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Thursday, December 01, 2016
Latest News from The Bookseller
Auckland Libraries' great summer reading programme
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1 December 2016 -
30 January 2017
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Saturday 3 December
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Author talks
Saturday
3 December // Glenfield Library
Local author, singer/songwriter Chris
Sanders is launching his children's picture book with CD at Glenfield
Library.
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Book clubs
Ma te kakau me te matā e whaoa. Through our
combined efforts we will achieve success.Come and join our adult te reo Māori
reading group. All welcome – from beginners to more advanced.
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The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems 2016
The
winner
of the 2016 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems, run
by International Writers’ Workshop NZ Inc (IWW), has been announced with the
$1000 prize awarded to Michael Giacon of Auckland for his sequence, Argento
in no man land.
Giacon was born and raised in
Ponsonby. He is from a large Pakeha-Italian-Samoan family, and has worked at
tertiary level in English language teaching for quite some time. In 2016
he graduated with an AUT Masters in Creative Writing, producing a volume of
poetry, Beyond Retrieve, which was all about a life of
writing. Argento in no man land began as part of his Masters. A series
of IWW poetry workshops helped him select and shape his winning sequence of 13
poems telling of spring-to-spring romance, love, lust, break-up, some sadness,
hope, for Argento Q in the gay milieu.
This
year’s judge, Gus Simonovic, said of
the winning sequence: “This seduces on the first
read with its feel of ‘ease’. You know when you read one of those poems that
have just ‘landed’ as they are; the ones that look and sound as if they come
directly from that eternal creative source; and where the poet is just the
medium between the source and the reader. The structure of the poem is
‘predictable’, but the content itself is everything but. Its natural flow and
the richness of the emotional landscape makes it readable and re-readable with
endless incarnations of poetic surprise(s).”
The
Emerging Poet Award, presented to an IWW member of at
least three years standing who has not had poetry published previously, is Caroline Carlyle for her sequence The
Chongololo Therapy Sessions. A chongololo is a giant African millipede and
the seven poem sequence relates to her childhood growing up in Zimbabwe.
About
the Prize
The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a
Sequence of Poems has been made possible by a bequest from the Jocelyn
Grattan Charitable Trust. It was a specific request of the late Jocelyn Grattan
that her mother be recognised through an annual competition in recognition of
her love for poetry and that the competition be for a sequence or cycle of
poems with no limit on the length of the poems. It is one of two poetry
competitions funded by the Trust, the other being the prestigious Kathleen
Grattan Award run by the publishers of Landfall magazine.
This is the 8th year the
prize has been contested. Previous winners are:
2009:
Alice Hooton for America.
2010: Janet Charman for Mother
won't come to us, and Rosetta Allan for Capricious Memory.
2011: Jillian Sullivan for how
to live it
2012:
James Norcliffe for What do you call your male parent?
2013:
Belinda Diepenheim for Bittercress and Flax.
2014:
Julie Ryan for On Visiting Old Ladies.
2015: Maris O’Rourke for Motherings
About IWW
International Writers' Workshop NZ Inc
was founded in 1976 by poet Barbara B Whyte and meets twice a month from
February to November at the Northcote Point Senior Citizens Villa in Northcote.
IWW's main aim is to inspire writers by means of workshops and competitions
across fiction, nonfiction and poetry.
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2016 is IWW’s 40th anniversary year
and has culminated with the launch of Those
be Rubies, a comprehensive and meticulously researched history from
the workshop’s conception to the end of 2016 including these results of The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence
of Poems. More about the book at iww.co.nz/book.htm.
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Michael Giacon can be contacted by
email at mlag@xtra.co.nz or on 021 213
6685.
2017 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellows announced
New Zealand poets Steven Toussaint and Gregory Kan
have been awarded the prestigious 2017 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship. This is
the first time two poets have been the recipients of the fellowship.
The poets will have the
opportunity to focus on their craft full-time, with each having a six-month
tenure at the Sargeson Centre in Auckland, and sharing an annual stipend of
$20,000.
Originally from the United States, Steven Toussaint is
looking forward to seeing where the fellowship takes him, as his writing is
often troubled by our increasingly digital environment.
“The digital age has opened up wonderful opportunities
for new kinds of communication. However, it has also scattered our attention in
many different directions. At times I feel concerned that my attention is
strained by all the media and digital attractions that exist around me,” he
says.
Steven will use the fellowship to work on a new book
of poetry, which will consist of individual poems with unifying themes about
religious imagination.
Steven’s published works include a chapbook, Fiddlehead,
which was published in New Zealand in 2014, with his first full length
book, The Bellfounder, published the following year in the United
States.
Gregory Kan says the fellowship provides a wonderful
platform to help writers gain traction in an unrestrained world of literature.
“The digital age has meant that we have more writing
than ever before – it’s a form that was previously only accessible to a
privileged group, but is now more pervasive than ever which is fantastic,” he
says.
Gregory will be using the fellowship to work on
another book of poems. He will be consolidating pieces of already completed
work as well as writing new pieces which interrogate the writing of biography
and autobiography in this era of overwhelming and spectacular information.
Gregory published his first book this year, This
Paper Boat with Auckland University Press, which is on the Ockham NZ Book
Awards long list for poetry. His work has been published in numerous literary
journals, as well as contemporary art exhibitions and catalogues.
Frank
Sargeson Trust Chair Elizabeth Aitken-Rose says
she is delighted with the calibre of this year’s fellows and is excited to see
them take their work to the next level.
“The current technological revolution is shining a
light on some wonderful talent we may never have known about before – and this
was quite evident in the quality of applicants we received this year,” she says.
“Being a writer in the digital age gives writers
unprecedented opportunity, yet this can make it more challenging for writers to
cut through and have their voice heard. This is particularly the case for
poets, we are very excited to have two poets win the Fellowship this year.
“The fellowship will assist Steven and Gregory in
gaining traction in this highly competitive environment, giving them a platform from which they can continue to
build their careers and time to dedicate to their projects.”
The
fellowship will run from 1 April 2017 to 30 November 2017. Steven will have the
first stint at the residence with Gregory finishing out the tenure.
In 2016 the fellowship was
awarded to Diana Wichtel and Breton Dukes. Other previous
winners include Alan Duff, Catherine
Chidgey, Michael King and Janet Frame.
The fellowship has been
recognising and supporting some of our greatest talents for more than 30 years,
says Grimshaw & Co Partner Paul Grimshaw.
“It offers vital support to New Zealand writers to
focus, uninterrupted, on their work,” Grimshaw says. “They are contributing to
New Zealand’s literary landscape and we are very proud to support them.”
Further information on the Fellowship is
available here. Any queries
can be directed to Elizabeth Bennie at elizabeth.bennie@grimshaw.co.nz or on +64 9 375 2393.
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