Final Course Meeting on Monday 6/10 from 5.30 pm

Mary and I thought we might make the last meeting for our intrepid Argonauts of contemporary NZ / International Poetics on Monday at the little bistro Zavitos in Mairangi Bay. It doesn't open till 5.30 pm, but I won't be back from my other course in Auckland before then anyway, so it seemed like a good time to gather.

Zavitos is on the left as you head north through the Mairangi Bay shopping centre, at the head of a little shopping arcade, past Hastings Rd but just before you get to Penzance Street. There are full map details here.

There's a bar and a restaurant, so we can maybe start off with a drink and some pizza bread and then see what we want to do after that.

It's intended as a postmortem on the course, naturally - but also as a discussion of new directions both for your studies and for the subjects we've been discussing all year.

Hope to see you there!

Notes from the session on Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones

Posted on behalf of Mary -

This post contains lots of interesting stuff but it only relates to one aspect of what were discussing last Monday and I am going to try to explain how i think it might connect. Thanks to Anna for starting the discussion off so well!

Mr Pip is narrated retrospectively by a young woman who is telling about her experiences between the ages of 13 and 15 (‘skinny thirteen year-old’ on the first page). In fiction retrospective narration can work in many ways - sometimes a lot is retrospective assessment set against the past/present experience of the story and therefore moving between different understandings of a situation, sometimes the focus is more on the innocence at the time and although in the past tense reminds us very infrequently of the longer perspective. This latter manner is how Mr Pip is structured - so as you say Greg it is a useful voice in which to tell the events because it can engage readers who are also ignorant of the history and context of this island and because the young perspective is vivid and describes in a detail (the beach, Mr Watts, the stories, etc, etc) that is useful to evoke that world for those unfamiliar with it. Often child perspectives are to bring alive what we no longer see, or judge too much see. (And I agree with what you say about the choice of a girl to tell the story - keeping the narrative out in the open and so on).

However both 'convenient and versatile' imply something else, you seem to be saying that this was a good way for a writer with himself a limited knowledge to tell a story – perhaps, but isn't that worrying: aren't gaps and silences left intentionally in a story to hint at knowledge and understanding that surpasses what is actually included.

That makes me come back to on the one hand the tension between the retrospective narrator and the protagonist - remember Jenny commented on how in Great Expectations Pip comments in complex and often self-critical way on what he is telling. This mix can thicken a fiction - make it more meaningful as we think about the difference between different perspectives.

Another issue is the one raised about Sargeson and the distance between Sargeson's narrators (and often his characters) and the perspective of the implied author. Sargeson's work hinges on this distance - he uses an unreliable narrator ( I don't think Matlida is quite that though we th reader do think beyond her naivete at times) - and the narrator is telling a story (boxes within boxes) of someone he has met or known. It's usually a story which he the narrator is moved by but dosn't quite know why - ie he emotionally feels its significance but can't explain why or what it is. The difference from what greg is suggesting is in Sargeson’s case that this is an extremely conscious strategy for telling a story which is particularly designed to comment on what Sargeson the author thought was a judgmental and impoverished society in which those real experiences of joy, love, revelation, purposefulness were experienced by ordinary working people ( particaularly men)denied and destroyed by a utilitarian and judgmental (puritanical) middle class. Hence he is dignifying a real experience of the world by creating these inarticaulte narrators. He wrote mostly short fiction often - a good genre in which to sustain this tension. You acn of course deconstruct this also -s howing that the desire to show without telling, to hide knowledge and to write plainly is in fact a continuation of the puritanism he was trying to break away from.

So the question comes back to MR Pip - does Lloyd Jones use the naivete of Matilda's to some purpose - other than a useful way to tell a fable or fairystory. Is there a tension between Matilda's new understanding of the world and her first one. I think to give him his due at the end Lloyd Jones is trying to show that story can come via a pathetic example – that is it arises from NZ in the form of a rather lost and undirected actor in an arid community who gets involved with the lonely island girl living next door - Mr Watts.

But somehow I am not convinced both because the narrator's rethink has been delayed without building up a questioning tension as Dickens or Sargeson do in different ways and because the pattern of story- telling in the main part of the book has been so much the pattern of colonial appropiation, misrecognising or leaving out and erasing the culture of the island, and privileging the power of story as it emenates from the Western classic - even if its conduit, Mr Watts, is unlikley.

I hope I have explained this - this last part probably needs better articulation!

The choice to go back to the island is, as Bruce said, also interesting - why? And why escape alone - in the initial plan?

Authorial Voice in 'Mr Pip'

Lloyd Jones, author of Mr Pip (2006), has written 14 books since 1991, including novels and children’s stories. In that time frame, he has either been short-listed for or won a dozen or so national book awards, including at least one children’s book award. The latter implies that Jones is adept at knowing how to ‘speak’ to children, which brings us to the question of the authorial voice in Mr Pip: Jones chose a university graduate named Matilda recalling her life at age 14 onwards in a village in Bougainville cut off from the outside world by an encircling war.

Before discussing Matilda, let us backtrack for a moment to an essay called ‘The Godly Roof', which was written by R. A. Copland and first appeared in the New Zealand periodical Landfall in 1968. In the essay Copland discusses the authorial voice in literature, particularly that of Frank Sargeson. For Copland, authors continually battle with what level of intelligence to give their characters without it seeming forced. If we apply that statement to Emma Neale’s 2006 novel Relative Strangers, it was not a huge jump for Neale – who holds a PhD on expatriate New Zealand women writers – to speak in the voice of the protagonist Chloe, who also has an enquiring mind and is continually taking night courses to keep herself intellectually stimulated. Likewise in the 1987 novel Dirty Work written by Nigel Cox, the protagonist Gina Tully is a middle class girl with a college education, so it is not a huge jump for Cox to emulate Tully’s voice, however, crossing the gender divide to speak as a ‘postmodern Ms’ no doubt was. 

In short, both the above authors and their protagonists are almost like us. In contrast, Copland writes that Sargeson wrote with his left hand (not literally) to achieve the realism of his characters, so distanced were they from his intellect.

So how does Copland’s discussion about what level of intelligence to give a book’s character transfer to Mr Pip? At age 14, Matilda is at a very convenient and versatile age as a protagonist. She is old enough to comprehend what the adults in the village talk about and has access to the world of children through her classmates. Yet she is still exposed to the violence of war, as can be seen in the segment where her mother sacrifices herself to save Matilda from being raped. But why did Jones choose a female voice? One answer is that if the narrator had been a male from the same age group, he would have been preoccupied with whether he should join the rebels, as other boys around his age had done, or whether he would eventually be forced to. In short, the male world and the war would have overridden the narrative. So by having a young woman as narrator, Mr Pip keeps the narrative out in the open, within the village dynamics, not hidden in the jungle with the fighters. Plus, for much of the time during the book, the narrator appears to be either absorbed in a literary world, or in shock after experiencing close at hand the horrors of war, a condition that in the real world creates a sort of tunnel vision. Both devices are handy veils if the author is not quite knowledgeable about a lived reality.

Finally, in keeping with his previous books targeting children, to some extent Jones is using a author's device that has worked for him before. In 2004 he wrote Everything You Need to Know About the World by Simon Eliot. The book was a finalist in the 2005 New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children. In the book a narrator named Simon Eliot creates a worldview for children in the 9-14 years age group. Sound familiar? The upper level of the target age group is the same age as Matilda, the protagonist in Mr Pip. Jones is familiar with the dialogue of that age group.

Hustlerville

Sir Ed's statue

IN MEMORY OF NIGEL COX AND DIRTY WORK

By Gregory Wood

I

Welcome to Hustlerville, a small seaside town at the end of Auckland’s northern motorway. For over half a century Hustlerville has fought to retain an image as a holiday town. But with the growth of Auckland and the extension of the motorway, Hustlerville is fast becoming just another satellite suburb of the metropolis.

Back in the early days however, the leading figures of Hustlerville must have had noble ambitions for this place. They erected an imposing statue of Sir Edmund Hillary in the future town centre and named it Hillary Square. Today, Sir Ed’s statue is surrounded by a little garden in the midst of a car park. Council workers clear away from the small shrubs a daily build-up of fast-food wrappers blown in by the sea breeze. Sir Ed’s statue faces the beach and the sunrise, and nearby there is a small plaque marking the death of Princess Diana. But any ocean outlook has long gone, blocked by beachfront houses, a block of shops and a Macdonald’s drive-in with its endless queue of cars.

Behind Hillary Square is a short dead-end street called George Lowe Place, which is named after George Lowe, who was a member of that famous 1954 expedition when Sir Ed and a sherpa named Tenzing became the first to climb Mount Everest. George Lowe Place ends at the doors of two panel-beating shops, an auto electrician and a tyre depot. Car wrecks in various stages of restoration line the street, its tar-seal scarred by tyre skid marks.

Leading off George Lowe Place is an alleyway called Tenzing Lane, which is named after the sherpa Tenzing. Here, there is a second-hand shop and a parking lot lined with industrial waste bins at the rear of shops. The names of these two mountaineers, Lowe and Tenzing, are used on street signposts to show the way to a semi-industrial area, a dumping ground for car wrecks and unwanted furniture.

“So what is the problem?” a small voice inside my head asked. “Walk one block back from the main street in any town and you’ll always find industry and ugliness. The tourists only see a façade and come away smiling, while the rest of us get on with making money. That is the way it is.”

II

Seeking some sort of respite, I went to Sir Ed’s statue and paused for a moment to ponder the great man, and Lady Di’s memorial. “Surely they wouldn’t put a statue of Sir Ed in such a prominent position just to attract tourists to be photographed next to?” I thought. “He is not a prop; he stands for something.” Just what I did not know, but had to find out for some peace of mind.

I resumed walking along the road engrossed in my thoughts and found a small path, which led to an estuary, where small wading birds gathered. Approaching female walkers nodded a greeting as if relieved that my walking shoes, drink bottle and cap signified a ‘safe’ man.

Further up the path a woman walking a beautifully kept longhaired spaniel pulled off the walkway a long time before I was even near her to let me pass. She was of average height, reasonably attractive, but gave me only a furtive glance. I saw anguished eyes on a drawn face. About fifty metres behind her walked a tall man of solid build and a shaved head. A pair of wraparound sunglasses hid any touch of emotion on the face. He did not acknowledge our passing but stared impassively ahead, not taking his eyes off the woman with the dog, keeping pace with her as if he held on to her with an invisible leash. He seemed to be walking the woman just like she was walking her beloved pet. After reaching a safe distance I turned to watch them disappearing around a small headland. For a sad and fleeting moment the path had become a stage, and two actors were playing out the final scenes in a tragedy play called End of an Affair. My heart went out to the woman; the man looked incapable of changing. He also looked threatening.

Finally, the walkway led to the beach and that first initial blast of salt air. Just beyond the water’s edge, kite surfers skimmed across small waves attached by lines to kite-like sails hovering high above them. At times, they would rise into the air with the force of the wind against their sails. Black-backed gulls reeled overhead, dropping shells onto the sand until they split open, even if it took half a dozen attempts before revealing that treat of fresh shellfish.

The wind strength was perfect for these large seabirds. Once aloft, they can swoop and dive as easily as the tiny common gulls, and turn in huge arcs, their bodies freed by an invisible velocity. When that happens, a walk along the water’s edge is like taking part in an aerial ballet. Look up, and a moving tapestry of sailcloth mingles with the outstretched wings of the black-backed gulls, which seem to revel in the company of an even bigger ‘bird’. One’s senses are overwhelmed with the roar of the wind and surf, and a screeching as the gulls commence diving runs in mock air battles before arcing back around for another game.

III

As the sun went down and cars again lined up outside McDonald’s, I found myself back at Sir Ed’s statue. During that time, someone had placed a red posy of young pohutukawa stems at Ed’s feet. It seemed that the statue was being used as a site of solace, a place to remember and dwell on a distant past with a different set of values.

The wind had died now. Tomorrow, I must bring some flowers for Lady Di. Now, that is progress. And while I’m there, perhaps that first faint touch of a sea breeze will again caress my skin as if being touched by a phantom lover. When that happens, it will be time to heed her siren’s call and leave this modern world for those soft sensuous sands. There, we will hold each other close, her silken hair swirling in the wind as the tempest encircles us and takes us up, soaring and sharing in that incredible celebration of life between Nature and the human spirit.

Administration Guide: Further Reading

Prescribed Texts:

Fiction:

Cox, Nigel. Dirty Work. 1987. Wellington: VUP, 2006.

Jones, Lloyd. Mr Pip. Auckland: Penguin, 2006.

Neale, Emma. Relative Strangers. Auckland: Vintage, 2006.

Randall, Charlotte. Within the Kiss. Auckland: Penguin, 2002.

Poetry:

Book of Readings [available from student notes in Quad Block B basement]

Suggested Further Reading:

[More specific lists of relevant secondary reading will be posted here during the course of the year]

Poetry:

Broom, Sarah. Contemporary British and Irish Poetry: An Introduction. Houndmills, Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance. Ed. Jack Ross & Jan Kemp. Auckland: Auckland UP, 2006.

Contemporary New Zealand Poets in Performance. Ed. Jack Ross & Jan Kemp. Auckland: Auckland UP, 2007.

New New Zealand Poets in Performance. Ed. Jack Ross & Jan Kemp. Auckland: Auckland UP, 2008.

Martin, Isabel. Reading Peter Reading. Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 2000.

Administration Guide: Assignments

NB: This is a 30-point paper, 100 percent internally assessed.

Submit assignments either in the Assignment slot on level 2 of the Atrium building, or directly to either Mary or myself during the workshop.

The work you hand in should adhere to the following guidelines:

• Typed.
• Double-spaced.
• Written on one side only of A4 sheets.
• Margins at least 2.5 cm (1 inch) all around (including top and bottom).

The marks will be divided up as follows:

Creative Response

Worth: 20 %
Due in: Session 4
Length: up to 3 pages

This is the first piece you will be handing in. We invite you to take off on a creative tangent from one of the authors or pieces presented in the course. Your own piece might take the form of a poem or poetic sequence, a piece of fiction, a script, or even a picture or pagework. Let us know what you have in mind, and we can discuss it further.

Journal

Worth: 20 %
Due in: Sessions 4 & 12
Length: up to 4,000 words in final form

This should be a series of thoughts and reactions to the materials and ideas covered in the course kept throughout the year. We expect at least some reaction to each of the authors, presented either as straight journal entries or in the form of an online blog. you’re welcome to contribute to this blog.

You may wish to set up your own linked companion blog instead, however.

You will be asked to submit your journal twice in the year. The first time for general reactions and comment, the second time for assessment.

Seminars

Worth: 20 %
Due in: by Session 10
Length: c.4-5 pages

You will be asked to give two seminars in the course of the year – one on themes, ideas, or texts primarily associated with the poetry section of the course and the other predominantly on issues associated with fiction. You should aim at giving one in each semester, but we’ll try to be flexible when it comes to scheduling the presentations.

The seminar should be roughly fifteen minutes long, with an additional fifteen minutes set aside for questions, making up a full half-hour.

The seminars will be assessed in terms of content and presentation but you will not be required to present them in written form. It is envisaged that you will develop one of your seminars into your Research Essay. In the seminar you should: aim to interest other students in the text and topic, outline the issues raised by your topic, indicate some interesting ways of looking at the question, and find ways to engage your audience in active exchanges concerning the topic.

Preparation of the seminar should act both as brainstorming and a plan for your eventual Research essay.

Research Essay

Worth: 40 %
Due in: 17th October
Length: up to 5,000 words

This is your major piece of work for the year:

It can be an extended literary-critical examination of one (or more) of the authors, works or themes discussed during the year.

If you wish, you can present your research essay online – on the model of one of the essays linked to author pages on the nzepc – and link or attach it to the course website.

Alternatively, you might like to take a more creative approach and do a piece of writing (perhaps in the manner of Susan Howe or Anne Carson) which incorporates research and innovative form.

The seminar (whether it be the first or second that you give) in which you discuss the scope and ramifications of the project you have in mind, must have been presented to the class by session 10.

Administration Guide: Timetable

Meetings: 3 hours Fortnightly (Monday 4-7 pm / AT 3.49).

WEEK:

1 - (3/3): Introduction [MP / JR]

2 - (17/3): Poetry: Howe / Leggott [JR]

(21/3-4/4): [EASTER]

3 - (7/4): Fiction: Dirty Work [MP]

4 - (21/4): Poetry: Harlow / Carson [JR]

Creative Response (20%)
& first presentation of Journal

5 - (5/5): Fiction: Within the Kiss [MP]

6 - (19/5): Poetry: Graham Lindsay [JR]

(30/5-11/7): [MID-YEAR BREAK]

7 - (14/7): Poetry: Reading / Muldoon [JR]

8 - (28/7): Fiction: Relative Strangers [MP]

9 - (11/8): Fiction: Mr Pip [MP]

(25/8-5/9): [MID-SEMESTER BREAK]

10 - (8/9): Poetry: Fiona Farrell [JR]

11 - (22/9): Fiction [MP]

12 - (6/10): Conclusion [MP / JR]

Journal (20%)

(17/10):

Research Essay (40%)

Suitable dates for each of your two Seminar presentations (each worth 10% of the final grade) should be chosen in consultation with Mary Paul or Jack Ross, depending on whether the major focus is on fiction or poetry.

Randall, Charlotte

[NZ Book Council Writers Pages]


Charlotte Randall

Author Pages:

NZ Book Council

Bibliography:

Novels:

Dead Sea Fruit (1995)
The Curative (Penguin Books, 2000)
Within The Kiss (Penguin Books, 2002)
What Happen Then, Mr Bones? (Penguin Books, 2004)

Neale, Emma

[NZ Book Council Writers Pages]


Emma Neale (b.1969)

Author Pages:

Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive

NZ Book Council

Bibliography:

POETRY:

Sleeve-notes. Auckland: Godwit, 1999.
How to Make a Million. Auckland: Godwit, 2002.
Double Jointed. [with Rob Allan, John Allison, Claire Beynon, John Dolan, Larry Matthews, Martha Morseth, James Norcliffe, Peter Olds, Jenny Powell-Chalmers and Trevor Reeves]. Wellington: Inkweed, 2003.
Spark. Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2007.

FICTION:

Night Swimming. Auckland: Random House, 1998/Australia: Anchor, 1999.
Little Moon. Auckland: Random House, 2001.
Double Take. Auckland: Random House, 2003.
Relative Strangers. Auckland: Random House, 2006.

EDITED:

Creative Juices. Auckland: Flamingo, 2002.
Best New Zealand Poems 2004. Wellington: IIML, 2004.
Swings and Roundabouts. Auckland: Godwit, 2008.

Jones, Lloyd

[NZ Book Council Writers Pages]


Lloyd Jones (b. 1955)

Author Pages:

NZ Book Council

NZ Literature File

Novels:

Gilmore's Dairy. Auckland : Hodder and Stoughton, 1985.
Splinter. Auckland : Hodder and Stoughton, 1988.
Choo Woo. Wellington : Victoria University Press, 1998.
Book of Fame. Auckland: Penguin, 2000.
Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance. Auckland: Penguin, 2002.
Paint your Wife. Auckland : Penguin, 2004.
Mister Pip. Melbourne : Text Publishing Company, 2006.

Stories:

Swimming to Australia and Other Stories. Wellington : Victoria University Press, 1991.
This House Has Three Walls. Wellington : Victoria University Press, 1997.

Non-Fiction:

Biografi: an Albanian Quest. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1993.
Last Saturday; by Loyd Jones and Bruce Foster. Wellington: Victoria University Press for the National Library of New Zealand, 1994.
Beach. Photographs Jocelin Carlin ; essay Lloyd Jones. Auckland: Bateman, 1999.

Edited:

Into the Field of Play : New Zealand Writers on the Theme of Sport. Edited by Lloyd Jones. Auckland : Tandem Press, 1992.
On Getting Old. By Kevin Ireland. Series Editor Lloyd Jones. Wellington: Four Winds Press, 2005.
On Going to the Movies. By Peter Wells. Series Editor Lloyd Jones. Wellington: Four Winds Press, 2005.
Next to Gods: a Cleaner's Story. By Don Franks. Series Editor Lloyd Jones. Wellington: Four Winds Press, 2005.
etc.

Cox, Nigel

[NZ Book Council Writers Pages]


Nigel Cox (1951-2006)

Author Pages:

NZ Book Council

NZ Literature File

Novels:

Waiting for Einstein. Auckland: Benton Ross, 1984.
Dirty Work. Auckland: Benton Ross, 1987. Reprinted, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006.
Skylark Lounge. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2000.
Tarzan Presley. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2004.
Responsibility. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005.
Cowboy Dog. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006.

Welcome

Welcome to:

139.795: Special Topic in English

The Massey University Calendar prescription runs as follows:

Recent Poets and Fiction in NZ

Campus: Albany (Auckland)

Mode: Internal

The purpose of the course is to set some selected contemporary New Zealand poetry and fiction writers in an international context. Too often, "New Zealand" and "World" literature are seen as mutually exclusive categories. Actually, we would argue, it's difficult to understand the innovations and technical demands of our most challenging local writers without some knowledge of where they're coming from - who their influences / pet hates are; and also without the added rich theoretical explanations of globalization and the postcolonial.

This blog is meant to supplement the Course Anthology and Administration Guide by giving you a forum to share your discoveries and insights throughout the year.

Assignments:

Journal (20%)

Seminar (20%)

Creative Response (20%)

Research Essay (40%)

Poets:

Michael Harlow (b. 1937)

Susan Howe (b. 1937)

Peter Reading (b. 1946)

Fiona Farrell (b. 1947)

Anne Carson (b. 1950)

Paul Muldoon (b. 1951)

Graham Lindsay (b. 1952)

Michele Leggott (b. 1956)

Novelists:

Nigel Cox (1951-2006): Dirty Work (1987)

Lloyd Jones (b. 1955): Mr Pip (2006)

Emma Neale (b. 1969): Relative Strangers (2006)

Charlotte Randall (b.?): Within the Kiss (2002)