Aotearoa New Zealand

Introduction

We write this in early June 2020 as New Zealand draws a relieved collective breath at having emerged from months of anxiety and lockdown into the expanded freedoms of Level 1 and a nation that appears to have contained COVID-19. Our borders remain tightly controlled and restricted, but our daily lives are returning to pre-pandemic norms, with growing opportunities to meet with friends, attend a poetry reading, play or book launch, watch a film at a cinema, or listen to live music. The experiences of the last months continue to shape and influence us and this moment provides an ideal opportunity to reflect on our journey through this extraordinary time.

Aimee-Jane’s experience of lockdown saw her with much more time to write, but not more headspace. She turned instead to the act of reading and immersed herself in the sense of an online writing community which thrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, attending online readings and writers festivals and soaking up all the wonderful work in the new literary journal Stasis. Kirstine has spent the last months frantically learning how to teach online, with her paper on dystopian literature proving to be particularly stimulating as her students reflected on pressing and topical questions of freedom and oppression, safety and threat, the individual and the collective. Above all, lockdown teaching affirmed the vital importance of literature to transport, comfort, inspire and connect. David has found lockdown to be both highly stimulating and incredibly draining. As well as helping Kirstine to teach dystopian literature, he used the time to avoid the news cycle, tackle his increasingly large stack of books, rekindle his love of jazz and to pretend that when he is swimming, it is in a Hockney painting.

Aimee and Kirstine were delighted to participate in the Virtual Writers Festival during lockdown. The talented Writing Studies students at our university, mentored by Catherine Chidgey and Tracey Slaughter, organised this online event in May 2020; it featured panel discussions, recordings of original work, and conversations with poet Michael Stevens and Waikato University’s 2020 Writer in Residence Richard von Sturmer.

This local microcosm was replicated throughout Aotearoa New Zealand as writers, reviewers and dramatists reacted to the physical distancing of lockdown with innovative creativity. A number of online initiatives connected New Zealand writers and readers with audiences across the country and the world. The Poetry with Brownies team held online open mics every Saturday of lockdown, featuring writers of colour. Motif Poetry hosted The House Is Open, a weekly digital cabaret show. Pegasus bookshop poetry readings moved online, as did book launches, and the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Victoria University Press created The VUP Home Reader, a generous and completely free downloadable sampler of very recent and forthcoming work from the publisher. Pantograph Punch ran an Online Festival, featuring writing, art and critique live on Instagram, including poets Freya Daly Sadgrove, Dominic Hoey, Tayi Tibble, Ruby Solly, Chris Tse and Nina Mingya Powles. Sinead Overbye and Jordan Hamel founded Stasis, an online journal, in response to the COVID-19 lockdown, with the aim “to financially support artists whose income was impacted by the pandemic” (www.stasisjournal.com).

Auckland Writers Festival launched their online Winter Series on 3 May, a 13-week programme hosted by Paula Morris and featuring both international and New Zealand talent, from Bernardine Evaristo, An Yu, and Neil Gaiman to Selina Tusitala Marsh, Ian Wedde, and Elizabeth Knox. In July CoNZealand will host the 78^th World Science Fiction convention. Entitled “From New Zealand to the World”, the virtual event will celebrate the work of local and international authors, artists, and creators.

Theatres also rose to the challenge of finding new ways of sharing work. Shortly after BATS closed its doors, the Wellington theatre livestreamed its planned performance of Hugo Grrrl’s solo show Princess Boy Wonder to 160 paying viewers – double the capacity of the actual theatre.

These stories of success are counterbalanced with the many painful stories of the cancellation and postponement of events. One of the most tragic literary casualties of the Covid-19 pandemic was the New Zealand Listener, with Bauer Media Group discontinuing its New Zealand publications (which also included the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly and North & South) in April 2020. The early editors, Monte Holcroft, Oliver Duff and Ian Cross, of the New Zealand Listener (founded in 1939) established a proud history of publishing New Zealand literary voices, a tradition which has continued. Janet Frame was first published in the Listener and the magazine has featured the work of many prominent authors, such as Frank Sargeson, Maurice Shadbolt and Witi Ihimaera. Tim Watkin lamented that “[t]oday we lose a pioneer of national identity and a vessel of many indigenous voices” (RNZ, 2 April 2020).

Even before the recent economic pressures of the pandemic, 2019 proved to be a testing time for print journalism, epitomised by the sad fate of the New Zealand Review of Books Pukapuka Aotearoa. The publication of this invaluable quarterly periodical, which first went to press in 1991, ceased with the Summer 2019 issue (128) after funding from Creative New Zealand was withdrawn. Steve Braunias, mourning the journal’s departure, described it as “an intelligent and in-depth print quarterly … an essential part of [New Zealand’s] literary infrastructure” (newsroom. 27 November).

Aotearoa New Zealand farewelled the incomparable Peter Wells in 2019, award-winning novelist, essayist, historian, anthologist, filmmaker and playwright. Siobhan Harvey highlights that long before the discourse of diversity became popular, “Wells broke with a literary tradition which saw being gay as taboo”, writing about his experiences with bravery and nuance (New Zealand Review of Books 29.2) David Herkt asserts that Wells fulfilled the “ultimate role of the writer … to change perceptions of the world” with his breaking of both social and artistic boundaries, his “reshap[ing] of the way in which New Zealanders viewed sexuality”, his dynamic revisiting of neglected colonial history and his unflinching battle against any kind of injustice (Stuff 18 February). Wells’ final work Hello Darkness, first created by increments on Facebook, recounts his battle with cancer with immediacy and honesty and manages to transform the trivia of the internet age into something meaningful, a meditation not only on mortality and illness but also the enduring power of the written word.

We also bid goodbye to Jack Lasenby, the multiple award-winning author of children’s books and young-adult fiction. Lasenby was the author of the dystopian Travellers series for young-adult readers and the creator of such memorable characters as Uncle Trev, Aunt Effie, and Charlie the Cheeky Kea. He was described by Margaret Mahy as “perhaps the most innately New Zealand writer of all New Zealand writers for children”. Barbara Larson pays tribute to Lasenby’s range, from his “[w]acky, inventive stories complete with … laugh-out-loud humour” to his bleaker young-adult works which “embodied a belief that to hide pain and darkness from the young was dishonest” (New Zealand Review of Books 29.4).

The Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement acknowledged the contributions of three long-serving luminaries of the New Zealand literary community: children’s book author and illustrator Gavin Bishop, poet Fleur Adcock (whose Collected Poems was published by Victoria University Press) and novelist Elizabeth Knox. The Absolute Book, Knox’s latest novel is a captivating adventure into a world of stories, libraries, demonic possession and family tragedy. Journeying into the underworld, the central character Taryn is remade and Maria McMillan writes that this “familiar journey … is explosive and surprising, new and quite brilliant … Knox’s heavenly underworld is hellish, the beautiful are cruel, the cruel are sad, the demons are capable of good, those lost find themselves” (The Spinoff, 12 September).

The fiction finalists in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards were all focused on the real rather than the magical, although confrontations with the darkness within are also to be found in these works. Owen Marshall’s Pearly Gates skilfully delineates both place and people. The eponymous narrator is a mayor, real-estate agent, and former rugby player whose life and mistakes play out against the backdrop of a small town in New Zealand’s South Island. Human error is also central to Carl Shuker’s thought-provoking A Mistake. Questions of accountability and blame are explored in a narrative which probes the reason for the death of a young woman on the operating table. David Vann’s Halibut on the Moon draws on the author’s own family trauma with its focus on the suicide of Vann’s father. The narrative, written from the perspective of Jim Vann, is both deeply disturbing and profoundly empathetic.

The prestigious Acorn Prize for Fiction at the annual Ockham New Zealand Book Awards went to Westport writer Becky Manawatu for her debut novel, Auē. The narrative focuses on the experiences of orphaned Arama, living in rural Kaikōura with relatives, and his urban-based brother Taukiri. The judges described the novel as a “mere pounamu”, which evokes resonances of both something infinitely precious and something that is a potent weapon: “There is violence and sadness and rawness in this book, but buoyant humour too, remarkable insights into the minds of children and young men, incredible forgiveness and a massive suffusion of love”.

Journeys, both physical and internal, are a connecting thread in other compelling New Zealand novels. Craig Cliff’s funny, constantly surprising Nailing Down the Saint probes the limitations of a rationalist, realist world. The novel traces the adventures of expatriate New Zealand filmmaker Duncan Blake from fickle, celebrity Los Angeles to Italy as he scouts locations for a biopic about the 17^th-century saint and levitator Joseph of Copertino. Laurence Fearnley takes readers into a sensory world of smell in Scented, which follows recently redundant Sian on her quest to create a signature scent. Rosetta Allan’s haunting The Unreliable People highlights the forcible relocation and “disappearance” of people of Korean origin in Stalin’s Russia in a poignant exploration of place, identity and culture.

2019 saw the launch of a major new writing award, the Sargeson Prize. Named for celebrated New Zealand writer Frank Sargeson, the prize recognises the art form of the short story. The 2019 winners were Sam Keenan for “Better Graces” (Open Division) and Elijah Neilson-Edwards for “Stray Dog” and Xiaole Zhan for “Woman, Sitting in a Garden” (Secondary Schools Division).

Important collections of short stories continued to enchant readers. Vincent O’Sullivan’s Selected Stories draws together 35 stories from seven collections and reveal his signature awareness of, and both compassion for and puncturing of, human pretensions and frailties. Helen J. O’Neill’s edited edition of The Stories of Eileen Duggan, with an introduction by John Weir, makes these works available to readers for the first time and adds a fresh dimension to our appreciation of Duggan as not only a poet but a writer of fiction. Huia Short Stories 13 introduces readers to the shortlisted stories from the 2019 Pukihuia Awards. Seven of the stories are written in Māori and emphasise questions of language, culture and identity.

In uncertain times, New Zealand poetry continues to flourish, with university presses and independent presses alike supporting both established and emerging voices. Seraph Press founder and poetic powerhouse Helen Rickerby won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry for her collection How to Live. The collection is part history, part biography, part autobiography and part ars poetica. It plays with form and creates a rich collage of the “unsilent” women of history and the contemporary moment.

Paula Green released three books in the space of a month, Groovy Fish, The Track and Wild Honey. The third, Wild Honey, is a roomy guide to poetry written by New Zealand Women. The book itself is beautifully rendered, with cover illustrations and design by Sarah Laing. Green’s critical work in this book is, as always, warm and inviting as well as incisive. Green had a hectic year, releasing these three wonderful books, while maintaining and expanding her two essential websites: Poetry Box, for children, and NZ Poetry Shelf.

2019 saw the renewal of an exciting series by Auckland University Press, with the arrival of AUP New Poets 5, featuring the brilliant Carolyn DeCarlo, Sophie van Waardenberg and Rebecca Hawkes. The work of these three unique poets is connected by an attention to vivid imagery, a commitment to sincerity and close attention to the body. These are emerging poets who are already making a splash.

essa may ranapiri’s stunning debut collection ransack also turns to the body and interrogates the language that we use to relate to it. ranapiri is a prolific poet, and also a painter, and ransack is a collection honed to the visual possibilities of poetry. It relishes and revels in formal experimentation, as ranapiri constructs and deconstructs the poetic form. The collection features letters written to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando figure, poems dedicated to friends and favourite poets, and is shaped by a constant play with the margins of the page. Punctuation functions in part as art, with slashes, asterixis, redactions, and plus signs marking rupture and gap.

Tracey Slaughter’s first full-length poetry collection Conventional Weapons showcases the work of a writer who shines in both the poetic and prose forms. The poetry in this collection is by turns both tender and cutthroat, exploring the last gasps of relationships, the flickers of difficult childhoods and the everyday grind of modern life.

Tayi Tibble undertook the job of head editor for Sport 47, and the journal was lit with hot-pink cover art by Miriama Grace-Smith. The journal carries exciting and urgent work, including Tibble’s genius editorial and an opening discussion between Patricia Grace and Anahera Gildea “He kōrero māori” (pp11-37).

2019 saw the launch of Ngā Kupu Waikato, the first-ever anthology of poetry from the Waikato region, edited by Vaughan Rapatahana. It features the work of 41 poets, including Mere Taito, Loren Thomas, Reihana Robinson, Mark Houlahan, Olivia Macassey and Stephanie Christie.

The anthology Te Rito o te Harakeke offers work by Māori writers in response to the events at Ihumātao. It is a beautiful, hand-stitched collection of poetry and personal essays, brought together by Hana Pera Aoake, Sinead Overbye, essa may ranapiri and Michelle Rahurahu Scott. It is a book which reminds us of the power of words, created at a time where we were reminded of the change that is possible when people come together.

New Zealand continues to produce excellent drama at both a professional and community level. New voices constantly emerge in New Zealand dramas, seen in James Cain’s Movers and Cian Gardner’s Sorry for your Loss, with both touching on class, gender and the idea of whānau [family], in a heart-wrenching and warming way. Sam Brooks had revivals of two of his plays, the scorching political drama Burn Her and his bildungsroman Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys, in Wellington and Hamilton, respectively. Janet Frame’s novel Owls Do Cry was brought to the stage by physical theatre company Red Leap, and Sartre was given a Polynesian twist with Victor Rodger’s Pasifika version of No Exit, entitled Uma Lava.

Many classic New Zealand plays, such as Tom Scott’s The Daylight Atheist, were revived on stage, and many others were revived in print. Renée’s three seminal plays Wednesday to Come, Pass It On, and Jeannie Once are published together for the first time by Victoria University Press as Wednesday to Come: Trilogy. Hone Kouka’s much celebrated work Waiora, a play touching on colonisation and the tensions between generations, has been released by Playmarket, with updated text, a new introduction and academic supplements. Dame Ngaio Marsh’s landmark production of Hamlet has been reproduced for the first time, complete with unpublished music, archival photographs and an academic essay on the staging and context of the production. Marsh’s fast-paced script is a great starting point for anyone wishing to gain a fresh perspective on New Zealand’s rich theatrical history.

Graphic Narratives continue to be an underrepresented narrative form, but the few publications produced tell thought-provoking stories. Courtney Sina Meredith and Mat Tait’s exquisite The Adventures of Tupaia follows the experience of the Tahitian priest navigator who sailed onboard the Endeavour with Captain Cook on his first voyage to Aotearoa. Tait’s bold graphic art and muted colour palette perfectly complements Meredith’s dramatic prose and verse. Rufus Marigold is a gentle, but harrowing look at workplace and social anxiety, framed through the titular character, Rufus, an office working primate. Author Ross Murray tells of his struggles with anxiety and fears in life through his warm, yet harshly drawn characters.

Following on from the success of her graphic memoir Mansfield and Me, Sarah Laing returns with a collection of thoughts in Let Me Be Frank. Keeping the wit, authenticity and scratch-like drawings of her memoir, this collection highlights her daily musings from 2010 to 2019, confirming her place as keen observer, self-critic and visual genius. Selina Tusitala Marsh’s stunning Mophead looks at identity in a graphic narrative suitable for all ages. Mophead follows Marsh’s struggles with difference until she learns to embrace it, setting her on the path to become Poet Laureate and an icon of Pasifika poetry in Aotearoa and the world.

One of the most affecting memoirs of the year was Witi Ihimaera’s Native Son, the sequel to his wonderful 2014 memoir Māori Boy. Native Son details Ihimaera’s struggle to be an indigenous voice in a predominantly Pākehā world, as well as finding his voice, and his journey to becoming an acclaimed Māori novelist. This story of identity, growth and experimentation is classic Ihimaera: warming, honest, confronting and unflinching.

Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica interweaves science writing and personal account, reflecting Rebecca Priestley’s experience as an Associate Professor of Science and creative non-fiction author. Accompanied by a constant sense of anxiety, Priestley travels to Antarctica to achieve a lifelong goal, as both a scientist and an artist, grappling with truths about our natural world and herself. Rose Lu’s intimate and entertaining All Who Live on Islands take us through a personal history, as well as cultural experiences and the reverberations of those who come before us, highlighting what it means to be a young migrant living in 21^st-century Aotearoa. First-time author Shayne Carter, frontman of Dunedin’s Straitjacket Fits, won the General Non-Fiction Award at the New Zealand Book Awards for Dead People I Have Known. This witty, funny, and sad memoir is rich in insights into family, friendship, and loss as well as music.

The letters of poet James K. Baxter appeared in a stunning two-volume collection edited by John Weir, entitled Letters of a Poet. This collection spans 33 years, following Baxter’s life, works and conversation with fellow New Zealand writers, friends, family and members of the public. Letters of a Poet sent shockwaves across the New Zealand literary community, as a letter from 23 September 1960 reveals, in firm bluntness, that Baxter committed marital rape. This will no doubt impact how Baxter is read in Aotearoa and his place in our literary canon.

This year was a rich year for literary criticism, particularly studies of individual authors. A special issue of the Journal of New Zealand Literature focused on poet Allen Curnow. A range of articles and books on Katherine Mansfield profiled questions of settlement, explored her connection to Elizabeth von Arnim, examined her contribution to periodical culture and highlighted her links with Poland. Patricia Neville’s Janet Frame’s World of Books provides an in-depth exploration of Frame’s extensive reading and web of intertextual relationships. Drawing on new archives and textual evidence Neville profiles Frame’s borrowings from the Bible and Shakespeare, her engagement with mythology and her responses to the poetry of fellow New Zealanders, the Romantics, Rilke, Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath.

A range of early and mid-20^th-century authors received critical attention. Voices from New Zealand’s literary past with an Australian connection were explored by Stephanie Johnson whose West Island turned the spotlight on novelist Jean Devanny, novelist and poet Dulcie Deamer, poet and literary editor Douglas Stewart and novelist and journalist Eric Baume. The work of detective novelist Ngaio Marsh, historical Gothic novelist Dorothy Eden and poet Mary Stanley all attracted analysis and Margot Schwass’ All the Juicy Pastures meditated on Greville Texidor’s time in New Zealand.

It is excellent to see a range of exciting contemporary poets, dramatists, novelists attracting scholarly attention, with articles and chapters on Tusiata Avia, Bernard Beckett, Susan Brocker, Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Anna Jackson, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Heather McPherson, David Merritt, Tze Ming Mok, Albert Wendt and Alison Wong.

The Women’s Book Shop, run by Carole Beu, marked its 30^th birthday in style, with a Literary Concert. The bash celebrated women’s writing, its community, and all things feminist, and included readings, wine and much laughter. The festival featured Catherine Chidgey, Fiona Farrell, Patricia Grace, Paula Green, Charlotte Grimshaw, Mandy Hager, Stephanie Johnson, Fiona Kidman, Poet Laureate Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh, Charlotte Randall and Fiona Samuel.