Category: Memoir

Cuba Press Book Gig

THURSDAY 12 FEBRUARY, 6PM
HAVELOCK NORTH LIBRARY

I’ve had a great run with publishers Cuba Press — Mary and Paul and all the other dedicated workers who have supported their efforts to publish local books, beautifully. It was Mary’s very cool idea to get some of their authors metaphorically on a bus tour for a gig in Hawke’s Bay.

THURSDAY 12 FEBRUARY, 6PM
HAVELOCK NORTH LIBRARY
Free event. Refreshments. Books for sale.
RSVP: books@wardini.co.nz

Poets Michael Fitzsimons and Simon Sweetman (well known music reviewer) will be there, and Andrew Wright channelling the extraordinary Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe and her life in the early days between two rivers, Tracy Farr with the brilliant novel Wonderland which has left me star-struck and championing her for the Ockhams this year (obvious choice, I know), me talking history and murder and colonialism, and all tied up in a bow by Mary McCallum, novelist and publisher of Cuba Press… but also on this night wearing her poet’s hat and tackling the hens with her collection of read-out-loud poems.

That’s a lot of writers gathered together for an evening, and all keen to yabber about poetry, novels, writing, publishing, life. Come along and join us for a hell of a night.

The Wonderful Wardini Books will have books for sale.

Featuring:

Michael Fitzsimons, High Wire: author of Michael, I Thought You Were Dead.

Simon Sweetman, The Richard Poems: author of The Death of Music Journalism.

Andrew Wright, My Three Rivers: the unpredictable waters of rural life.

Tracy Farr, Wonderland: Marie Curie and an early Wellington circus family. What? Yes!

Cristina Sanders, Ōkiwi Brown, colonial Wellington and its degenerates.

Mary McCallum, Tackling the Hens. Both the name of her fab book of poems and also an apt description of what she’ll be doing on the night, probably.

Bring your chickens along for a bok bok bok.

Always Home, Always Homesick

Always Home, Always Homesick, by Hannah Kent

Why fall in love with Iceland? Hannah Kent counts the ways. As a young Australian woman she picks up the default option of a Rotary exchange to Iceland, spends the first few months in a cold house with a cold family and an inhospitable frozen land, but after a while, both Hannah an Iceland thaw. She works hard to learn the language “my conversation has always been pockmarked with grammatical error and the foreigner’s manner of jamming in known vocabulary at the expense of clarity and precision”, makes some friends, and moves in with a new family who became her greatest support and friends for life. She falls in love with Iceland itself.

Continue reading “Always Home, Always Homesick”