those things don’t happen or take away from the struggles that people have, but for me, there was none of that.

There was just me, an ordinary gay teenager, trying to find his way in the world with not a lot of advice, a lot of alcohol and plenty of hormones. That’s what this book is about. Simple, plain honest life regardless of sexuality, written in the most beautiful of ways that understands sometimes life is messy, definitely not straight, but with a bit of grit and the odd tear, you’ll get there. I recommend you all read this book, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll all wish you knew a small town gay Ukrainian-Russian Jewish teenager like Stephen Shulevitz.

(Podcast of the entire Revue coming soon!)

Steve Braunias on The Scene of the Crime (with podcast!)

Had the eclectic public which filled Central City Library's Whare Wānanga earlier this month come to hear Finlay Macdonald interviewed by Steve Braunias, as the publicity had seemed to announce and Finlay picked up on in his opening gambit? No worries. I was there -- I'm not a "horrible trout" wont to pronounce without first hand experience, to borrow one of Steve's colourful animal kingdom descriptors which he used on the night -- and I can attest that the only thing threatening to upstage Steve Braunias was the lure of the subject of his new book The scene of the crime. 

The book, which developed out of Steve's reporting from a dozen notorious trials for variously heinous crimes, is not actually a study of the criminal mind, despite the book being placed in the true crime area of the library collections. As the title suggests, what he repeatedly found himself most interested in was the places. "It's impossible and pointless to try to put yourself in the mind of a killer", he says in the book, "but the setting takes you to the scene of the crime, shows you something about New Zealand".

In this way, it is indeed, as he pointed out, a companion to Civilisation, his wonderful and prize-winning (2013 New Zealand Post Book Award for General Non-fiction) stories evoking "twenty places on the edge of the world", and not its flip side, as one might be inclined to think.

Yesterday I was told that Steve Braunias has referred to himself as "the poor man's Martin Edmond". He does himself a disservice. They are both fine writers, of two different moulds: off the top of my head I'd say Martin Edmond is more Whitmanesque, the long lyrical cadences, the transcendencies, the bare feet and bare-stript heart; and Steve Braunias, more of a rascal and more of a realist, indignant and contrarian but also a lover of whimsy, would be more of a Mark Twain. Or maybe I mean Tom Sawyer.

No trace of Tom Sawyer in Finlay Macdonald, whose smooth and capable interviewing remained happily free of the cronyism which so often mars "in conversations" between friends. One of my favourites among his questions: does Steve Braunias, with over ten years under his belt now of hearing evidence of people doing horrific things to other people, believe in evil?

Stream the podcast to hear the answer to this and many other interesting questions. Either listen via Soundcloud below or search for "Auckland Libraries" in iTunes or on your favourite podcast app to download the episode.

Oh, nearly forgot: have you seen our new Auckland Libraries Top 100?  The scene of the crime is there, along with 99 other reading suggestions, including one from Steve Braunias.