National Poetry Day – 25th August 2017

20 August, 2017 in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Lots going on for the 20th anniversary of National Poetry Day! Full list of events here: POETRYDAY.CO.NZ

National Poetry Day logo

I will be reading at two events:

Where the Wild Words Are |
Come and hear Mākaro Press poets bewitch, berate, busk and bewilder at the Wellington Central Library.

Mary Cresswell • Lindsay Pope • Janis Freegard • Tim Jones • Harvey Molloy • Maggie Rainey-Smith • Keith Westwater • Pete Carter • Peter Stuart • Robyn Cooper • Helen Rickerby • Julie Hanify • Peter Rawnsley • Robin Peace • John Howell
Entry details: Free
Date/times: Friday, 25 August, 1-3pm
Location: Wellington Central Library, Victoria Street, Wellington.
Contact: makaropress@gmail.com
Further info: www.makaropress.co.nz

Poetry Ngaio
An evening of poems by some of the terrific NZ writers with connections to Ngaio and Crofton Downs. Readers include Kerry Popplewell, Kate Spencer, John Howell, Janis Freegard, Carmen Downes and more. Includes open mic. Light refreshments provided. (You’ll also be able to see/add to a display of poems responding to local photographs, which runs at Cummings Park Library 14-28 August.)
Entry details: Admission free, all welcome
Date/times: Friday 25 August, 7.30-9.30pm
Location: Cummings Park Library, Ottawa Road, Ngaio, Wellington
Contact: Kerry Hines poetryngaio@hotmail.comFurther info: https://poetryngaio.wordpress.com/

I’ll also be calling into the Upper Hutt Library for this:

Competition Awards Night
Upper Hutt Library’s annual poetry competition returns this year on the 20th year celebration of National Poetry Day (to enter, see competition calendar). Join us on National Poetry Day to celebrate our competition winners and all things poetry!
Entry Details: Free, all welcome.
Date/Times: 25th August, 6.30-8.30pm
Location: Upper Hutt Central Library
Contact: Danny at Danny.Tiata@uhcc.govt.nz
Further Info: http://upperhuttlibrary.co.nz/upper-hutt-poetry-competition/

Happy Birthday National Poetry Day!

Poetry Ngaio

21 July, 2017 in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Something to go to on National Poetry Day – hurrah!Poetry Ngaio

Quick as a Flash

11 June, 2017 in writing | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

I’ll be reading a very short story at the pretty flash Thistle (3 Mulgrave St, Thorndon) and so will some other writerly Wellington folk. It happens on 22nd June 2017 aka National Flash Fiction Day – the shortest day for the shortest stories. Might see you there!

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We went to Auckland

28 May, 2017 in travel, writing | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

The Ballad of Jimmy Bang

3 May, 2017 in writing | Leave a comment

I’m Big Jimmy Bang and I can ride the fastest mustang.

You’re a liar and a loser, Jimmy Bang.

I’m Big Jimmy Bang and I can shoot sharper than any sharp-shooter that ever shot.

You’re not even big, Jimmy Bang.

I’m Big Jimmy Bang and I can build the highest wall that’s ever been built in this town.

I’m putting on my hat, Jimmy Bang.

I’m Big Jimmy Bang and I’m the grabbiest grabber that ever grabbed.

You’re a grubby little man, Jimmy Bang.

I’m Big Jimmy Bang and my wife’s so pretty, I had to lock her up in a big, gold tower.

Set her free, set her free, Jimmy Bang. I’m putting on my coat and I’m lacing
up my boots and there’s thousands of us coming Jimmy Bang. Millions of us  coming for you, swarming the streets. We’re wearing our hats and we’re stomping on down and sure as kittens are kittens we’ll stop you, Jimmy Bang. Get outta town and don’t ever come back. Do you hear us, Jimmy Bang? You’re yesterday’s yesterday man.

 

 

toy gun

*Sincere apologies if your name is Jimmy Bang – this is so not about you.

New Zealand Fiction & Non-Fiction by Gender & Ethnicity 2015

19 March, 2017 in poetry, writing | Tags: , , , , , , , | 3 comments

…and here is the breakdown of fiction published in New Zealand in 2015, by the gender and ethnicity of the authors (as far as I can make out).

In terms of gender, women dominate in the fiction stakes, with 44 fiction books by women published in 2015 (59% of titles) compared with 30 men (40%). The ‘Other’ category refers here to a book jointly authored by a man and a woman.

Here is the pie chart:

gender fiction 2015

In non-fiction, the proportions are reversed, with 13 titles (62%) by male writers and 8 (38%) by female writers (see below). So it kind of balances out. If you add fiction, non-fiction and poetry together, 82 titles were by women, 83 by men and one by both. Yay, right? (Note: I’ve left out a few categories, like Drama and Criticism, but included Letters & Autobiography).

NZ Non-fiction by gender

An analysis by ethnicity, however, tells a miserable little tale indeed.  Here is the pie chart for fiction:

2015 fiction by ethncity

Yep, that’s right, with 68 titles, Pakehā writers got 91% of the pie; Māori writers and Asian/Indian writers got 4% each with 3 titles apiece and Pasifika writers got 1%, with a single title (ie Albert Wendt wrote a book).

By way of comparison, in 2014, 88% of fiction titles were by Pakehā writers, 7% by Māori writers, 5% by Asian/Indian writers and none by Pasifika writers.

And for non-fiction, 85% of titles (18 in total) were written by Pakehās and 5% (1 title each) by a European/Jewish writer, a Māori writer and a Pasifika writer.

Non-ficiton by ethnciity 2015

How do I know what ethnicity everyone is, I hear you cry. Well, I don’t know for sure. I visit at least 3 websites (author pages and so on) and look for clues. So there may be some undercounting. If a writer does not describe themselves as Māori, Asian or Pasifika and does not mention an iwi affiliation, I have counted them as European/Pakehā.

One last pie: all fiction, non-fiction & poetry titles for 2015. 90% of titles were by Pakehā, 4% by Māori and 2% each by European/Jewish, Pasifika and Asian authors. What a lot of pie…

All titles 2015

For the record, I’m female and Pakehā (I was born in the UK and grew up in England, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand; I’ve lived in New Zealand since I was twelve.) Two of the books published in 2015 were mine.

I put this analysis together because it matters to me. Fairness matters. Having a national literature that represents our national population matters. Being able to read a diverse range of voices matters. Also, I’m curious (in more ways than one) and like playing with spreadsheets 🙂

My source for the books published in 2015 is the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Previous posts on this subject can be found here:

https://janisfreegard.com/2017/01/07/nz-poetry-2015-by-gender-ethnicity/

https://janisfreegard.com/2011/07/29/poetry-gender-in-new-zealand-publishing-part-2/

https://janisfreegard.com/2012/04/03/poetry-gender-in-new-zealand-publishing-2008-2010-4/

https://janisfreegard.com/2013/03/23/poetry-gender-in-new-zealand-publishing-an-occasional-series/

https://janisfreegard.com/2014/10/19/poetry-and-gender-in-new-zealand-publishing-the-latest/

https://janisfreegard.com/2015/12/30/poetry-published-in-new-zealand-by-gender-ethnicity-to-2014/

https://janisfreegard.com/2016/02/08/nz-fiction-non-fiction-by-gender-ethnicity-2014/

NZ Poetry 2015 by gender & ethnicity

7 January, 2017 in poetry, writing | Tags: , , , | 2 comments

Every year I spend several days hunched over a spreadsheet doing a bit of a round-up of who had a poetry book published in New Zealand the previous year, so you don’t have to. I’m interested in whether our national literature can be seen as representing the diversity of our population, because I think it should. I look at gender and ethnicity, based on how people describe themselves (or are described by others) on their websites, author pages, etc. Generally I try up to 3 websites and a quick check of who’s in Puna Wai Korero and if I don’t find any mention of ethnicity, I assume the poet is Pakeha/European. It’s not an exact science, but it gives a rough idea.

Now I’m up to 2015 (the most recent information readily available) and, well frankly, this is embarassing. Only two of the poetry books published in 2015 were by poets with Māori heritage and two more mentioned Pasifika heritage. Two further poets mentioned mixed European and Jewish heritage. Everyone else, as far as I could make out, was Pakeha/European. There were no Asian poets with collections published in 2015.

Here is a sad little pie chart:

poetry-ethnicity-2015

By way of comparison, only 74% of people described themselves as Pakeha/European in the 2013 census (15% Maori, 12% Asian, 7% Pasifika, 1% MiddleEastern/Latin American/African – it doesn’t add to 100% because people can indicate more than one ethnicity).

Things are a bit more egalitarian on the gender front, but men were published more (57% of books compared with 43% by women), down from the heady days of 2012 where numbers equalised. Here’s how it looks over time:

poetry-by-gender-to-2015

Total numbers of poetry books are looking reasonably healthy, with 70 titles published in 2015 (compared with 73 in 2014). Victoria University Press were the winners in terms of overall quantity (10 titles), with Wellington’s Original Books in second place (7 titles) and Auckland University Press, Mākaro Press, Otago University Press and Steele Roberts joint third (6 titles each). Various small presses made up the rest of the list.

You can read previous posts on this subject here:

https://janisfreegard.com/2011/07/29/poetry-gender-in-new-zealand-publishing-part-2/

https://janisfreegard.com/2012/04/03/poetry-gender-in-new-zealand-publishing-2008-2010-4/

https://janisfreegard.com/2013/03/23/poetry-gender-in-new-zealand-publishing-an-occasional-series/

https://janisfreegard.com/2014/10/19/poetry-and-gender-in-new-zealand-publishing-the-latest/

https://janisfreegard.com/2015/12/30/poetry-published-in-new-zealand-by-gender-ethnicity-to-2014/

https://janisfreegard.com/2016/02/08/nz-fiction-non-fiction-by-gender-ethnicity-2014/

and if you have read it yet, here’s the link to Brannavan Gnangalingam‘s Spin-off article on subtle racism in New Zealand literature.

My source for the books published in 2015 is the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. I’ll get around to fiction in due course. And if you were wondering about reviews (whose books get reviewed), data for 2015 are still trickling in from an intrepid band of volunteers and I’ll try to do something on it when I can.

 

52 Men – the Podcast

19 December, 2016 in writing | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

52 Men

Sometimes I buy a book and find myself wishing I’d written it (while at the same knowing I couldn’t, because, well, I’m someone else and I can only write the way I write – disappointing though that can be when I was hoping for something more like Jeanette Winterson or Haruki Murakami).

Louise Wareham Leonard (New Zealand-born but mostly New York-based) is one of those writers whose books I always wish I’d written. I loved her novels: Since You Ask and Miss Me A Lot Of and I’ve been just as impressed with her latest work,  52 Men (published by Red Hen Press).

52 Men is a series of vignettes involving main character Elise’s interactions with different men, followed by a longer piece concerning disturbing events from her childhood and teenage years. The vignettes would each stand alone as flash fiction, but together they form a mosaic of Elise’s life, each encounter building our understanding of her as a person. So you get the depth of character development you might expect from a novel, but in a series of snapshots. It’s an interesting technique and it works. In further crossing of genres, the author describes 52 Men as autobiographical fiction, which I take to mean somewhere between the remembered and the made up.

But wait, there’s more! Louise Wareham Leonard invited other women to record a short piece of their own writing about men and launched a series of podcasts.  The recording I contributed (I Meet A Man in a Bar) was based on a piece I wrote twenty years ago and recently rediscovered. You can listen to 52 Men the Podcast on Soundcloud.

Art is a Living Thing

27 November, 2016 in poetry, writing | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 comment

Saturday Afternoon

It never rains, but it pours… Hot on the heels of LitCrawl and Brooklyn, here’s another event I’m reading at, this time at Aratoi in Masterton. It’s a celebration of the work of artists, writers, dancers and musicians from all over the world who have had residencies at New Zealand Pacific Studio in the Wairarapa. The studio’s been going for 15 years now and I was very fortunate to hold the three-week Ema Saikō poetry fellowship there in 2014.

Aratoi (Wairarapa’s Museum of Art & History) is hosting an exhibition of works by former NZ Pacific Studio residents, including a video reading of a snippet of the long poetry sequence I worked on while I was there.  Opening night is Friday 2 December 2016 (5:30pm) and there’s a special event on Saturday afternoon (3 December, 2 – 4 pm), featuring music by Leo & Karen Cappèl (Netherlands/NZ), Sarah Dill (USA) and Hemi Walker (NZ). The inimitable Tracy Farr will be reading a short story and I will read a short section from my poetry sequence.

If you’re in the hood and want to catch it, the exhibition runs from 3 December 2016 – 15 January 2017.

You can find Aratoi at 11 Bruce St, Masterton, Wairarapa

Books in Brooklyn!

20 November, 2016 in Janis, The Year of Falling, writing | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 comment

Fancy some Brooklyn-inspired writing? Next Friday 25th November 2016, I will be reading from ‘The Year of Falling’ along with the excellent Maggie Rainey-Smith and the fantastic Jenny Bornholdt at the Brooklyn Deli (199-201 Ohiro Rd, Brooklyn, Wellington, NZ). There will be music from Wellington band The Brooklyns and wine & food from the Deli. Hope to see you there!

 

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Wordle: janisfreegard.com

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