Showing posts with label Lisa Samuels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lisa Samuels. Show all posts

Sunday, August 14, 2022

Devonport Library Poetry Reading - Tuesday 23/8/22


The Devonport Library Associates present Jack Ross with Johanna Emeney, Elizabeth Morton, Lisa Samuels and Bryan Walpert, all eminent poets reading from their own works.

Jack is a recent editor of
Poetry New Zealand.

This event is part of Auckland Libraries’ We Read Auckland | Ka Pānui Tātau I Tāmaki Makaurau.



The idea of this reading, which coincides with the beginning of the Auckland Writers Festival, is to celebrate the reopening of the Devonport Library's event series - after a couple of years of pandemic-prompted closures - with a showcase of local, North Shore-based poets.

Each writer will have the chance to read a representative sample from their work. Their latest books will also be on sale, thanks to our friends at Paradox Books.

The real heroes of the occasion are, however, the Devonport Library Associates: chair Jan Mason, events organiser Paul Beachman, and publicity courtesy of Linda Hopkins.

Johanna Emeney lives with her husband David and a family of cats, goats, sheep and ponies. Jo’s latest book, co-written with Sarah Laing, launches on September 7th, 6pm at Takapuna Library. Sylvia and the Birds is part-biography of Bird Lady Sylvia Durrant and part call-to-arms for young environmental activists.

Johanna Emeney: Felt (2021)


Elizabeth Morton is an Auckland writer, with three collections of poetry, the latest being Naming the Beasts (Otago University Press). She holds an MLitt from the University of Glasgow, and is completing an MSc at Kings College London. Her writing has appeared in publications from New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia and online.

Elizabeth Morton: Naming the Beasts (2022)


Jack Ross is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The Oceanic Feeling (2021), as well as numerous works of fiction, including The Annotated Tree Worship, highly commended in the 2018 NZSA Heritage Book Awards. He was managing editor of Poetry New Zealand from 2014-2020, and has edited many other books, anthologies, and literary journals. He lives in Mairangi Bay and blogs at The Imaginary Museum.

Jack Ross: The Oceanic Feeling (2021)


Lisa Samuels is Professor of English at the University of Auckland and the author of eighteen books, mostly poetry, and of many influential essays on theories of interpretation and body ethics. Lisa also works with sound, visual art, film, and editing, including co-editing the anthology A Transpacific Poetics (Litmus Press 2017). Her most recent poetry book is Breach (Boiler House Press 2021), and a Serbian translation of her novel Tender Girl has just been published by Partizanska Press.

Lisa Samuels: Breach (2021)


Bryan Walpert is the author of four books of poems, most recently Brass Band to Follow (Otago UP), named among the top 10 poetry collections of 2021 by the NZ Listener. He is also the author of three books of fiction, including the novel Entanglement, short-listed for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. A Devonport resident, he is a Professor of Creative Writing at Massey University-Albany.

Bryan Walpert: Brass Band to Follow (2021)







Bronwyn Lloyd: Jack as MC (23rd August, 2022)


Saturday, March 31, 2012

Pictures from a Symposium


[Shouldn't that be surge-black fissure?
Never mind. It goes with the blue & black of Michele's outfit, anyway ...]


I've just spent two days at a Poetry Symposium at Auckland University. It'd be hard to do justice here to all the myriad impressions and conversations that make up one's experience of such an event, so instead I've decided to put up a selection of the photos that Bronwyn and I took.

Hopefully they'll give you something of the atmosphere of the proceedings. For more impressions, you can visit my commentary site here:

[1] Approaches:

[Old Government House, in the university grounds, is a fantastic setting for a conference].

[Wellesley St Overpass]

[Old Government House]

[On the terrace]




[2] The Booktable:

[Bronwyn looked after the booktable on the first day, Thursday 29th, Brett Cross on the Friday. Looking through all the books, cds, t-shirts and other things people bring is one of my favourite parts of these events - I doubt if I'm alone in that].
[Setting Up]

[Poets' books]

[Pania Press & Titus Books]




[3] Participants:

[Some extremely distinguished guests came along. I wish we'd managed to get good photos of more of them, really: Bernadette Hall, Dinah Hawken, John Newton ... so many others.]
[Cilla McQueen]

[Stephanie Christie]

[Robert Sullivan & John Adams




[4] The Symposium:

[There were 15 papers on the first day, and 6 on the second (mine among them). Everybody finished within their allotted time and there were no over-runs. That's pretty unprecedented - in my experience, at any rate - for  a poetry conference. Thanks to Michele Leggott, Robert Sullivan & Lisa Samuels, the three organisers - and all their fellow-chairs - for this extremely impressive achievement].
[Michele Leggott opens proceedings]

[John Tranter (at right) in conversation]

[Rachel Blau DuPlessis closes proceedings]




[5] Lunch:

[The conference organisers prepared us a picnic lunch on the first day, and most of us chose to eat it out on the lawn - the weather was amazing on both days].
[Tim Page, Jack Ross, Michele Leggott & Olive the guide-dog]

[More brown-baggers]

[David Howard, Helen Rickerby & friend]




[6] Waiheke:

On Friday, after Rachel Blau DuPlessis's eloquent summing-up (and Robert and John's spookily effective evocation of Governor George Grey, whose house this once was), most of us went off to Waiheke for the conference after-party: an attempt on the record for the world's longest beach poem].
[on the bus to Oneroa]

[Preparing the ground]

[Marshalling the troops]




[7] The Beach Poem:

[And this is the beginning & end of what we came up with. You'll have to check on the nzepc if you want to see the rest of the poem, though].
[Begin]

[Anywhere]

[The End]



Friday, April 01, 2011

Reviews of Alt


Lisa Samuels
[photograph: Tim Page]

Well, it's April Fool's day - and, sure enough, a review of my book of short stories Kingdom of Alt (Titus Books, 2010) has appeared on Landfall's new online site here ...

The review is by Lisa Samuels, who teaches poetry and creative writing at Auckland University, and I think it would have to be described as extremely charitable by any standards.

In fact, as Lisa conducted her forensic enquiry into the inner workings of the various stories in the collection, I did begin to expect some kind of flying boot to appear out of nowhere and crush my impertinence forever. Not so, though. She ends as judiciously as she began - and to anyone who knows Lisa's fierce regard for accuracy and truth in all she says and does, this is quite a tribute.

I also have to register a strong vote in favour of the new Landfall Review Online here, too. it's been very frustrating, for a long time now, to see excellent books appearing here in New Zealand which can't get a decent review for love or money. Quote Unquote, Mark Pirie's mid-period JAAM, the pander - all those journals which aspired to cover the more interesting stuff appearing here have either bitten the dust or changed their formats. Yes, reviews are complicated to organise and expensive to commission. Congratulations to David Eggleton, Landfall's new helmsman, then, for getting this new initiative up and running. Even if my book had been slated (which it wasn't), it'd still great to see some solid discursive critical writing out there, easily accessible on the internet.

That's not to say that I agree with everything Lisa says, mind you ... but how else are you going to find out how your writing means to other people than through a comprehensive discussion of this sort by a careful and honest critic? What you think is perfectly clear may not turn out to be so ...


brief 41 Launch (19/1/11)
[photograph: Michael Arnold]

The other substantive review of Kingdom of Alt which has appeared in the past couple of months was in brief 41 (2010): 103-5, edited by Richard von Sturmer. The reviewer, one Elmar Ludwig, characterised himself in the "notes on Contributors" at the end of the magazine as having:

... sold his second-hand bookshop in Hamburg in December 2007. He then decided to spend the next ten years in ten different countries. In 2008 he lived in Yokohama, Japan; in 2009 in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil; and in 2010 in Auckland, New Zealand. Next year he will relocate to Israel. His choice of countries is based on a mathematical equation. [107-8]


briefers
[photograph: Michael Arnold]

As the immortal Rabbie Burns once observed: "Would the good Lord the gift would gie us / To see ourselves as others see us" (or words to that effect). One of the most interesting things about Elmar Ludwig's review - to me, at any rate - was the fact that virtually everyone seemed convinced that I'd somehow fabricated his very existence in order to review the book myself ...

Even my publisher, the redoubtable Brett Cross, seemed to have a few doubts on the score. It's true that my fiction is a bit on the tricksy side, and I wouldn't swear not to have invented the odd alter-ego from time to time, but to review my own book? No, honestly not.

Mr Ludwig does sound a bit unlikely, on the surface, but anyone who knows Richard von Sturmer knows that he'd be about as likely to endorse George W. Bush for a Nobel Peace Prize as to collaborate in a literary hoax of this sort ...

You can check out parts of the Ludwig review at my bibliography site here. Elmar Ludwig begins by expressing doubts about my knowledge of contemporary Korean fiction. In this he is quite correct, I should say.

Lisa Samuels begins similarly by wondering if I'm ignorant of J. G. Ballard. There I would have to say that she's less justified, however. The obituary I wrote for him on this very site should constitute evidence of my reverence for the Master's works (though it's true that I haven't actually reread The Atrocity Exhibition all that recently ...)


[J. G. Ballard: The Terminal Collection
(Selected Cover Art: 1978-1984)