More on the launch

A section of the crowd who came to the Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland, to celebrate the launch of Dear Charles Dear Janet: Frame & Brasch in Correspondence.

Please click on this link to read poet Elizabeth Smither's thoughtful launch speech for Dear Charles Dear Janet:

Text of a speech by Elizabeth Smither

Dear Charles Dear Janet: Frame & Brasch in Correspondence

Holloway Press, University of Auckland, 2010

Limited edition, letterpress printed by Tara McLeod.

NZ $250

Order by contacting: p.simpson@auckland.ac.nz

Or download the order form:

http://www.hollowaypress.auckland.ac.nz/order_form.pdf

The volume includes facsimiles of an exchange of letters between Charles and Janet after the two friends had been to see Midnight Cowboy together in Dunedin on a Saturday night in June 1970.

These days we'd email or facebook or text our subsequent thoughts about such an encounter, but in the 60s and 70s it was not unusual to write to each other across town, putting a stamp on your letter and posting it! Charles wrote on the Sunday, thanking Janet for a gift she had given him, and mentioning that he was still thinking about the movie ("scenes from midnight Cowboy keep coming back to me"...) Janet replied the following day, giving her impressions of the movie (and of Dustin Hoffman).

(Facsimile images were provided courtesy of Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka a Hakena, University of Otago)