Blog

A great evening on the restaurant ‘ship’ Patio,  a kind of two decker river cruiser permanently moored on the banks of the Spree near Bellevue and the Akademie der Kunst. The entire lower deck was booked by Mana Verlag for an evening of NZ food, wine and literature and supported by the embassy and MCH. About 40 people enjoyed a five course gourmet dinner with NZ style ingredients, each course accompanied by a different NZ wine. The courses were also followed by a reading from the five kiwi writers there, providing a similar variety of flavours. The arrangement was spontaneous enough that Chad Taylor, without hard  copy, had to download his novel ‘Pack of Lies’ from the net and read from his iPhone while Diane had recourse to poems she had on the iPad. What did we do before? Peter Walker, Robert Sullivan and I all read from real books, ‘The Fox Boy’, ‘Star Waka’ and ‘To Each His Own’ respectively. All went down a treat, even book signings to follow. Got home before the S-Bahn stopped.

Other highlights have been a visit to the flea market at Mauerpark … Stalls along what was once the death zone between the Berlin wall. Here, for the second time this week, and it happens every time I come to Berlin, if I stand still for too long, someone comes up and asks me the way to somewhere. Do I look like a friendly German or someone who knows?

We went to the Pergamon Museum today and the highlight was the Pergamon Panorama – the 21st century  version of the cylindrical displays of battles or exotic places that used to be such an attraction in the early 19th century. And then the Neues Museum, the marvelously self-reflective museum that  displays its own archaeology of bullet and shell wounds from WWII, as well as its Greek, Roman and Egyptian treasures. The single wonder is Nefertiti’s head, more than 3000 years old yet utterly timeless and mesmerising in its androgynous beauty. See Nefertiti and die.

Off to Frankfurt tomorrow.

Berliner Luft, that special air, atmosphere of a city that never seems to stop reinventing itself. If it is still the embodiment of 20th century European history, it now seems to be showing how to make a 21st century European capital liveable. We are in a studio apartment in trendy Prenzlauer Berg where every second doorway seems to be the entrance to a shop, cafe, gallery or maybe a psychiatrist’s rooms … Or astrologers. Kids everywhere and this Kieze is said to have highest birth rate in Europe. Berliner Luft.

In London last Saturday, Diane and I gave our party pieces at a NZ Studies Network symposium at Birkbeck College and the Wakefield literary tradition narrative in prose and poetry both seemed to go down well. Audience of 12 seemed mostly expats whom we got to know better at El Paradiso in Goodge Street afterwards.

Last night, at the Literaturwerkstatt here in Berlin, we enjoyed the ‘Transit of Venus’ poetry performance as part of the ‘While you were sleeping’ Programme attached to NZ@Frankfurt, three German poets who had visited NZ to witness the transit at Tolaga Bay in the company of Glenn Colqhoun, Hinemoa Baker and Chris Price. They read poems prompted by the experience in their own language and in translation,  a crossover of language, ideas and metaphor that was intriguing and entertaining although it was hard to perceive any narrative arc or sequence. For the aficionado which may explain the small turnout of only 20. Glenn C’s performance was indeed that and garnered the most applause, as did Hinemoa’s moving waiata. The overall impression given was that NZ culture is driven by a Maori or at least bi-cultural imperative. During the discussion Glenn C was almost apologetic that NZ has no history compared to Berlin (!). And I thought the cultural cringe was dead.

On Unity Day (3rd) we caught up with old friends in Potsdam and then walked through glorious Sans Souci Park, a sunny summer’s day belied only by the first flush of autumn leaves and conkers showering everywhere from the horse chestnuts… Better go … Off to Hamburger Bahnhof for an art injection and a movie at Potsdamer Platz later.

FRANKFURT
Amazing how long it takes to prepare visual presentations for something like my ‘New Zealand Natural World’ session at the Frankfurt Bookfair on the 12th. But many thanks to John Crawford of Natural History New Zealand for coming up at short notice with a ‘show reel’ of NZ landscape and nature subjects. Brilliant.  But will my Apple stuff work with whatever gear is over there? I’m not a technophobe (maybe technosceptic) but too much time is deleted from meaningful work periods by satisfying the demands of the latest gadgetry – like this blog!

The Frankfurt literary programme looks reasonably diverse, given the constraints and distortions of the lead-in time, tight budgets and the need to take advantage of those writers who happen to be over there at this time. The criterion of having a German publisher also means a lot of excellent writers were simply not eligible. I’m not sure that all of this explains, however, the absence of any sessions related to NZ history and biography. We have no history??  Or no-one is interested in our history??  I suspect, also, that many Germans and other Europeans travel to NZ for its scenery, natural world and outdoor attractions.  And a high proportion of all this is in the South Island. Looks like I’m largely carrying the flag for both – the only other SI writer I can identify is Paddy Richardson.  More to come.

MMP
I picked up the other day that Whale Oil, aka Cameron Slater, described me as a ‘bearded, weirdo academic’ on his blog for daring to suggest in the Herald that the current government might pay at the next election if it didn’t take on board the Electoral Commission’s recommendations for improvements to MMP. ‘Bearded’? Full  marks. ‘Weirdo’? Sounds self-reflective.  ‘Academic?’ Never attended university although, I hasten to add, some of my best friends etc…  Slater reckons I’m wrong because most people out there don’t give a damn about the electoral system. Given that it upsets him so much, he clearly doesn’t speak for them.

Welcome to the billionth blog site on the planet.  I’ll be using it, to begin with, to post news about my (our) forthcoming trip to Berlin and Frankfurt. No time for much else at present as we are in the final hectic 10-day countdown to heading off for more than 6 weeks.

First stop London where Diane and I will be taking part in a symposium at the New Zealand Studies Network at Birkbeck College on Saturday 29 September, starting at 10 a.m. So if you are reading this from the London area, go to http://www.nzstudies.com and book in. I’ll be talking about the Wakefield Literary Tradition (with a Dickens connection) and Diane about ‘Addiction to Narrative’.

We arrive in Berlin on 1 October for interviews and events around the new German edition of my novel To Each His Own  – Jedem das Seine – and my other German novels. The highlight looks like a literary cruise on a restaurant ship on the Havel on Sunday 7 October.

We get to Frankfurt in time for the official opening of the Book Fair and on Wednesday 10th I’ll be in the NZ Pavilion with Witi Ihimaera and Cath Dunsford talking to the topic ‘Aotearoa New Zealand – Traditions and Landscape in Contemporary NZ Fiction.’ The title is almost as long as the mere 5 minutes each we’ll have to address this weighty topic!! Watch out for the T shirt.

Then on Friday 12th I’ll be flying solo in the Focus on Travel Gallery in the Main exhibition hall, talking about Natural New Zealand: 10 – 11a.m. Hall 3.1, L691. Lots of pictures.

On 15 October, Diane and I will escape the super-heated air of the Frankfurt Book Fair for the warm waters of Crete. New book? New poems for sure.