A New Zealand Waterbiography

"You bathe carefully, as you live, between the flags." ~ Janet Frame (from Owls Do Cry)

Here's another book hot off the press that I can highly recommend as a very good present. Buy Local!

Swim: A year of swimming outdoors in New Zealand by Annette Lees (Potton & Burton 2018). 

The title is a little misleading because the included diary of a year's worth of the author's swim-a-day, though entertaining, is not even the half of what is on offer here.

This is a well researched 'waterbiography' of  'wild swimming'in NZ, covering lots of different aspects. There are guest contributions, historical insights, potted biographies, chapters with titles like 'Night Swimming', 'Urban Creeks', 'Teaching Swimming', as well as one that discusses the different types of 'bomb' (jumping into the water with maximum splash).

And more. It's an interesting and educational book, well backed up with citations and bibliography, without being overly academic.

There are apposite quotes from NZ literature (several from Janet Frame) and many other relevant sources of information. And great illustrations.

I was a water baby myself, growing up, and very much enjoyed a trip down the memory lane of the school swimming pool.

The Latest Janet Frame Poem Poster

Here I am earlier in 2018 doing my job as Frame Literary Executor and 'launching' the 2018 Janet Frame poem poster, 'The Place', as a promo for New Zealand's Poetry Day.

This wonderful poster of one of Janet Frame's most-loved poems is the latest in a long and happy collaboration of the Janet Frame Literary Trust with the Phantom Billstickers project Poetry on the Streets.

You can find images of all the other Janet Frame poem posters produced by Phantom Billstickers at my earlier post here.

Janet Frame poems in French

Late last year the first major selection of Janet Frame's poetry was published in French translation in the prestigious journal La Revue de Belles-Lettres. 

Twelve poems ('Douze Poèmes') were translated by Paol Keineg and presented opposite their English language original as a bilingual display. 

The Janet Frame section of the journal also included two short stories translated by Sylvie Doizelet and an introduction by David André.

Here's a review of the volume  (it's in French) which says something like: 

"Janet Frame infuses her work with melancholy but also with rebellion and scathing irony." 

Fair comment, I think.

Pictured: 'L'Endroit', Paol Keineg's translation of Janet Frame's poem 'The Place'.

Larger on the inside

The latest anthology to feature Janet Frame's work is Short Poems of New Zealand edited by Jenny Bornholdt (VUP 2018). Cunningly published just in time for the Christmas market, this is a compact and beautifully designed hardback book with pretty illustrations by the editor's partner Gregory O'Brien... AND A GREEN RIBBON!

Bornholdt restricted her choice to poems with a maximum of nine lines and the result makes for ideal dipping and browsing and yet of course so many of these poems will pull you up and make you stay with them for longer than you might have expected.

As well as the two Janet Frame gems, there are excellent poems from many other top names of New Zealand poetry. I was pleased to see some beloved Kiwi classics there, such as James K Baxter's 'High Country Weather', and other of my personal favourites too, alongside new discoveries.

Janet Frame's poem 'The Chickadee' leads off the selection. Frame was an attentive observer of the natural world, including bird life. The Chickadee is a North American bird from the tit family and Janet Frame's description is exquisitely evocative of its flight and of its plumage as it lands in her palm to eat sunflower seeds. In her introduction Bornholdt calls this a poem about the need to nurture our imagination, and it is the genius of Frame that indeed you can draw such an analysis from those few lines about feeding a bird, and being alert and present to that moment. 

Available at all good book sellers.

Janet Frame Quotes

Collected from around the internet, mostly from the Janet Frame Facebook page where fuller contexts are given for many of the quotes.

The Blue Fury, The Gravity Star, and An Apology.

Catherine Chidgey, Pamela Gordon, Kate Camp

Oamaru Opera House

February 2018

My most recent post here was written earlier this year, in February, about an upcoming literary weekend in Oamaru featuring novelist Catherine Chidgey and poet Kate Camp. To anyone who may have been following this blog it possibly seemed as though I had vanished after that: a very Janet Frame-like disappearance. Did the Blue Fury get me, or the Gravity Star?

Nothing that fictional or dramatic.

Plenty has been happening in Janet Frame-land, and some of that news has been reported on the Janet Frame Facebook page if you have found your way there.

There are advantages to the blog format though, even though many blog authors like myself do seem to be deserting this genre. I didn't intend to go almost the whole year without posting any updates.

Sorry about that.

The literary weekend was a great success.

Catherine Chidgey and Kate Camp are pictured at a Literary Picnic at the Janet Frame House with chair of the house trust Carol Berry and former curator Ralph Sherwood.

Oamaru Mail (Report by Sally Brooker, 23 February 2018)

Friends of Janet Frame House plan literary weekend

Our colleagues at the charitable trust that cares for the Janet Frame House in Oamaru have sent us this poster for their upcoming literary weekend taking place from Friday February 16th - Sunday February 18th. The weekend is a very worthwhile annual event organised by  the Friends of the Janet Frame House and they have hosted a parade of excellent Kiwi literary talents over the years including: Fiona Kidman, Greg McGee, Anna Smaill, Philip Temple, Diane Brown, Owen Marshall.

For 2018 the stars are two prizewinning authors: novelist Catherine Chidgey and poet Kate Camp. 

As an aside, I'll mention that Catherine Chidgey is the most recent recipient of our own Janet Frame Literary Trust Award. As a novelist she is at the height of her powers.

The pair are not to be missed if you are in Oamaru next week, booking information for their discussion "That Inviolate Place" at the Oamaru Opera House on Friday night is available at:

https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2018/authors-talk-that-inviolate-place/oamaru

Janet Frame wrote, “…there must be an inviolate place where the choices and decisions, however imperfect, are the writer’s own, where the decision must be as individual and solitary as birth or death.”

We get an exclusive glimpse behind the scenes with two of New Zealand’s leading writers; Catherine Chidgey and Kate Camp – award-winning writers at the top of their game.

With each highly acclaimed writer interviewing the other, expect an intimate evening of shared good humour, spontaneity and revelation.

Writers and readers alike will delight in this exclusive insight into the makings of world class literature.

Unfortunately I'm told the Saturday writing class is sold out, but the free picnic on Sunday at the house sounds like fun.