Turbine 11 Writing Journal

We are happy to announce that Turbine 11 is now live and you can read it here: Turbine 11.

Turbine 11 contains poetry, short stories, an interview with the playwrite Albert Belz and reading journals. Turbine 11 also features poetry from the recipient of this years Adam Prize for creative writing Hera Bradburn (writing under the name Hera Lindsay Bird). Some of the poets have also been kind enough to record their works if you want to listen.

Turbine is an annual journal, published electronically, to showcase new writing from New Zealand authors. Many of whom are emerging authors. The journal is edited by staff and students from the International Institute of Modern Letters Master of Arts in Creative Writing degree. This years editors were Damien Wilkins, Christopher Howe and Hera Lindsay Bird.

The NZETC works with the IIML to produce and host the Turbine website.

Three new collections on Elsdon Best, student media and Antarctic research

We are very pleased to announce three new collections:

• Elsdon Best Published Works Collection
• Victoria University Student Magazine collection
• Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (VUWAE) Reports

Elsdon Best is widely known for his work as an ethnographer writing about Māori life and culture. This collection contains 15 of his works ranging from Māori Agriculture to Religion and the Māori concept of time. Some of Best's works were originally published by the Dominion Museum, where Best was employed, as a part of the Dominion Museum Bulletin series.

The Hilltop Literary Paper is the first publication in our student magazine collection. Hilltop contains works from some well known New Zealand authors such as James K. Baxter and Charles Brasch. We also plan to make available:

• The Spike
  
• Arachne
  
• SMAD

These magazines discuss student life from 1902 through to the 1950's and cover important events and activities throughout each trimester, for example: capping ceremonies and social and sports events. Student reaction to world wide events, such as the world wars, is also discussed.

For over 50 years Victoria University of Wellington has been sending research expeditions to the Antarctic. The outcomes of these expeditions form the Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (VUWAE) Reports collection. The aims of the expeditions were to research many aspects of the Antarctic environment including geology, glaciology, meteorology and biology.

A second poem for National Poetry Day

It's National Poetry Day today and I'd also like to share a poem that I like from the NZETC Collections.

It's called Love poem for a Geek on Dixon Steps by Airini Beautrais, from Sport 35: Winter 2007.

The poem's title caught my eye mostly because I walk up and down Dixon Steps everyday. The poem is short and sweet, and it enticed me to read more of Airini's poems. It is the first poem in Twenty-three Love Poems, all of which I enjoyed and I hope you enjoy too.

National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day so I thought I'd share my favourite poem from the NZETC collection.

When I first started at VUW, I'd recently returned from Oxford, where I'd been quite removed, physically and intellectually, from my years as an undergrad at Canterbury. One of my early tasks was assessing our collection with respect to google suite of tools. I'd not yet really had much to do with the Sport journal, but one of the pages was highly ranked for both "fucking poems" and "fucking poetry" and I instantly connected with the poem. The poem reminds me of two wonderful years I spent as part of the Canterbury Writers Group set up by the then Writer-in-Residence Bernadette Hall (whose Wikipedia entry I would later edit). For me those years were filled with poetry that was long on passion, shock value and pseudonyms but short on writing craft and life experience. We edited two anthologies (Find the Red (which ran to two printings) and Eels in a Bucket); we drank cheap red wine; we supported each other at poetry readings; we got to know the AA crowd (they were in the room immediately before us); in short we had a ball. One of my poems from the period eventually washed ashore in the School Journal, so maybe it wasn't an entirely misspent youth.

All that floods back to me when I read Short Poems About Fucking by James Brown from our Sport collection. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

stuart yeates

Māori Language Week

Kia Ora and welcome to Māori language week. The theme for this year's Māori Language week is Manaakitanga or Maori hospitality and Customs. There are several mentions of this term in our collection.

We thought we would take the opportunity to highlight some of our highly used Māori language works.

* A Dictionary of the Maori Language by Herbert W. Williams.

* Nga kōrero a Reweti Kohere Mā by Te Ohorere Kaa and Wiremu Kaa.

* 28 Maori Battalion by J. F. Cody.

These three works are in our ten most accessed items for the past 6 months. We are very pleased to see Maori language works being highly used in our collection.

If your currently studying Te Reo Maori you may like to use the 'Māori-English / English-Māori parallel texts only' search function to show works with translations between the two languages.

We are also looking forward to publishing another Māori work 'Te Whakatuwheratanga o Te Tumu Herenga Waka' or The Opening of Te Tumu Herenga Waka. Te Tumu Herenga Waka is the meeting house at Victoria University of Wellington and this work discusses its founding and the Epa, Poupou and Heke found inside.

Best New Zealand Poems Audio

We are happy to announce that selected poems on the Best New Zealand Poems Website are now available as audio files. Each poem has been recorded by the poet themselves. The audio files correspond to poems selected in The Best of Best New Zealand Poems, an anthology now available from Victoria University Press, edited by Bill Manhire and Damien Wilkins. We have been working with the International Institute of Modern Letters to make these recordings accessible. We hope to have the remaining poems available by mid 2011. You will find audio for many well known New Zealand poets and we hope you enjoy being able to listen to each poem as well as read it.

“Chew and depth” in New Zealand Poetry anthology

A brand new issue of the online anthology Best New Zealand Poems has gone live, containing the best 25 poems from 2010.

The anthology includes work from well known writers like Fleur Adcock, Elizabeth Smither, Ian Wedde, Jenny Bornholdt, James Brown, Gregory O'Brien and Poet Laureate Cilla McQueen as well as some of the rising stars of New Zealand literature.

This year’s Best New Zealand Poems is edited by Victoria University Senior Lecturer Chris Price—a former editor of Landfall and herself a well-known poet. She says she is particularly pleased to have included “two comets long lost from the local poetry firmament”—David Mitchell, who has published almost nothing since his near-legendary Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby in 1972, and John Newton, author of the much admired book about Baxter’s Jerusalem, The Double Rainbow.

She notes in her introduction that she was looking for—and found—“poems with enough chew and depth to make them worth repeated tasting.”

Series editor Professor Bill Manhire says that it’s exciting to see such a strong selection at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. “It’s one of New Zealand’s best kept secrets, just how good we are at poetry – Best New Zealand Poems is one way of telling the world what we all know locally.”

Professor Manhire and his colleague Damien Wilkins have been making a “best of the best” selection from the first ten years of Best New Zealand Poems. It will be published by Victoria University Press, and launched in May at the Auckland Writers’ Festival.

Professor Manhire says that sound files will soon to be added to back issues of Best New Zealand Poems. “We already have authors’ notes and lots of useful links. But everyone tells us that poems make most sense when their authors read them aloud. Now you’ll be able to see the poems on screen and hear the poets read them at the same time.”

New additions to the collection.

It has been a while since we updated our front page so we thought we would highlight some new works in the collection. We have a backlog of historical New Zealand and Pacific works that we are working our way through so keep an eye out for more to come. There are two noteworthy additions that maybe of interest.

The Founders of Canterbury provides the intriguing correspondence between Edward Gibbon Wakefield and John Robert Godley and other key figures of the settlement of Canterbury between 1847 and 1850. This addition to the NZETC Collection is timely considering the recent devastating earthquakes which have struck Canterbury and the slow process of grieving and rebuilding. Our thoughts go out to all Cantabrians during these hard times.

Voices of Auckland, is an attempt to redress the unfavourable view of Auckland province that was being circulated in the United Kingdom during the mid 1800s. It includes information about the greater Auckland area from the Bay of Islands to the Bay of Plenty. It also provides a variety of advice to potential emigrants. The following example of advice is from Rev. Richard Taylor:
"To single men, intending to emigrate, I would say, marry before you go out; a good wife is a great treasure and stay to a young man. Many have been ruined, because they have not had a bosom friend to sustain them in times of trial, besides the social comfort thus derived; for none can tell how dreary a young settler's home is without a wife, and how many temptations she saves him from. Therefore, to every single man I again say, marry, for wives are not to be had abroad; property is of little consideration, compared with that of a partner."

• Sir George Grey Pioneer of Empire in Southern Lands by Geo. C. Henderson
• Government in New Zealand by Leicester Chisholm Webb
• A Dark Chapter from New Zealand History by James Hawthorne
• Voices from Auckland, New Zealand by Alex. F. Ridgway
• The Founders of Canterbury by Edward Jerningham Wakefield
• Notes on Sir William Martin's Pamphlet Entitled the Taranaki Question by Francis Dillon Bell, Thomas Gore Browne and Frederick Whitaker
  
• The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of Custom by Basil Thomson
• Fiji and the Fijians 1835-1856 by G. C. Henderson