POETS ON THE DIGITAL BRIDGE
Who reads? who listens? who writes (and to whom)? We asked for contributions to build a digital bridge between Auckland and Sydney as poetry symposiums took place in each city March and September 2010. On 1 June the first part of the bridge was launched: 50-plus creative contributions, a collaborative digi poem, audio talks and photos from the Auckland symposium. Now the Sydney side launches with 60 creative contributions, a complementary digital collaboration, more audio talks, video readings, photos and texts of papers and commentary. We present here the multiple traces (text, audio, visuals, poetry, prose) of the year’s trans Tasman exchanges, noting how often the roles of host and guest have flip flopped, and hoping that they will go on doing so as we move between each other’s reading and writing spaces.
Pam Brown, Martin Edmond, Brian Flaherty and Michele Leggott
Editors, 1 December 2010
John Adams writes less experimentally as a District Court Judge than he sometimes manages in his poems and short stories. He is a graduate of the 2009 Masters of Creative Writing degree at the University of Auckland.
Adam Aitken lives in Sydney. He has spent time with his mother’s Thai family in Bangkok, taught English in Bali, worked with his wife for an NGO in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and has enjoyed writers’ residencies in Kuala Lumpur, Hobart, Hong Kong and Honolulu. His latest book is Eighth Habitation from Giramondo.
Dael Allison is a poet and essayist, winner of the 2007 Wildcare International Prize, 2008 Northern Territory Literary Award for Essay and 2009 LitLink/NRWC Award for unpublished manuscript (a novel). Her Masters in Creative Arts at UTS (Sydney) interprets, in poetry, the 1952 Darwin-to-Timor raft trip by artist Ian Fairweather.
Serie Barford is of European-Samoan-Algonquin Indian descent; she lives in Auckland and her most recent poetry book is Tapa Talk (Huia 2007). With Selina Tusitala Marsh, Tim Page, Doug Poole and others, she was part of the spoken word show Polynation which played the Queensland Poetry Festival and Auckland’s Going West Writers and Readers Festival in 2008.
Miro Bilbrough’s poetry collection Small-Time Spectre was published by Kilmog Press (Dunedin) in 2010. She lives in Sydney where she writes and directs films, including Urn, Bartleby and the short feature Floodhouse. Her poetry sometimes appears in Sport and Landfall.
A major, if exasperatingly ‘diffuse’ talent in Australian letters (David Malouf), Ken Bolton played the kettle in the failed Ionesco remake of How Green was My Valley (effectively the role of chorus). He has played opposite some of the major talents of our time (Anita Ekberg, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Loren Horsley, Madeline Kahn) and his most recent book is A Whistled Bit of Bop from Vagabond Press in Sydney (2010).
Sal Brereton’s collections of experimental prose are Ideal Conditions (1982) and Sitting Rigid (2000). She is presently co-curating (with Kurt Brereton and Ken Bolton) a retrospective exhibition called The Coalcliff Days, opening April 2011 at Wollongong City Art Gallery. Her memoir Taking Stock will be published to coincide with the exhibition.
Iain Britton lives in Auckland and teaches at King’s School. Oystercatcher Press (UK) brought out his third collection in 2009 and Kilmog Press (Dunedin) is publishing a new collection in November 2010. See iainbritton.co.nz.
Ben Brown is a children’s author, poet, short story/non-fiction/script/freelance writer who enjoys spoken word performance. He lives and works in Lyttelton.
Pam Brown’s most recent title is Authentic Local (soi3 modern poets 2010). She has published numerous books, chapbooks, and an e-book, both locally and internationally over many years. She is a bass player with The Crispy Wantons and blogs intermittently at The Deletions.
Alan Brunton (1946-2002) was a poet and performer who co-founded the experimental theatre troupe Red Mole with Sally Rodwell in Wellington in 1974. The Brunton Rodwell Papers are in the University of Auckland’s Special Collections.
Michelle Cahill’s poems appear in World Literature Today and are forthcoming in the Harper Collins Book of New English Poetry by Indians. Vishvarupa, her second collection, will be published by Five Islands Press in 2011. She co-edits the online journal Mascara.
Janet Charman lives in West Auckland. Her most recent collection cold snack (Auckland UP 2007) won the Montana NZ Book Award for poetry, and in 2009 she held a fellowship at the Hong Kong Baptist University International Writers Programme.
Lindsay Charman-Love lives in Rawene on the Hokianga harbour where he writes short stories, poetry and local history, and looks after Clendon House for the NZ Historic Places Trust. He is the author of Top Hat and Taiaha (Huia 2001), a collection of stories.
Jennifer Compton is a New Zealander now living in Melbourne. Her most recent poetry book is Barefoot (Picaro 2010) and she was Visiting Literary Artist at Massey University in Palmerston North this year. In 2011 she will be a guest at Sarajevo Poetry Days.
Jen Crawford lives in Singapore and teaches at Nanyang Technological University. Her previous homes include Auckland, Wollongong and Sydney. Her poetry publications include Napoleon Swings (Soapbox 2009), Bad Appendix (Titus 2008) and Admissions (Five Islands 2000).
Belinda Diepenheim lives in Ashhurst and has had her poetry published in various New Zealand magazines.
Bill Direen is a poet, fiction writer and musician presently based at the Michael King Writers’ Centre in Devonport where he is the 2010 University of Auckland Literary Fellow. His recent publications include ‘L’ (in A Foreign Country, Random Static 2010), Enclosures (Titus 2008) and the CD Mean Time (Powertool Records 2010).
Laurie Duggan is from Melbourne and is now based in England. His most recent books are The Epigrams of Martial (2010), Crab & Winkle (2009), The Passenger (2006) and Compared to What: Selected Poems 1971-2003 (2005). The Complete Blue Hills will appear from Puncher and Wattmann in 2011. His blog is Graveney Marsh.
Rachel Blau DuPlessis teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia. She has visited Australia and contributed to several nzepc projects. Sections of the long poem Drafts, begun in 1986, have appeared in Pitch: Drafts 77-95 and The Collage Poems of Drafts, both 2010; Torques: Drafts 58-76 (2007); Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnumbered: Précis (2004), all from Salt Publishing. Drafts 1-38:Toll (2001) was published by Wesleyan UP.
Martin Edmond lives in Sydney and publishes non-fiction in New Zealand and Australia. His most recent books are Zone of the Marvellous (Auckland UP) and The Supply Party (East Street), both published in 2009. He is researching the story of Rex Battarbee and Albert Namatjira for a new book and blogs at Isinglass.
Murray Edmond lives in West Auckland. He is the editor of Ka Mate Ka Ora: A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics and his most recent poetry book is Walls to Kick and Hills to Sing From: A Comedy with Interruptions (Auckland UP 2010). He teaches drama at the University of Auckland.
David Eggleton is a poet, performer and critic who lives in Dunedin. His most recent poetry books are Time of the Icebergs (Otago UP), launching November 2010, and Fast Talker (Auckland UP 2006). He is the new editor of Landfall.
Michael Farrell lives in Melbourne and has published three books: ode ode, a raiders guide and BREAK ME OUCH. He co-edited (with Jill Jones) Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann 2009). Michael visited Auckland in 2009 and 2010, and has poems in brief 40 and 41.
Sue Fitchett is a retired psychologist, conservationist and Waiheke Islander. She has co-authored and co-edited several poetry books, and her most recent solo collection is Palaver lava queen published by Auckland UP in 2004.
Brian Flaherty is Associate University Librarian at the University of Auckland, co-editor of the online journal Trout and co-founder with Michele Leggott of nzepc. A selection of his work can be found at nzepc digital,
Paula Green is a West Auckland poet, children’s author and critic. Her latest poetry collection is Slip Stream (Auckland UP 2010) and she is the co-author with Harry Ricketts of 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry (Random House 2010).
David Gregory is a Christchurch-based poet active in the promotion of New Zealand writing. He is an editor for Sudden Valley Press, a member of the Canterbury Poets Collective and has three books of poetry to his name. His work has been published and performed locally and internationally.
Bernadette Hall lives at Amberley Beach, north of Christchurch, and teaches part-time at the Hagley Writers’ Institute. She held the Rathcoola Residency in Co. Cork, Ireland, in 2007 and her most recent poetry collection is The Lustre Jug (Victoria UP 2009).
Aroha Harris belongs to Te Rarawa and Ngapuhi, and lectures in the University of Auckland History Department.
Martin Harrison teaches at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is a poet, essayist and critic whose books include Music: Prose and Poems (Vagabond 2005) and Wild Bees: New and Selected Poems (U of Western Australia P 2008).
Siobhan Harvey is the editor of Words Chosen Carefully: New Zealand Writers in Discussion (Cape Catley 2010) and Our Own Kind: 100 New Zealand Poems about Animals (Godwit 2009). She is poetry editor of Takahe and a consulting editor of International Literary Quarterly.
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman lives in Christchurch. His most recent books are Best of Both Worlds: The story of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau (Penguin) and two poetry collections, Autumn Waiata (Cold Hub) and Fly Boy (Steele Roberts), all published in 2010. He is the 2011 Writer in Residence at Waikato University.
David Howard’s collaborators include photographer Fiona Pardington (How To Occupy Our Selves 2003) and composer Johanna Selleck, whose setting of his lyric Air, Water, Earth Meld was premiered 2009 in Melbourne. In December 2009 he received the inaugural NZSA Mid-Career Writer’s Award for the body of his published work over thirty years.
Hanna Huia writes fiction, poems and songs, and lives in Auckland. Ko Hikurangi te maunga, ko Waiapu te awa, Ngatiporou te iwi (Hikurangi is the mountain, Waiapu is the river, Ngatiporou the people).
Lynn Jenner lives at Raumati on the Kapiti Coast and is a recent graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters. She won the Adam Foundation Prize for Creative Writing in 2008 for her poem sequence Dear Sweet Harry which was published by Auckland UP in July 2010.
Jill Jones teaches in the Creative Writing programme at the University of Adelaide. Her most recent book is Dark Bright Doors (Wakefield 2010) and she co-edited with Michael Farrell the anthology Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann 2009). She blogs at Ruby Street.
Paul Kane teaches at Vassar College in New York state and spends part of each year in Victoria, Australia. His most recent books are Work Life and A Slant of Light.
S. K. Kelen is an Australian poet who lives in Canberra, enjoys travelling, gardening and hanging around the house, philosophically. His most recent volumes are Goddess of Mercy (Brandl and Schlesinger 2002) and Earthly Delights (Pandanus 2006).
Cath Kenneally makes Arts Breakfast each Saturday for Radio Adelaide at the University of Adelaide and is the producer of Writers’ Radio, a weekly books and writing programme nationally distributed on the Community Broadcasting Network. Her most recent book is the novel Jetty Road (Wakefield 2009).
Anne Kennedy’s most recent book is the narrative poem The Time of the Giants (Auckland UP 2006). She has worked as a screenwriter, script editor and fiction reviewer, and has held writing fellowships at the University of Auckland and at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Anne co-edits the online journal Trout and is currently based in Auckland.
Michele Leggott’s most recent poetry book is Mirabile Dictu (Auckland UP 2009) and her sequence northland was published as a limited edition chapbook by Pania Press in September 2010. She coordinates nzepc with Brian Flaherty and teaches at the University of Auckland.
Kate Lilley teaches feminist and queer literary history and theory at the University of Sydney. Her first book of poems, Versary (Salt 2002), won the Grace Leven Prize. Her second, Ladylike, is forthcoming from Salt. She is the editor of Dorothy Hewett’s Selected Poems (U of Western Australia P 2010) and the poetry editor of Southerly.
Genevieve McClean is a poet, singer, actor and film-maker. Her recent short film Stasis explores existentialism using her recorded word performance, and she is working on a number of documentary projects with Fat Blossom Films. For more information visit her blog at Gengenerator.
Cilla McQueen is a poet and artist who lives in Bluff, Southland, and is the New Zealand Poet Laureate 2009-11. Her most recent collections are The Radio Room (Otago UP 2010) and Firepenny (Otago UP 2005), and her audio CD A Wind Harp (with backing music by the Blue Neutrinos) was released by Otago UP in 2006. She is winner of the 2010 Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry.
Frankie McMillan is a Christchurch poet and short story writer. She is a graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters (Victoria University) and her first short fiction collection The Bag Lady’s Picnic and Other Stories was published by Shoal Bay Press. Dressing for the Cannibals, her first poetry collection, was published by Sudden Valley Press in August 2010.
Kelly Malone completed a Masters of Creative Writing at the University of Auckland in 2009 and her poetry has been published in local zines and print journals. She was educational consultant and a contributing poet for the Michael King Writers’ Centre project A Million Poems for Matariki June-July 2010.
Bill Manhire is the director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. His most recent poetry book is The Victims of Lightning (Victoria UP 2010).
Selina Tusitala Marsh lives on Waiheke Island and teaches at the University of Auckland. Her poetry collection Fast Talking PI includes an audio CD with original musical backing by Tim Page. It was published in 2009 by Auckland UP and won the 2010 Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award.
Philip Mead teaches at the University of Western Australia in Perth. He is the author of Networked Language: Culture and History in Australian Poetry (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2008) which won the NSW Premier’s Prize for Literary Scholarship.
Peter Minter is a poet, editor and scholar. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Empty Texas and blue grass, co-editor of Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets and was poetry editor at Meanjin 2000-2005. His most recent projects include co-editing the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature and the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, and from 2011 he will be the poetry editor of Overland.
David Mitchell’s Steal Away Boy: Selected Poems was published by Auckland UP in March 2010. He lives in care at Phillip House in Bronte in Sydney’s east where he is, perhaps intermittently, as happy as a sandboy.
John Newton lives in Wellington where he is the 2010 Stout Research Centre Fellow at Victoria University. His critical study The Double Rainbow: James K Baxter, Ngati Hau and the Jerusalem Commune was published by Victoria UP in 2009 and his second poetry collection Lives of the Poets (Victoria UP) was launched in July 2010.
Gregory O’Brien is a poet, artist and critic who lives in Wellington. His most recent book is Euan Macleod: The Painter in the Painting, published in Sydney by Piper Press. A Micronaut in the Wide World: The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy is forthcoming from Auckland UP in 2011.
Stephen Oliver has lived in Paris, Vienna, London, San Francisco, Greece and Israel. Signed on with the radio ship The Voice of Peace broadcasting in the Mediterranean out of Jaffa, Israel. Freelanced as production voice, narrator, newsreader, announcer, voice actor, vocal coach, journalist, radio producer, copy and feature writer. Lived in Australia for the last two decades; now based in the King Country. He has published 16 titles of poetry. His latest, APOCRYPHA (2010), is a chapbook published by Cold Hub Press, Lyttelton.
Rachel O’Neill is a writer and artist living on the Kapiti Coast. She has written poetry, stories and art criticism. Selected writing appears in JAAM 28, Hue and Cry 4, Paper Radio (www.paperradio.net), Blackmail Press 25 and Turbine 2009 and 2010.
Tim Page is a singer songwriter who works at the University of Auckland as a digital media specialist. See and hear more of Tim’s music at Amplifier.
Mark Pirie is a Wellington poet and publisher, editor of broadsheet and archivist for the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa (PANZA). His latest book is A Tingling Catch: A Century of New Zealand Cricket Poems 1864-2009. More information on Mark at his website www.markpirie.com.
Vivienne Plumb is Sydney-born but has lived for many years in New Zealand. She writes poetry, fiction and drama. Her play The Cape played recently at Centrepoint Theatre, Palmerston North. Her new collection of poetry crumple will be published in November 2010 by Seraph Press, Wellington. She is presently completing a Doctorate of Creative Arts in Sydney.
Doug Poole is of Samoan and European descent and lives in Auckland where he runs Blackmail Press. He organised and performed in Polynation, the spoken word show that played the Queensland Poetry Festival and Auckland’s Going West Writers and Readers Festival in 2008.
Chris Price is a Wellington poet, musician and editor who teaches at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her most recent poetry book is The Blind Singer (Auckland UP 2009). She is winner of the 2011 New Zealand Post Mansfield Prize, which enables a New Zealand writer to work at the Villa Isola Bella in Menton, France, where Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote in 1919 and 1920.
Nigel Roberts lives and writes in Sydney. His most recent publications are Déjà vu tours (Hale & Iremonger 1995) and Late (Polar Bear 2007). His Selected Poems will be published in 2011. He is currently assembling a collection of memoirs on the life and work of David Mitchell.
Jack Ross teaches at Massey University’s Auckland Campus. His latest collection of short stories, Kingdom of Alt, was published by Titus Books in September 2010. Other books scheduled for this year include 11 Views of Auckland, a book of essays about the ‘super city’ which he is co-editing with Grant Duncan. You can find details about this (and other matters) at his blog The Imaginary Museum.
Lisa Samuels teaches at the University of Auckland. Her newest poetry books are Tomorrowland (Shearsman 2009), Throe (Oystercatcher 2009) and Mama Mortality Corridos (Holloway 2010). Chax Press will publish her creative non-fiction book Anti M next year. Current projects include an audio CD of poetry and soundscapes, a modular novel experiment (Tender Girl), and essays on contemporary poetry and critical practice.
Koos Schuur (1915-1995) was born in the Netherlands and lived in Australia between 1951 and 1963. He was an associate of the Dutch experimental poets known as the Vijftigers.
Kerrin P Sharpe is a teacher of creative writing. Over the last two years she has been published in Best NZ Poems 2008 and 2009, Turbine 2007 and 2009, Snorkel, Bravado, Takahe, NZ Listener, Poetry NZ, Junctures, Sport and The Press. She is featured poet in Takahe 69.
Penny Somervaille graduated with a (mature) BA in 2009 and has been active in reading her work in a variety of venues around Auckland. She is an MC for Poetry Live, the weekly open mic forum started by David Mitchell in 1980 and now located at The Thirsty Dog in K Rd.
Michael Steven has recently relocated from Auckland to Dunedin. He is the proprietor of Soapbox Press which has published among others Jen Crawford, Martin Edmond and Mark Young.
Amanda Stewart is a poet, writer and vocal artist who lives in Sydney. Over the years she has created publications, performances, film and radio works including an opera which was set in New Zealand, The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior (Vast CD 028). Her book and CD set of Selected Poems, I/T is available from Here and There Books and Split Records.
Helen Sword teaches at the University of Auckland and has published widely on modernist literature and culture, digital poetics, educational development and academic writing. Her digital poetry can be found at The Stoneflower Path.
Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English living in Venice. He has written poetry exclusively in English since 1993.
John Tranter is the founding editor of Jacket Magazine and coordinator of the Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library (APRIL).His most recent poetry book is Starlight: 150 Poems (U of Queensland P 2010).
Fredrika van Elburg was born in the Netherlands, studied English literature at the University of Auckland, and enjoys translating poetry between the two languages, in both directions. Her PhD thesis (2007) is a comparison of selected Language poets and the post-war Dutch experimental poets known as the Vijftigers.
Ann Vickery was a founding editor of the feminist e-journal HOW2 and now teaches at Deakin University in Melbourne. Her most recent book is Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women’s Poetry (Salt 2007) and she co-edited Manifesting Australian Literary Feminisms: Nexus and Faultlines (Australian Literary Studies 2009) with Margaret Henderson.
Catherine Vidler’s first collection of poems Furious Triangle is forthcoming from Puncher and Wattmann. She is the editor of the online trans-Tasman journal Snorkel.
Corey Wakeling lives in Melbourne. His work has appeared in Cordite, [out of nothing], Yomimono, Peril, Etchings, 543, Everyday Genius, Otoliths, Art Monthly (Australia), The Sun Herald (Sydney) and The Age (Melbourne). He is a prospective PhD candidate of literature at the University of Melbourne.
Kate Waterhouse co-edited Motherlode: Australian Women’s Poetry 1986-2008 (Puncher and Wattmann 2009) with Jennifer Harrison, and recently moved back to Auckland after ten years in Sydney. Her first book Keep Breathing was published by Five Islands Press in 2006; a full-length collection, working title To Australia With Love, is forthcoming.
Gerry Webb lives in the Far North of New Zealand. He raises vegetables and trees, beef cattle and bees, after a long spell in Auckland where he taught literature and English language, mostly at Unitec. His first collection of poetry, Some evidence of you is forthcoming from Steele Roberts, Wellington.
Mercedes Webb-Pullman returned to New Zealand from Australia in 2008 after 40 years in the wilderness. She completed a Diploma in Creative Writing at Whitireia in 2009 and spent 2010 worrying about her MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University. Her poems are in Turbine 2008, 4th Floor 2009 and 2010 and Reconfigurations 2009.
Ian Wedde lives and writes in Wellington. His most recent books are Bill Culbert: Making Light Work (art criticism) and Good Business (poetry), both published by Auckland UP in 2009.
Adrian Wiggins lives in Newtown, Sydney. His writing has recently appeared in Meanjin, Snorkel, Cordite and Heat. In 1997 he co-founded Cordite and In 2010 he founded www.sydneypoetry.com. Read more of his work at www.pureandapplied.net
Cyril Wong lives in Singapore. He published tilting our plates to catch the light (firstfruits 2007) and was awarded the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award for Literature (2005) and the Singapore Literature Prize (2006). His poems have appeared in journals such as Atlanta Review, Fulcrum, Poetry International, Wascana Review and Asia Literary Review.
Becky Woodall is an aspiring novelist and poet. She placed second equal in the 2010 Going West Poetry Slam and her work is included in the 2010 New Zealand Poetry Society anthology across the fingerboards.
Sonja Yelich lives in Devonport, Auckland. Her latest poetry book is get some (Auckland UP 2008) and she held the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship January-June 2010.
Mark Young auditioned for The Supremes when Florence Ballard left the group, but Cindy Birdsong got the gig. His most recent books are Genji Monogatari (Otoliths 2010) and At Trotsky’s Funeral (Kilmog 2010). and an e-chapbook some Geographies is due in December from Argotist Ebooks. He is the editor of Ototliths and blogs at gamma ways.
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