A GOOD EGG

Popular cookbook author Julie Biuso has been recognised as one of the ‘good eggs’ of the food industry.

Julie was one of 38 recipients (and the only food writer) of the inaugural Good Egg Awards presented at a special ceremony last night by the Royal New Zealand SPCA Blue Tick scheme and Compassion in World Farming.

The awards recognise food industry businesses and personalities that support animal welfare and act in sustainable and responsible ways by sourcing cage-free eggs throughout the supply chain.

Julie had always wanted to have chickens, for their eggs, not least because of the distinct difference in quality between fresh free-range eggs and battery-farmed eggs, and the increasing confusion with terms such as barn-free and cage-free. She decided the only way to be sure was to raise her own chickens in her Northcote backyard.

“My husband Remo and I collected three chickens from a poultry farm, saving them from a life of misery,” said Julie. “And they have blossomed into three gorgeous girls: Hortense, Clothilde and Henrietta. They lay an egg each a day, 21 eggs a week. It’s enough for my cooking school and for all my magazine shoots and the family. I haven’t had to buy an egg since April this year.”

They have wreaked a bit of havoc with her herb and vegetable supply though. “They have on occasion demolished the parsley and mowed the silverbeet down to stumps. They ate all the leaves off the chilli plants, leaving just the chillies, although they pecked at a few of them, too!”

But it is not just her chicken coop and run that won Julie the award. “I’ve supported ‘free-range’ as a concept all through my food career, and ethically farmed products too – specifically calling in my recipes for free-range eggs and chickens, New Zealand pork and bacon and Australian prawns. Both Your Home & Garden and Taste magazines have in turn supported me in this endeavour,” she said.

“Raising chickens is easy enough, and the rewards are obvious – we’re never short of something to eat, something ‘home-grown’ that has been well-fed and ethically farmed.”

Sweet Feast , Julie Biuso’s 15 cookbook, will be published by New Holland in November this year. And needless to say, the mouthwatering collection of her favourite and most popular dessert and sweet baking recipes from Taste magazine call for free-range eggs throughout.

 Above: Celebrity chef Peter Gordon was on hand to present Julie Biuso and the other recipients with their Good Egg awards.

The sex life of poets: Fucking Poets by John Gallas

Fucking Poets is a collection of 30 Close Encounters with English poets that was conceived on the banks of the Thames and born after labour in Coalville, Leicestershire. Following Hardy’s dictum that the sex life of a character is vital to an understanding of what makes them tick, the poems provide a fleshily possible encounter with writers from Eadbert (a ‘Beowulf’ poet) to Thom Gunn, with (a selection) Arnold, Brooke, Flecker, Duck, Housman, Owen, Noyes, Crashaw, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Gower, Layamon, Chatterton, Shelley, Skelton, Spenser and Haggard between. Each written by an Orlando-type partner, who traverses Time and Space (and Sex) from (undoubtedly) New Zealand to be There, the poems are a rhapsody of humour, researched detail, surrealism, language-concoction, merry obscenity and philosophical rudeness. A short introduction, written by the anonymous but certainly irresistible penperson is here attached.

All the encounters described here are real : though they seem incredible. I have recounted them in poems of my own maykynge not to gain Opinion, but to allow the Reader intimacy with Angels. 

In each case, I determined to do whatever the Poet asked of me : I would be, so to speak, the possible World he entered. And though this World begin in a cloud of unknowynge, I sought to hold gentle questions with Each to allow the Lights of Knowledge to disperse it. 

I fear that there will be questions upon my virtue. I assure the Reader that this was only a labour of love : and while I was a Determined Woman, and could be a Boy, I should have found it hard to be a Man.

My evidence is the collection of centuries. I seek only to add to the scholarship of poets and, concomitantly, the body of knowledge. It is a commonplace that artistic creation and the urge to love are in their preparation, achievement and denoument wholly alike.

Though I have not shirked from Detail, I am sure there are no particular descriptions of equipment here unless they are wholly justified by their relevance to the Work. La sirs, all the working parts of a Poet are interesting.

I commend this Book of Experience to the reader in the hope that I have laid bare ingredients of the creative process unachievable in the guesswork of strangers. I seek no character at all for myself. 

Read on, and enjoy this rare glimpse into the Private Poet, brought to 

you by the fearless but scholar-conscientious Cold Hub Press, of Governors Bay, Lyttelton.

John Gallas was born in 1950 in Wellington, New Zealand, and brought up in Richmond and St Arnaud. He went to England to study Old Icelandic in 1972, and stayed. He now lives in Coalville, Leicestershire. His poetry is published by Carcanet Press, the latest of 8 books being 40 Lies (2010). Fresh Air and The Story of Molecule are to be published in 2012. He returns to New Zealand each winter.

  

Fucking Poets. John Gallas. Cold Hub Press.  www.coldhubpress.co.nz/

Vol I     ISBN: 978-0-473-18983-9

Vol II    ISBN: 978-0-473-18984-6

Vol III   ISBN: 978-0-473-18985-3

Softcover chapbooks, 32pp each. Set of 3 $49.50.

Cold Hub Press

PO Box 156

Lyttelton 8841

New Zealand

+64 3 329 9389

web: http://www.coldhubpress.co.nz

email: coldhub@gmail.com

Ernest Scott Prize 2011

Just announced by the Australian Historical Association

Joint winners:

Dr Emma Christopher for A Merciless Place: The Lost Story of Britain’s Convict Disaster in Africa and how it led to the Settlement of Australia (Allen & Unwin), and Professor Jim Davidson for A Three-Cornered Life: The Historian W. K. Hancock (UNSW Press).

NATION DATES: SIGNIFICANT DATES THAT HAVE SHAPED THE NATION OF NEW ZEALAND

The Sustainable Future Institute invites you

To the launch of our first book:

NATION DATES: SIGNIFICANT DATES THAT HAVE SHAPED THE NATION OF NEW ZEALAND

‘Nation Dates’ is a record of the past and provides invaluable context for the future at a time when our society is facing major questions about the way forward.

WHERE: Unity Books, 57 Willis Street, Wellington

WHEN:    Tuesday 6^th September 2011

                6-7.30pm

RSVP: Please reply to Wendy McGuinness  (04) 499 888  or email launch@nationdates.org.nz 

The Press of Language

Thoughts on language from author and occasional blogger Emma Neale.

Posted on August 29, 2011 by ejneale

Even when experiencing writer’s block, I get a kind of electrical tingle, a sliding warmth, or even a centeredness out of the look and sound of certain words. It’s not exactly synesthesia, but it makes me wonder if there is another sense we haven’t yet named. Some words seem to peel free of their immediate context for a moment. They bring a feeling of ease, satisfaction, amusement, or animation, that doesn’t always fit with the meaning of the word itself. There are words I want to pick up off the page, or out of the air, and gaze at, or listen to again more closely, as if tuning an instrument. I want to turn them over, feel whether they’re rough or smooth, put them on the kitchen windowsill to see how they catch the light, and whether they’ll throw it back into the room as prismatic spill, blue coin on the floor, or a bobbing, lemon jack o’ the wall. Or whether some word might sprout: buds, leaves.

I like the idea of a sidewalk chalkboard in the kitchen, with a word of the day written there, sending out its something-like-a-scent, its something-like-a-light, its something-like-a-texture, its something-like-a-coolness: its very what’s-the-word-for-it-ness.

Catch-cry. Slub-silk. Fanfare. Funfair. All the fun of the fanfare. Famble. Enkindle. Nunky. Pinguid. Swizz. Is a cocktail stick called a swizzle stick because people tend to take to drink when they’ve been betrayed? There they sit, morose, stirring their gloom into their Manhattans… Missing a lover’s dulciloquy, perhaps. Net a certain word, and a new trail of associations seems to open up in the bristling confusion of the day: a trail to take you through to a precious moment of clarity, or a refinement of memory.
The rest at Emma's blog.

"A bumper sixth issue of Poetry Notes, the newsletter from Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa, is available now for download as a pdf.

 http://poetryarchivenz.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/issue-six-of-poetry-notes-available-now/

Niel Wright on two classic NZ poets: Kate Gerard and Ernest L Eyre; Obituary: David Mitchell; tributes to David Mitchell by Michael O'Leary and Ron Riddell; classic New Zealand Poetry by Reginald (Rex) Hunter; American-born NZ busker and poet John d'Estaing Adams (aka 'Kenny') dies (includes 3 of his poems transcribed); comment on the Alistair Te Ariki Campbell Exhibition - Cook Islands by L E Scott; Dunedin poet Larry Matthews dies; NZ poetry donations made to the Poetry Library, London; recently received donations; about the Poetry Archive."

My Dog – the Soul: poems by Floarea Țuțuianu

Not my body, not my soul, but my sex at the word’s heart

my strong point

    

My Dog – the Soul (Câinele meu – sufletul) gathers a dozen of Țuțuianu’s poems, many of them in dialogue with Emily Dickinson as an ancestral woman poet. Unlike Dickinson, however, Țuțuianu is a writer of smouldering (often sizzling) sexuality; she identifies herself with both the word in itself and the flesh in the form of the female body, figuratively pregnant with poetry. Țuțuianu’s lyrical imagination reveals an earthy, voluptuous, yet also ironic set of confrontations and dichotomies between the erotic and the religious, and her lines bristle with a detailed sensuality and a provocative intelligence. “Oh Lord God,” she prays, “let me stay woman / I want to be Leda the swan between my legs.” 

 The Romanian poet Floarea Țuțuianu [her surname is pronounced “Tsu-tsu-ya'-nu”] graduated from the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of the Fine Arts in Bucharest and began publishing poetry only after the 1989 overthrow of the communist government. She has produced five books of poetry: The Fish Woman (Femeia pește, 1996); Libresse oblige (1998); The Lion Mark (Leul Marcu, 2000); a selected volume with new poems, The Art of Seduction (Arta seducției, 2002); and Your Magnificence (Mărinimia Ta, 2010). Țuțuianu works as a graphic designer at the Romanian Cultural Institute Publishing House in Bucharest, where she lives. Her artwork (the title-page contains an example from one of her drawings) has been exhibited in Germany, Italy, England, Poland, the United States, and Israel, as well as in Romania.

My Dog – the Soul  by Floarea Țuțuianu (with translations by Adam J. Sorkin and Irma Gianetti) is a softcover chapbook (28pp, $19.50) published by Cold Hub Press.  www.coldhubpress.co.nz

ISBN 978-0473-18878-8

Novelists need publishers

A novelist without a publisher is like a singer without a microphone – mouth going, arms waving, nothing coming out – frankly, an embarrassment

Jane Rogers, guardian.co.uk, Friday 26 August 2011 

Jane Rogers … 'Thank heavens for literary prizes.' Photograph: Laurie Harris

It's quite easy for a mainstream novelist to vanish. Poor sales for one novel are enough to make bookshops reluctant to stock the next: low sales figures combined with the writer ungraciously insisting on writing the book she wants to write rather than the book an editor wishes she would write, are enough to alienate publishers. This was more or less the position I found myself in three years ago, when my novel The Testament of Jessie Lamb was having difficulty finding a home. I was writing a book set in the near future, after an act of biological terrorism, and I was electing to write in the voice of a naive and idealistic 16-year-old. It was very different from my previous work. I had written seven novels including Mr Wroe's Virgins and Island, and had won prizes ranging from the Somerset Maugham award to the Writers Guild best fiction book, but that was no help now. A novelist without a publisher is like a singer without a microphone – mouth going, arms waving, nothing coming out – frankly, an embarrassment to herself and everyone else. I was embarrassed.
But what I've learned over the past few years is that writing is like a leak – it will out. If you block its way it finds another channel.
I'd been writi ng for radio for a long time, mainly adaptations, enjoying it for the escape from self that immersion in someone else's work gives you, increasing my respect for the dramatic genius of Edith Wharton's dialogue along the way. And of course, I did it for the pay, which, if you work quickly, is good. But as it dawned on me that I was probably not going to be able to publish my latest novel – nor indeed any other novel in the future – radio began to interest me more. I began to think about the first-person voice on radio, how it draws you right into the character's intimate thoughts; how there can be more than one voice, there can be arguments, all inside one head; how engaging and dramatic that is; and how many people listen to Radio 4. Afternoon plays get two million plus listeners, while most literary novels sell, what, 10,000 copies? If you're lucky. Snobbishly, I'd been valuing radio in the way newspapers do – second-class medium, one measly review a week – instead of acknowledging its power and potential.
Full story at The Guardian.

Edinburgh international book festival diary

Jackie Kay, Colin Thubron and AL Kennedy in our honorary awards to mark the end of the Edinburgh Book Festival

Charlotte Higgins - guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 August 2011 

The poet Jackie Kay won the Scottish book of the year award for her memoir Red Dust Road, in which she traces her natural father. Photograph: Gary Calton

• Some end-of-term reports as the Edinburgh international book festival edges towards its close. Most excitable introduction to an author award goes to the chair of Jackie Kay's event, who promised that an hour spent with the poet was the "literary equivalent of a ride in the Large Hadron Collider". Most peculiar question goes to the audience member who asked the, in novelist AL Kennedy's session: "When I see Anne Robinson on telly, why is she using your voice to speak?" And the prize for the most self-deprecatory opening statement goes to Colin Thubron, arguably Britain's greatest living travel writer, who prefaced his talk by quoting Margaret Atwood on the perils of meeting authors: "If you like paté, don't bother meeting the duck."

• Thubron spoke movingly about his new work, To A Mountain in Tibet, which describes a journey he took to the slopes of the sacred mountain Kailas after the death of his mother. He spoke also of the changing nature of travel writing – which is enjoying an upsurge in popularity, infiltrating history, memoir and nature writing. "The kind of travel writing I have done," he said, "where you go to somewhere remote, and sometimes dangerous, will get more rare. But it is a new duty of travel writers to find out what is beneath the superficial Coca-Cola-isation of cultures such as China and the former Soviet Union."
• Jackie Kay last week won the Scottish book of the year award for her memoir Red Dust Road. Her Nigerian father and Scottish mother met in Aberdeen; when Kay was born she was adopted by a Glaswegian couple. Red Dust Road records Kay's tracing her born-again Christian father, who saw Kay as the living embodiment of a sin of the flesh had once committed. The book, however, is extraordinarily upbeat. "I'm bored with the misery memoir as a form," said Kay. "Self-pity is one of humankind's least likeable traits, along with meanness. Self-pity: it's so last year."

God save us from books with soundtracks

By Harry MountLiterature, The Telegraph,l  August 29th, 2011

Below - St Jerome in his Study, iPod in left hand, by Domenico Ghirlandaio

The last bastion of silence in Britain has been breached. As today’s Telegraph reports, publishers are now producing the first “enhanced e-books”, where soundtracks are provided along with the text. The first one, The Adventures of the Speckled Band, a Sherlock Holmes story, came out last week, complete with driving rain, thunderclaps and blood-curdling screams.
Perhaps the most powerful advantage a book has over any other medium is in sparking and expanding the imagination. When you read, you fill in the gaps – your own internal soundtrack, how things look, how the emotions feel. Soundtracks are that much more prescriptive and precise, with little room left for your brain to improvise. Your own inner version of a scream may be that much more blood-curdling than the one laid down in the sound studio.
Eventually, if enough effects are added to a book, it stops being a book. Throw in a soundtrack and it becomes a radio play; add images on top, and it’s a film.
Full piece at The Telegraph.

Three Criteria for a Killer Book Title

My brain refuses to rest with a good title. It scrambles about until it finds the best one. That perfect fit. And searching for the best is not easy. Often times, for me, it either comes or it doesn't.

When it comes, what a glorious feeling. But when it doesn't? No fun at all. My brain turns into a stubborn donkey. The harder I push, the more it refuses to budge.

Which is exactly what happened these past couple weeks as my editor and I discussed potential titles for my debut novel. My brain refused to cooperate. Sure, I came up with a few suggestions. And some of those suggestions were okay. But none were great. None really resonated. None fit my idea of a strong title.

Which for me, involves three criteria:

Read what author Katie Ganshert has to say on this often difficult task.

Life Itself - Roger Ebert

Very Short List

Cancer robbed Roger Ebert of his speaking voice, but his print persona and online presence have never been stronger. Now he’s written a keen, confessional memoir called Life Itself. We read it in a single sitting.
Ebert devotes plenty of space to his favorite films and filmmakers (the list includes Robert Altman, Robert Mitchum, and other actors and directors he’s known personally). But he also describes his relationships with Ann Landers, Oprah Winfrey, and sometime cohost/occasional nemesis Gene Siskel (“ ‘You may be an asshole,’ Gene would say, ‘but you’re my asshole’ ”), casts a cold eye on his problems with alcohol (“Did I know drinking made me unmarriageable, or did I simply put drinking ahead of marriage?”), and gives us a typically unflinching account of his illness (“I will look the way I look, and express myself in print, and I will be content”). All of this in the elegant, unpretentious sentences that Ebert’s readers have come to expect. 

New Sony Reader details emerge

30.08.11 | Bookseller Staff

The new model of the Sony e-book reader has swapped its metal body for a plastic one and boosted internal memory to 2GB.
The new device, the PRS-T1, has yet to be made available in the UK. It will include wi-fi and a web browser and multitouch support for a six-inch e-ink pearl display. It will include a stylus to make handwritten notes and annotations.
Slashgear reports that the T1 will include 2GB of integrated storage, which can be augmented with a memory card. The device will be plastic rather than metal and weigh under 6oz. It will also include 12 preloaded dictionaries plus search support for Google and Wikipedia.
Engadget has spotted the device for sale on a Dutch website, priced €165 (£146).
In early August, Sony listed its current e-readers as out of stock, raising speculation that a new launch was imminent.

Half million print run for new Wimpy Kid

30.08.11 | Katie Allen - The Bookseller

Puffin is to release an initial print run of half a million copies of the new Wimpy Kid title, Cabin Fever, published on 16th November.

The print run is the largest in the history of the children's publisher, and will be Penguin's largest initial UK print run this autumn, exceeded only by Jamie Oliver.
"I am very excited to be pressing the button on this unprecedented initial print run," said Penguin Children's Books m.d. Francesca Dow. "The publication of Cabin Fever in November will be unmissable and will amount to a spectacular autumn for Puffin and for the Wimpy Kid series."
Puffin is also planning a marketing and PR spend of £210,000 for Jeff Kinney's latest, launching on publication date, dubbed Wimpy Kid Wednesday.
Marketing plans include: pre-order messaging around the DVD release of "Rodrick Rules" in September with 85,000 inserts in DVDs; Wimpy Kid character masks and Wimpy Kid Wednesday event packs to download and available in bookshops and libraries nationwide; TV advertising and a "major" outdoor consumer advertising campaign.
Online promotion includes activity on wimpykidclub.co.uk; updates and newsletters to 130,000 Facebook fans; a Cabin Fever internet trailer; plus a schools campaign to promote interactive webcast Jeff Kinney Virtually Live.
Puffin is also launching a competition to meet Kinney plus a UK tour in November including an appearance at Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland.
According to the publisher, close to four million Diary of a Wimpy Kid titles have been sold in the UK alone. The fifth book in the series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth topped the children's book chart on publication in November 2010.

Barge bookshop given Bristol St Nicholas Market stall

BBC News - Bristol 

Customers can barter for books

A bookseller banned from trading on a barge in Bristol has been offered a market stall in the city.

Sarah Henshaw from Lichfield, Staffordshire, has been mooring the 60ft (18m) Book Barge in places such as Oxford, and selling her stock.
But the city council refused a trading licence after saying the business was not in "Bristol's interests".
The council has since advised her of a stall in St Nicholas Market she can use on Friday and Saturday.
'Looking brighter' Ms Henshaw, who has been trading from moorings in London, Warwick and Bath, lets customers pay for books with money or in "milk, meals and amusement".
But after mooring in front of the Arnolfini and producing a visitor's licence and a British Waterways trading licence she was told these did not apply in the city.
The council said it initially refused a licence due to a lack of public access and the "issue of liability" if someone was injured on the barge.
Ms Henshaw said: "I am really excited. They've [the city council] been really helpful since it was brought to the public's attention.
"Things are definitely looking brighter. I've had amazing support, lots of emails disagreeing with the council statement that it isn't in Bristol's interests."
A spokesman for Bristol City Council said while Ms Henshaw could not trade on water, she was entitled to trade on land.

David Hare wins Pinter literary prize

 Sir David is known for his gritty portrayals of contemporary Britain - BBC News

Playwright Sir David Hare has been awarded this year's Pen/Pinter Prize, it has been announced.

The award, set up by the writers' charity Pen in memory of playwright Harold Pinter, is given to a British writer who casts an "unflinching, unswerving" gaze upon the world.
Pinter's widow, Lady Antonia Fraser, said Sir David was a "worthy winner".
He will be presented with his prize on 10 October at the British Library.
The award will be shared with an imprisoned "writer of courage" who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs, to be announced at the event.
Lady Antonia said: "In the course of his long, distinguished career, David Hare has never failed to speak out fearlessly on the subject of politics in the broadest sense.
"This courage, combined with his rich creative talent, makes him a worthy winner of the Pen/Pinter Prize".
Known for his gritty portrayals of contemporary Britain, Sir David's notable works include Plenty, a portrait of disillusionment in post-war Britain, and The Absence of War, a drama about the Labour Party.
He was nominated for Oscars for The Hours, in 2003, and for Kate Winslet drama The Reader, in 2008.
He has also directed and written spy thriller Page Eight, starring Bill Nighy and Rachel Weisz, which will be screened on BBC Two on Sunday 28 August at 21:00 BST.

Amazon's Tablet to Be 'Hundreds Less' Than iPad

By Ed Oswald, PCWorld Aug 26, 2011

The fire sale of the HP TouchPad (and the resulting rush to snag the tablet) proved one thing: if it's cheap enough, they will come. This could be good news for Amazon, who reportedly plans to release its own tablet in late September/early October for "hundreds less" than the iPad.
According to unnamed sources speaking to the New York Post, the online retailer plans to sell its upcoming tablet for "hundreds less" than what the iPad costs, though no price has been specified. Understandably, it seems as though Amazon wants to get its hardware out there first, and makeup the difference in content sales later.
Sources have told the New York Post that the e-tailer plans to sell the device for "hundreds less" than the iPad, although they didn't specify a target price. It seems as if Amazon wants to sell more hardware first, and then hope to make up the difference in the sales of content later.
In industry speak, this is called a "loss leader" because the product is sold for less than it costs to manufacture the device. Amazon hopes that consumers will spend more in its digital content stores as a result of getting the hardware itself cheaper. Now, whether that strategy will work in the tablet sector is up for debate, but it's worked in the video game market for years.
If true, the market strategy presented by the New York Post is helping to flesh out the picture of a device that we still don't know much about. Based on reports, the Amazon tablet is expected to run Android 3.2 with a nine inch screen, slightly smaller than the iPad's 10.1-inch screen but significantly bigger than the Tab's 7-inch screen.
Amazon may release two versions of its tablet: a dual-core processor model for the average consumer, and a more powerful quad-core device for the power user. Other than that, we don't know much, because the company has shared little about its tablet plans (other than telling us to "stay tuned").
Amazon tablet?Regardless of the specs, as long as it's comparable to the iPad, Amazon's apparent decision on pricing will pay off. Look at the TouchPad: it was inferior to the iPad in power (and some may argue software), and still sold like gangbusters when the price was right. Imagine a tablet that is closer to the iPad in specs -- how could it not sell well?
The coming price war on tablets will benefit everybody. I'm willing to bet that Apple will even join in and possibly bring the cost of the iPad down a bit, too. Let's remember the company had about a year head start on everybody, so its manufacturing costs have likely fallen to a point where it could drop the price and still make a hefty profit.
I think it's a perfect time for an iPad price drop. Just in time for the holiday season. That could make things very interesting.

How to Avoid Nasty Surprises in Your Publishing Workflow

Publishing Perspectives

A streamlined workflow, one that aligns expectations, schedules and systems, is paramount to achieving success.
Publishing Executive Karina Mikhli offers a three-step program of workflow basics you need to bear in mind no matter what type of publishing you're working in, no matter where you are in the world.


READ MORE >> 

Centre for the Book Established at University of Otago

Donald Kerr has advised that  the Humanities Division has officially sanctioned the establishment of a Centre for the Book at the University of Otago, Dunedin. This is exciting news. Melding aspects from other Centres around the world (Toronto, Leiden, Monash, etc), and utilising the great heritage resources that Dunedin offers - and talented individuals from within & outside the University – the aims and objectives (briefly) of the Centre for the Book at Otago are:

to foster research by staff and post-graduate students in the role of the book in cultural and historical processes; to promote book activities such as conferences, publications, and workshops, and to liaise with other institutions local, national, and international. All for the Book – in its widest sense.  

Further announcements and details will be made, but three future activities are worthy of note:

1. 2011 Printer in Residence programme (start date 5 September)

2. 2012 annual conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand

3. 2013 Australasian Rare Book School. 

All these events will be held in Dunedin.

For further details, please contact Dr Donald Kerr, Special Collections Librarian (Donald.kerr@otago.ac.nz) or Dr Shef Rogers, English (shef.rogers@otago.ac.nz)  

300 Years of Bridal Fashions in One Beautiful Book

A spectacular book that looks at the history and traditions of the wedding dress is being published by Te Papa Press this month.

The Wedding Dress: 300 Years of Bridal Fashions by Edwina Ehrman accompanies an exhibition that opens in Australia this August and at Te Papa in December. Both the book and the exhibition draw on the superb collection of wedding garments held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 

Heavily illustrated with paintings, photographs and newspaper illustrations of the original occasions, this book explores the history of the European wedding dress, and the traditions that have developed around it, from around 1700 to the present day, including photos from the most recent royal wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton. Importantly The Wedding Dress draws attention to the effect of social, cultural and technological change on wedding fashions and the image of the bride, and the commercialisation of the wedding and subsequent development of the wedding industry.

Until the twentieth century wedding outfits, for both bride and groom, were expected to be worn again as ‘Sunday best’ or for special occasions and many were adapted to help prolong their usefulness for this purpose. The white wedding dress first became fashionable in the early nineteenth century, and this book considers the ways that designers have subsequently challenged and refreshed traditional approaches to bridal wear. Designers who feature both in the book and the forthcoming exhibition at Te Papa include Charles Frederick Worth, Norman Hartnell, Charles James, Zandra Rhodes, Vivienne Westwood, Vera Wang, Christian Lacroix, Lanvin, Jean Paul Gaultier, Stephen Jones and Philip Treacy.

The author says that genealogical research has been an important tool for providing context for the collection. “The majority of the collection was gifted by individuals wanting a good home for treasured family heirlooms. By using the census and other records, we’ve found information about the occupations, circumstances and faiths of many of the wearers,” says Edwina. “These details have helped us personalise the garments and bring their stories to life.”   

The V&A acquired its first item for this collection in 1900 when it purchased a coat and breeches. The first wedding dress entered the collection two years later – its bodice is inscribed with the words, “Jean Smith married 20^th April 1789”.

The Wedding Dress: 300 Years of Bridal Fashions by Edwina Ehrman is published by Te Papa Press, August 2011. RRP NZ$84.99 ISBN: 978-1-877385-83-4

Te Papa Press is New Zealand’s unique museum publisher, creating popular non-fiction books about New Zealand’s art, culture, and natural world for museum visitors and readers everywhere. Details of other other books at: www.tepapapress.co.nz

Unveiled: 200 Years of Wedding Dress from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London shows at Te Papa from 17 December 2011 until 22 April 2012. Entry charges apply. 

For more info visit: www.tepapa.govt.nz

Small Holes in the Silence Collected Works By Hone Tuwhare

A poem is

a ripple of words

on water wind-huffed

Hone Tuwhare believed that poetry is to be spoken; it is an art that lives not only on the page but also in the voice, breath and very being of the writer and the reader.  A natural and charistmatic performer himself, he inspried audiences in every corner of the country from primary and secondary schools to universities, factories, art galleries and prisons, and as he travelled he encouraged others to write, express themselves, create and celebrate. A ‘people’s poet’, he was loved by New Zealanders from all walks of life.


Small Holes in the Silence showcases the finest examples of Hone’s poetry, from his early triumph in No Ordinary Sun (one of the most reprinted collections in New Zealand) right up to his final works, published when he was in his eighties. The book also includes a handful of previously unpublished works.


Although Hone wrote in English his poems had a Māori rythym and theme, so it is fitting that a number of them have been translated into Māori by his friends Patu Hohepa, Selwyn Muru and Waihoroi Shortland. Each translation stands proudly by the original.


In July 2010 the Hone Tuwhare Charitable Trust was established ‘To inspire people through the preservation, promotion and celebration of Hone’s legacy’. Hone’s son Rob Tuwhare worked with his father’s supporters and public figures to set up the registered charitable trust. The trust is currently raising funds to purchase and restore Hone Tuwhare’s crib at Kaka Point, South Otago, for use as a writers’ residence. This residence will be the first to be established in the home of a Maori writer.  - See www.honetuwhare.org.nz for more information.


‘No history of New Zealand literature, arts and culture will ever be able to be written without having in it the name of Hone Tuwhare. He is the greatest of all Maori poets and he is also one of the greatest New Zealand poets, an exemplar of the poetic arts in Aotearoa to both cultures. Accordingly, it is most fitting that his house at Kaka Point be conserved so that young generations of poets, artists and writers can gain inspiration and the opportunity to aspire to Hone Tuwhare’s example.’- Witi Ihimaera


Born in 1922 in Kaikohe, Hone Tuwhare was a boilermaker, political activist, husband, father and poet. He won two Montana New Zealand Book Awards, was made Te Mata Poet Laureate in 1999, and held two honorary doctorates in literature. In 2003 he was named as an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon Artist. Tuwhare was still writing at the time of his death in his eighty-sixth year in 2008.


Small Holes in the Silence
Godwit - $44.99

UNION - The Heart of Rugby

 Featuring 150 original and evocative images with text by Paul Tomas founded on exclusive interviews with five of the games great players it is fair to say that this book is an epic international portrait of rugby through the lenses of the world's great rugby photographers.

I can see that many a copy of this impressive large hardback book will be going home with overseas visitors when the RWC is over.

Contributors:

NICK FARR-JONES was capped 63 times for Australia’s

Wallabies, including 36 as captain, and led Australia to its

first World Cup win in 1991.

MARTIN JOHNSON has 84 test caps for England, including

39 as captain. He led England to victory in the 2003 Rugby

World Cup, beating France in the final.

JOHN KIRWAN represented New Zealand’s All Blacks from

1984 until 1994 and gained 63 test caps. Kirwan scored

the winning try against France in the 1987 Rugby World

Cup final in Auckland, New Zealand.

PHILIPPE SELLA made 111 appearances for France between

1982 and 1995 and represented Les Bleus in three rugby

world cups: 1987, 1991 and 1995.

JOEL STRANSKY has 22 test caps for South Africa to his

credit, and scored the winning drop goal in the 1995

Rugby World Cup final against New Zealand.

PAUL THOMAS is an award-winning novelist, scriptwriter,

journalist and sports biographer based in Wellington,

New Zealand.

Kimble Bent: Malcontent

Through striking illustration in this new graphic novel, author illustrator Grosz retells the story of this now little-known character in New Zealand history, whose escapades elevated him to folk-hero status at the turn of the century. Bent was a reluctant American solider who became privy to some of the fiercest and most infamous battles of the Taranaki land wars.

Bent ended up in New Zealand in the 1860s, fighting with the 57th regiment, the Die Hards, against the Hauhau. The discipline of soldiering life did not suit him and after a spell in military prison, Bent deserted and found himself living with the very tribes he had been fighting against.

Kimble Bent: Malcontent depicts Bent’s life as a Pakeha Maori, his assimilation into tribal life and his observation of Hauhau war rites. Bent was there at the battles of Te Ngutu o te Manu and Tauranga-ika, and was acquainted with some of its most legendary personalities, such as master strategist Titokowaru and pacifist Te Kooti. He identified the slain body of Gustavus von Tempsky, and ran for his life with the Hauhau from Kepa’s formidable kupapa forces.

Chris’s interest in New Zealand history was sparked by working at the Canterbury Museum as a young man, under Roger Duff and Tony Fomison, and it was here he first heard about Kimble Bent. While working in Hong Kong as a political cartoonist and newspaper designer he noticed that quite a few of his staff liked to read Manga comics rather than traditional novels using just the written word. This combination of words and pictures seemed a great way to entertain while also educating, and hence the idea for Kimble Bent was born. Told as a boy’s-own adventure story, Kimble Bent: Malcontent is an exhilarating tale encompassing bloodshed, mayhem and danger. A retelling of James Cowan’s original book published in 1911, The Adventures of Kimble Bent, are these tall stories embellished by Bent or real-life adventures?

Rendered in scraperboard, a technique involving removing a top layer of black ink to reveal white china clay underneath, these expressive and bold hand-drawn illustrations vividly portray the sense of darkness and threat in a dramatic and tumultuous time in New Zealand’s history.

 About the author/illustrator:

Chris Grosz is a graphic designer, author, painter and illustrator. He has worked as a poster designer for such names as Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, and U2, as well as in teaching, illustration and art direction for TV and advertising, and as a political and editorial cartoonist. This is his first foray into drawing for one of his own projects, which developed out of an exhibition of paintings he produced for Maheke galleries in 2006.

Grosz has a regular column in the Australian magazine The Monthly with the crime novelist Shane Maloney. A collection of fifty of these works was published in 2010 under the title Australian Encounters.

STEPHEN LEATHER

Rather surprisingly I hadn't come across this well established thriller writer until recently when my friend Mark (from Mason's Menswear in Ponsonby) loaned me a copy of his 2009 title LIVE WIRE. I was immediately hooked and now have his two latest to read, MIDNIGHT and FAIR GAME (500 + pages - both 2011 titles).
Here is his Wikipedia entry:
Stephen Leather is an English thriller author who writes pacy "action packed" novels in a style deliberately based upon the work of Jack Higgins and Gerald Seymour. His novels frequently include themes of crime, imprisonment and military service, and lately terrorism and the War on Terror. Settings are typically London and the Far East. He is published by Hodder & Stoughton and has sold more than two million books in more than twenty languages.

If you are looking for topical, pacy and convincing thriller fiction then I warmly recommend this guy. I especially like his Spider Shepherd character.

In July 2011, 

TUESDAY POEM

Tuesday Poem features PM Award-winner Peter Bland's Song

Hot on the heels of the PM's Award for Poetry which he won last week, Peter Bland has launched a new collection Coming Ashore (Steele Roberts) and is online today as the featured poet on Tuesday Poem. Christchurch poet Jeffrey Paparoa Holman launched Coming Ashore in Wellington, and as editor of the Tuesday Poem this week has selected Peter Bland's poem "Song". He says of it:

'This poem, “Song”, is one of my favourites, of many choice pieces here: the viewing persona observes a next door neighbour, a Chinese woman, quite elderly it seems, singing as she hangs out her washing. In 21 carefully crafted and understated lines, Peter Bland brings her to life: the song, the strange quality of otherness and the keening for home its sounds evoke, “full of comings and goings/like the sea on/a calm day when/it drifts in exhausted". '

Jeffrey says Peter Bland deserves his PM Award 'richly' and goes on to describe Coming Ashore as a whole:

'...a rich collection of elegy and history, and sharply-observed images of the inner and outer life of the poet through his bicultural world views....'

After reading the hub poem on Tuesday Poem, take time to enter the sidebar for more Tuesday Poems. Highlights include a poem about Hurricane Irene by Boston poet Melissa Green, a video of Sharon Olds reading, and a poem by Robert Sullivan commissioned for the new steps of Auckland City Central Library! And there is that wonderful host of poems by NZ locals including Sarah Broom, Tim Jones, Helen Rickerby, Andrew Bell,  Saradha Koirala, Mary McCallum ... as well as some classics: Lawrence and Shelley, and more will go up as the day progresses. 

Haruki Murakami Excerpts ’1Q84′ in New Yorker

By Jason Boog on Galley Cat,  August 29, 2011 

This week The New Yorker ran an excerpt from Haruki Murakami‘s upcoming novel, 1Q84.
Check it out: “Most people think of Sunday as a day of rest. Throughout his childhood, however, Tengo had never once viewed Sunday as a day to enjoy. For him, Sunday was like a misshapen moon that showed only its dark side. When the weekend came, his whole body began to feel sluggish and achy, and his appetite would disappear.”
If you want some mood music for “Town of Cats,” check out our growing Murakami playlist on Spotify. It includes many songs from the novel, constantly updated as this GalleyCat editor works his way through a review copy of the novel. 

It takes judgment, not taste, to pick a Booker winner

The challenge facing this year's Booker judges reminds us that recognising excellence in literature is about far more than personal opinion - Rick Gekoski in The Guardian

How do you judge a book? John Banville's Booker-winning The Sea divided the critics. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

The longlist for the Man Booker 2011 came out last month, and I don't even recognise half the names. Some of the old favourites are there – Barnes, Barry, Hollinghurst – but a lot are not. I like that. It not only freshens the air, it suggests the judges have actually done their reading and thinking, instead of reflexively picking the same-olds, and starting the process from there. It will be fun to see who wins.

The one thing I can guarantee, though, is that the process of deciding the winner will be contentious, and the final choice will not be unanimous. That's what happens with literary prizes, especially when there are five judges, who would find it hard to agree on what fizzy water to order. According to the Man Booker Prize's literary director, Ion Trewin, the final decision has never been unanimous. When I was a judge in 2005, three of us agreed that John Banville's The Sea was a wonderful novel, and of the two dissenting voices, one "loathed" it, and the other described it as "total cod".

We are often assured that choices with regard to literary prizes are "a matter of opinion," that they are "subjective". I can see what someone who says this is driving at – such decisions could hardly be called "objective," could they? – but whoever claims this, it seems to me, has got it wrong. Because most people who call something "subjective" imply the additional term merely. Just a matter of opinion. Different judges: different winner. Subjective. As if one might just as easily, and defensibly, have picked a novel by Jeffrey Archer as the winner.

But the very strength of feeling that the choice of Banville occasioned suggests just the opposite. Those who are appalled that we should choose what Boyd Tonkin called "an icy and over-controlled exercise in coterie aestheticism" clearly think that we were wrong. And those pleased by our choice of a novel that is (according to The Spectator) "brilliant, sensuous, discombobulating" surely imply that we were, if not right, at least fully justified.

Claiming that something is right or wrong is generally regarded as more than mere opinion. Murder is wrong, being kind to old ladies is right: such conclusions are the result of first principles, argument and sustained consideration. If I prefer merlot to cabernet sauvignon, football to cricket, blondes to brunettes, spinach to mushrooms, that is a matter of taste, and I am under no obligation to defend my preference. But if I adore murdering, and am gratuitously beastly to old ladies, I am (in many ways) likely be called upon to defend myself.

Where does this leave us? With a clear distinction between matters of taste and matters of judgment. You like Mateus Rosé better than Château Pétrus? No problem. You think it is a better wine? You're wrong. You're clearly without the experience, palate, or discrimination to make such a judgment. As unfit as I would be to decide which sort of catalytic convertor to fit to my car. I simply don't know enough. This seems obvious, but increasingly such a position offends against the spirit of the times. Nobody is wrong these days. We are all "entitled to our opinion", and the notion that there is some gap between opinion and truth, assertion and argument, seems to be getting lost.
Gekoski's full, thoughtful piece here.