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The Meow Gurrls continue to roll and this week it’s the wonderful Abra Sandi King with Medusa:
The Meow Gurrls are a group of Wellington, Kapiti and Wairarapa women who meet regularly to share their poems over food and wine, often at Meow cafe in Wellington. We’d love you to subscribe to our channel, where you’ll hear a new Meow Gurrls poem each week.
This week’s Meow Gurrrl feature poem is ‘bird cage’ by the wonderful Sudha Rao.
LitCrawl is coming! The big night is this Saturday 10th November 6pm – 9:30pm, where literary excitement will be descending upon all manner of interesting venues around Wellington. There’s other terrific stuff happening before and after too. Today the Meow Gurrrls interviewed the inimitable Chris Tse about his role as guest curator. It’s going to be a blast!
This week’s excellent Meow Gurrrl feature poem is ‘The Invisible Years’ by poet, art curator and creative writing tutor Mary-Jane Duffy. More Meow Gurrrls and further exciting content to come!
Poets for Peace and Planet, Saturday 3 November
Poets for Peace and Planet, Saturday 3 November
Peace Movement Aotearoa
Join us on Saturday afternoon at Poets for Peace and Planet, featuring · Maata Wharehoka (Parihaka) · Janis Freegard ·Harvey Molloy · Carina Gallegos · John Howell · Maria McMillan · George Watterson · Helen Rickerby · Tim Jones ·Reading of ‘Remember the Brave’ (the new children’s book about World War One conscientious objectors), and more …
Poets for Peace and Planet will be happening at St Andrew’s Conference Centre, 30 The Terrace, Wellington on Saturday, 3 November, from 3.30pm to 5.30pm.
All welcome, entry by donation, please RSVP at https://www.facebook.com/events/286740918636253
Poets for Peace and Planet is part of the ‘Peace, Peoples and Planet’ weekend, which begins on Friday night with a screening of ‘Tātarakihi:The Children of Parihaka’, with Maata Wharehoka, https://www.facebook.com/events/2224626401195701 and includes sessions throughout the weekend – full details of the ‘Peace, Peoples and Planet’ weekend are available athttps://www.facebook.com/events/273862176558630
This week, our Meow Gurrrls feature poet is the wonderful photographer and poet Mary Macpherson, with her poem ‘Litter’. We’d love you to subscribe to our Youtube channel if you want more Meow Gurrrl poems.
The Meow Gurrrls are a group of Wellington/Kapiti/Wairarapa-based women who meet regularly to share poetry, often at Meow cafe.
Who are the Meow Gurrrls, I hear you cry?
The Meow Gurrrls are a group of Wellington & Kapiti Coast poets who have been meeting for some time now to share poetry, wine, food and fine company, sometimes at Meow cafe in Wellington.
So, what’s new?
The Meow Gurrrls are launching a YouTube channel, whereby you can access quality short poems delivered by a Meow poet on the device of your choice any time you goddamn please. New poems will be added over the weeks and months to come. You’ll love it.
This is cool. what can I do?
We would love you to subscribe to our channel, like and share our posts, and tell your friends.
Do the Meow Gurrrls really need all those rrr’s?
Why, yes we do.
Are there any actual cats?
Sure. Meet Polly. Don’t be fooled by those fluffy good looks. Hobbies include destroying door frames and random savage attacks on her staff.
But she looks so sweet. Anyhoo, where is this alleged YouTube channel involving the Meow Gurrrls of which you speak?
Here you go. Meow Gurrrls Youtube channel
And here’s me, with a love poem. Because, you know, poetry. The poem also appeared on the Wellington City Library blog on National Poetry Day 2018. http://www.wcl.govt.nz/blog/index.php…
How come your lipstick looks crooked?
Because our bathroom mirror looks like this:
Thanks for stopping by.
Hope to see you there!
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:
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:
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.
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
Saturday 3 December 2016 2:00pm – 4:00pm
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