Pansy sandwiches and tall poppies

 

The menu for a supper held after one of the 2013 performances of the Patrick Evans play Gifted at the Fortune Theatre in Dunedin

reveals the cringe-making level of the 'wit' associated with this campaign to cement in a demeaning portrait of Frame as otherworldly and without rationality.

 

Because powerful brilliant successful women are easier for blokes to handle if you pathologise them and portray them as weak and foolish.

 

Pansy sandwiches (wink wink!) were accompanied by fruit and nut cake (giggle giggle).

 

Because Frank was a fruit and Janet was a nut, get it? get it?

 

And Harry and Frank were pansies! Nudge nudge! Say no more!

 

Ooooh naughty.... haha chuckle.

 

Homophobia and misogyny and mental illness played for laughs by a sniggering middle class cabal.

 

LINK: 'Play Suffers from 'significant ethical problem'

(Otago Daily Times)

 

 

 

While the invite said 'Spring Floral Sandwiches' and 'Harvest Cake', the fact that these were essentially 'pansy sandwiches' and 'fruit and nut cake' was made crystal clear on the night, as could be gathered by social media reports like this one

[Image: screen shot from Fortune Theatre Facebook page]

 

In the Antipodean Memorial Room

 

Journal of Postcolonial Writing

Volume 51 Issue 5

October 2015

Special Issue: Special Focus: Janet Frame: Ten Years After

 

Available Online (behind paywall)

 

Includes a Marc Delrez essay about Janet Frame's 13th published novel In the Memorial Room which was written while Frame was Katherine Mansfield Fellow at Menton in the South of France (the cover picture of this issue of the journal shows the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Room).

 

A dog returns to his vomit

"As a dog returns to his vomit, so the fool repeats his folly." (Proverbs 26:11)

The misrepresentation of Janet Frame by Patrick Evans rears its ugly head yet again: the play Gifted based on his fan fiction novel 'about' Frame's friendship with Frank Sargeson will have a season soon at Circa Theatre in Wellington New Zealand.

The novel and the play deliberately distort the historical facts in order to make the audience "see" Frame the way Evans wants them to.

This might seem clever, but a lot of people are asking why anyone would want to go to all the trouble and expense of staging a fake representation of a major cultural figure like Janet Frame.

What makes it OK to treat Janet Frame's memory like this, falsifying her story for cheap adolescent laughs?

Didn't Janet Frame suffer enough at the hands of New Zealand already? Apparently not. Even her death doesn't halt the vendettas of certain men who have spent decades now trying to persuade the rest of us that she was crazy and her work was overrated.

Her continued success does rather seem to infuriate them.

Play misrepresents Janet Frame

 

Otago Daily Times

17 September 2013

 

Janet Frame has the last laugh

Always.

Pamela Gordon and Janet Frame, Seacliff Village (1997)

At Denis Harold's place overlooking

Warrington Beach and Blueskin Bay

Photo (C) Denis Harold

 

This is my favourite photo of us. I call it 'Fishwives'.
It always reminds me of Anton Vogt's description of Janet and Jacquie Baxter as being "like a couple of peasant women" when he encountered them travelling through France together. Giggling and joking.
Everyone was always laughing when Janet was around. She was such fun.
And I love the way she keeps coming up with delightful surprises even now that she's dead.

Owls Just Keep on Crying

Announcing: a new UK/Commonwealth* edition of Owls Do Cry to be published in the Virago Modern Classic imprint in January 2016 by Little Brown. There will also be an ebook.

Isn't that a lovely cover? It looks like the character is taking a selfie! That's how fresh and relevant Janet Frame's writing remains, as Booker prize winner Eleanor Catton has said:

 

"Janet Frame is the greatest New Zealand writer. She is utterly herself.

Any one of her books could be published today and it would be ground-breaking."

~ Eleanor Catton

In January there will also be a new paperback edition of the German translation of Owls Do Cry.

Here are some of the different covers for many of the dozens of previous editions of Owls Do Cry, collected in a Facebook photo album.

In more good news for the longevity of the wonderful novel Owls Do Cry, the Janet Frame estate has just struck a publishing deal for a new American edition to be released in 2017, the 60th anniversary of its first publication, and it has still never been out of print.

"An unforgettable and startlingly original work, a true and timeless classic

of enduring power."

~ Margaret Drabble

#greatkiwiclassic #greatworldclassic

 * The new Virago Modern Classic Owls Do Cry paperback edition will be available in all UK/Commonwealth territories except Australia and New Zealand where there is an exceptionally good fresh Text Classics edition published last year:

 

Another translation of Janet Frame's poetry

Hot on the heels of the first ever volume of Janet Frame's poetry to be published in translation (the Swedish Hungrig Bland Orden was published in July), comes the second ever collection, this time in Spanish translation, to be published next month in Mexico. Here is a projected cover of Huesos de jilguero by Janet Frame. More details soon!

A selection of three poems by Janet Frame was published last year in Italian translation in the online journal Atelier.

Other selections of Janet Frame's poems have been published in many other languages, for example in French, German, Slovakian, Russian, Japanese (etc) anthologies or journals, and I have seen many bloggers around the world too, trying their hand at translations, but what is exciting about 2015 is that for the first time Frame has her own printed foreign collections, and from some rave responses so far to the Swedish volume it seems that she translates well.

 

Janet Frame Poetry Prize for Dunedin Author

Janet Frame Poetry Prize Announcement

28 August 2015

David Eggleton

Photograph by Liz March

 

Dunedin poet David Eggleton has been named as the recipient of the 2015 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry. He will be presented with a cheque for $5,000 at a National Poetry Day Event to be held in Dunedin tonight in honour of Janet Frame’s birthday. Janet Frame founded her charitable trust in 1999 and bequeathed an endowment fund to benefit New Zealand writers. Since Frame’s death in Dunedin in 2004 her estate has given out $110,000 in grants to writers as well as donations to literary causes.

David Eggleton said: “I am thrilled to receive this special Award, both because of what it means in terms of recognition and support for my own writing, and because Janet Frame is one of my favourite authors, a writer whose work speaks volumes about being a New Zealander, while challenging the orthodoxies. She is undoubtedly a major figure in world literature. To be associated with her legacy in this way is a great honour.”

Raised in Fiji and South Auckland but now based in Dunedin, David Eggleton is a poet, critic, editor and free-lance journalist who has published seven books of poetry, one of short fiction and many more non-fiction works. He first came to prominence as a performance poet wielding vernacular rhythms and eclectic subject matter into satirical and lyrical incantations that have been described as ‘mesmeric’. His work has been widely anthologised. His previous accolades include awards for Best First Book of Poetry, Best Book Reviewer, and ‘Street Entertainer of the Year’ (London, 1985). He held the Robert Burns Fellowship in 1990. Eggleton is the current editor of the New Zealand literary magazine Landfall. His latest book of poems ‘The Conch Trumpet’ was published by Otago UniversityPress earlier this year.

Janet Frame Literary Trust Chair Pamela Gordon said: “We are very pleased to acknowledge David Eggleton’s significant contribution to a vibrant contemporary New Zealand literary scene. He has been carving out a versatile, robust and courageous career, combining poetry with music, performance, art, film and multi-media. His is an independent and yet inclusive voice of Aotearoa New Zealand set in its Pasifika context, offering swathes of a beautiful lyricism combined with a searing honesty. His latest work ‘Conch Trumpet’ shows his poetic voice at its very best and the trustees felt that this outstanding achievement should be recognised.”

 

Links:

Paula Green interview with David Eggleton on ‘PoetryShelf’

 

UK Poetry Archive: David Eggleton

Cultural icons Video Interview with David Eggleton

 

 

David Eggleton poem and its translation into Polish projected onto a city wall in Krakow, Poland (eMultipoetry)