Adrienne

On Waitangi Day, 6 February, Escalator Press took part in the Festival of the Elements at Porirua. We did a reprise of last year’s session (why not re-use a very successful formula), and three of us – Kate Carty, Janet Colson and I – each read from our novel, then we completely mashed up the three plots into one story and asked the audience to come up with endings. Audiences are wonderfully inventive, and we like sending ourselves up too!

The Crescent Moon in Kuala Lumpur 

I had a week in Kuala Lumpur when The Crescent Moon exhibition opened at the University of Malaya. The Asia New Zealand Foundation generously gave me the opportunity, as they did last year when the exhibition opened in Bangkok. I spoke at the exhibition opening, and took part in a seminar for students. Always, revisiting that project revives that passion that we need to  become much better informed about Islam and the Muslim community in New Zealand, that we need to talk together about that very large moderate thoughtful middle ground that most of us inhabit, and absolutely not subscribe to glib stereotypes.

New novels from Escalator Press

In November Escalator Press, the new publishing house set up by the Whitireia Creative Writing Programme, published two new novels, The Shark Party by Janet Colson and Run Thomas Run  by Kate C arty. I’m one of a group of 8 running Escalator Press – it’s a lot of work but extremely interesting, and there’s so much opportunity for all kinds of creative thinking around marketing. We’re having fun!

The Blooming Lotus

I proofread the book The Blooming Lotus for editor Samson Sahele, which was launched in November. It’s an excellent and moving book of short stories  by former refugees in New Zealand. This is Samson’s last publication in New Zealand, because he’s moving to Australia. I’m very lucky to have collaborated with him on quite a few publications, and he’s made such a big contribution to all of us having a  bit better understanding of the lives that ex-refugees have  brought with them.

I’ve just been judging the Asia New Zealand Foundation short story competition with Mark Broatch from The Listener. Each story needed to link Asia and New Zealand in some way, and include 3 required words or phrases. There were some very imaginative links between countries, and some clever use of the necessary phrases (although some certainly felt shoehorned in)  but in the end we chose a story that felt complete in itself and had that sense of the writing being very well-honed. A reminder of how demanding the short story is!

I couldn’t have written The Score without piano technician Serge Grandchamp, of Piano Prestige. I had no idea how complex it was working out what height a grand piano could fall from and still be potentially repairable – exactly what damage it would sustain depending on how it fell, the costs, the time, everything. I talked about this research, and research for a few other projects, at Paremata Probus in August, and it reminded me how much research writing a novel can require, and how extraordinarily interesting it is.

Poets to the People has been running on the Kapiti Coast for years, thanks to the indefatigable Gill Ward,  now with a great supporting group. They kindly invited me to read there in July. Clarinettist Louise Porteneuve joined me in some nostalgic poetry about longtime friends in Canada, and it was a chance to try out a sequence of poems about a bunch of Titahi Bay locals. I’ve put the first poem in the sequence on this website, but you can read all of it in The Fourth Floor online journal – 2014 edition available in November.

I’ve been working as a writer at Te Papa for ten years, and I’m finishing at the end of May. Working at Te Papa teaches you a huge amount. Mostly I’ve worked as an exhibition writer, so you learn a lot about whatever exhibition you’re working on, but it’s also taught me a lot about writing clear concise English – why use 500 words when 100 will do just as well! I worked with three fine head writers there – Michael Keith, Liz Grant and Frith Williams. Right from the start Michael taught me that ‘good enough’ is never good enough. There’s been a rigorousness about the writing process at Te Papa that I respect very much.

We’ve launched The Curioseum. It was a large project – 22 writers, a big editing job, and a great project to be involved with. At the same time as the launch for the book, there was a sleepover for kids in the museum. The sleepover was based on the idea of kids writing their own stories about weird objects in the museum – about half the kids were keen to write, and half of them were excited out of their minds. I would have been too, if I was 12 and could spend a night in a big museum! I love the idea of kids making up their own stories about weird stuff in a museum – as well as finding out the facts of it – and I hope the idea of The Curioseum takes off in museums all over the place.

It’s pretty hard reading your own work about immigrants alongside people who’ve lived through it all as refugees. It’s a reminder of a lot of things. We celebrated Race Relations Day at the Wellington Public Library with Samson Sahele, La Nan, Selia Kassa and I reading work. Samson, as well as being a poet, constantly encourages young ex-refugees like to write about their experiences.

It’s been a really busy few months. Feels like one book after another rolling out. I took the opportunity of talking to Friends of Te Papa to recap several projects – The Score, Abdel’s Favourites, The Curioseum – but also to talk particularly about working on Throne of Emperors, the historical Chinese exhibition on at Te Papa. Also to do a little demonstration of how you can take a piece of very ordinary text and transform it into really attention-grabbing read-at-a-glance text without changing the content. It’s the perfect answer to mis-placed ideas about dumbing-down.

Friends of Pataka (Pataka Art and Museum is Porirua’s excellent museum/gallery) hosted a music-and-words event based on The Score – a pianist, a harmonica player, a piano technician, and a writer telling some of the stories behind the novel, and playing some of the music that features in it. Porirua Paper Plus sold lots of books – they have to be one of the best booksellers around.

And here’s what we did for the Festival of the Elements – it’s Porirua’s great celebration of Waitangi Day. Four of us involved with Escalator Press – Mandy Hager, Mary-Jane Duffy, Janet Colson,and I – read from our work, then cobbled together some kind of crazy story from all the works, and the audience had to come up with suitable – or unsuitable – endings. Lots of fun, and a great way for us to send up our own work!