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Writing Workshop Sunday 15 March, Kerikeri

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SHIFTING GEARS: TRANSFORMING YOUR STORIES FROM GOOD TO GREAT
Sunday 15 March 1.30PM-3.30PM
Venue: Craigs Investment Partners
Hobson Ave, Kerikeri
$25PP (INCLUDES A COPY OF SCORIA: SHORT PROSE FROM THE CINDER CONE)

In November we ran a workshop to celebrate the launch of our first publication, Scoria: Short prose from the cinder cone. The workshop was so well received that we are running it again, this time in Kerikeri.

When we went into the revision process for Scoria: Short prose from the cinder cone we had no idea how significantly some of our stories would change. Many had been published before, selected by editors and judges for inclusion in various periodicals, anthologies, blogs and websites – they must be good, right? Perhaps even great? We thought so but still we examined each one closely. And we asked others to examine them closely too – firstly beta readers, then an assessor and finally a copy editor. In each round of reading new eyes asked new questions that had us thinking about our stories in new ways. What if we did cut out some characters? What if we did reduce the word count? What if we increased it? What if we completely reconsidered the form? What if we changed the tense or point of view. Can a title change make that much difference? Even our proofreader asked a question we couldn’t ignore that saw one story completely rewritten just days before the manuscript went to the designer.

Shifting gears: Transforming your stories from good to great is a celebration of our revision journey. Join us for an afternoon of story shaping on Sunday 15 March 2020 from 1.30pm to 3.30pm at Craigs Investment Partners, Hobson Ave, Kerikeri. We will demonstrate some of these techniques and show you how powerful even small changes can be. Writers of all levels who have stories in any form from raw draft to ready to submit will find value in this workshop. We will have examples for you to work on but also feel free to bring some of your own work to experiment with.

If you already have a copy of Scoria, please bring it with you. There will be an alternate free gift for you.

Workshop Registration

Testimonials

Thank you for the excellent writing workshop; I came away full of ideas and the enthusiasm to utilise what I had learned. The workshop ticked so many boxes for me: it was well organised, interactive, serious with an element of fun, and managed to engage a diverse group in terms of writing experience.  Above all, I really appreciated the generosity of spirit with which you shared a piece of your own work as you had progressed through the edits.  You are both great learning facilitators and I look forward to attending future workshops with you. VM

I thought your workshop was fantastic. You two were honest, helpful, funny, endearing. Often workshops can be a bit confronting, say, if you’re asked to write something in a short time – but not this one. It was all about learning … such a gift to get an insight into your processes. RR

Shifting Gears is thoroughly engaging and insightful.  The facilitators are highly skilled and well trained, encouraging writers to be flexible and open to new perceptions.  I came away from the workshop not only inspired but also equipped with a framework of helpful suggestions for reference.  What is the Heart?  This question has breathed new life and focus into my stories and poems.  I have been writing daily ever since. KB

I really enjoyed the writing afternoon – intimate, not too long, and a chance for everyone to participate. AJ

Wordplay

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If you are interested in wordplay, the Northland branch of NZSA is launching their NorthWrite 2020 programme on Saturday 21 March in Kerikeri at the Tūhono Kerikeri Festival Day with magnetic fridge poetry. Magnetic words (in English and Māori) will be provided so the general public can create short poems or creative sentences for others to enjoy.

To build their word bank, NZSA Northland is hosting a competition and invites all Northlanders to submit short sentences and/or poems for that purpose. Full details are available on their NorthWrite 2020 page.

This got us thinking about sentences so we went on a treasure hunt through Scoria: Short prose from the cinder cone to find sentences that were striking no matter how simple or complex. Here are a few of them:

  • “He’s lower than slime on a snail’s arse” from The good intention of angels.
  • “This is not how the story is supposed to go” from The girl in the drop-hem dress whose mother was stung by a bee (which is also one of our favourite phrases!)
  • “You join me, yawning as if you are swallowing the day” from Sunrise.
  • “Later, tucked into the curvature of his body, she hears the thrumming of his blood and imagines herself afloat on his briny swells and furrows” from Staying in bed.

We also got to thinking about words in general and went searching for 2019’s word of the year. Every dictionary has chosen a different word reflecting the social and political climate of 2019.

  • they – Mirriam-Webster. “Lookups for they increased by 313% in 2019 over the previous year.” In September, Mirriam-Webster also added a new definition to they to define its use as a non-binary singular gender pronoun.
  • existential – Dictionary.com. “Existential, as a word and theme, was prominent in discussions of topics that dominated 2019: climate change, gun violence, and democratic institutions.”
  • climate strike – Collins Dictionary. Climate strike “has seen a four-fold increase since 2013, with news stories and images such as those seen in the BBC’s Blue Planet II steeply raising public awareness of the issue.” Greta Thunberg’s pleas have also pushed this and the Oxford Dictionary word of the year to the fore.
  • climate emergency – Oxford Dictionary. “This year, heightened public awareness of climate science and the myriad implications for communities around the world has generated enormous discussion of what the UN Secretary-General has called ‘the defining issue of our time’.”
  • upcycling – Cambridge Dictionary. “We think that our fans resonated with upcycling not as a word in itself but with the positive idea behind it … upcycling is a concrete action a single human being can take to make a difference.”

The word of the year for Pavlova Press is more personal than political:

  • scoria – scoria represents for us “the small bubbles and glassy fragments of the human condition.”

We also decided we wanted, as individuals, to select our own word for the year.

  • pōhutukawa – Kathy. As part of a current fascination with Rangi Matamua’s work on Matariki, I have discovered that one of the stars in the Matariki constellation is called Pōhutukawa, the star that connects Matariki to the dead. In one of my stories, written years before I learnt of Pōhutukawa the star, a woman is lying under a pōhutukawa tree, trying to come to terms with a stillbirth. This is such a poignant coincidence that I changed the original story title from Crimson tears to Pōhutukawa to reflect the connection. Pōhutukawa is no longer just a tree but a multi-layered word that resonates strongly with me.
  • narrative – Jac. Loosely meaning an orderly account of connected events, or story, narrative is considered an important component of fiction. Many also consider it vital to contemporary poetry, although personally I like to challenge that idea. But it is my word of the year because of its relevance to the creation of identity and meaning in our lives – instead of using logic to explain and understand our experiences we construct narratives/stories to help us deal with them. This can be healthy – for example, silver-lining narratives help us deal with negative experiences. However, when we operate as if our narratives are fixed, we can distort evidence to justify those narratives rather than change them or our behaviour.

Let us know your word of the year in the comments.

Kerikeri anthology: where to start?

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Kerikeri’s pre-European to modern day history is filled with a bounty of scintillating stories of early life where two cultures learned to live alongside each other and forge the way for early settlement throughout Aotearoa. 

Tūhono Kerikeri Facebook page, 4 September 2019

In our call for submissions for our proposed Kerikeri anthology, Pavlova Press hopes for stories and poems that reflect this history, and that can sit alongside contemporary tales and odes and speculations about the future. We are looking for diversity and balance, works written te reo Māori and te reo Pākehā, about good times and bad times, that celebrate and question. 

We have taken snippets from Nancy Pickmere’s Kerikeri: Heritage of Dreams (2nd ed., 2008), and the Rewa’s Village website that might stimulate your creativity. 

  • Kerikeri was of great importance to Ngai Tawake because it was their port/access to the site of their main pa at Te Waimate where they maintained valuable and productive gardens.
  • Koropiro Pā, located strategically at the junction of the Wairoa and Kerikeri rivers, was the major gathering place for the departure of hundreds of warriors and laden canoes. 
  • Ngāpuhi used a sophisticated communications system of fire and smoke, conches and drums, and fast-running messengers to alert villages of unusual activity.
  • Three powerful chiefs are connected with early European settlement in Kerikeri: Rewa, Hongi Hika and Tāreha.
  • Gravel (kirikiri) dug from the riverbed was used to warm the soil in the cultivation of kūmara crops. It may have provided the name ‘Kerikeri’.
  • There was a lack of trees on the site of the missionary settlement—first seen as an advantage because clearing the land would be easier, however the lack of timber was a handicap when it came to building. As an example of the measures needed, at one point a waka towed a loaded whale boat which towed a punt loaded with timber which itself towed a raft of logs.
  • The lack of a reliable food supply contributed to a serious discord among the missionaries in 1823, and eventually the Rev. John Butler (the first superintendent of the New Zealand Mission) resigned his superintendency in frustration, having failed to prevent the trading of food to whaling ships in exchange for muskets.
  • In December 1829 seven boatloads of people were paddled up the inlet from Paihia to witness the school examinations—boys exhibited their carpentry and girls their sewing.
  • The Stone Store, in 1867, had the reputation of ‘Church Missionary Grog-shop’.
  • In the early 1900s, gorse was a significant ingredient of chaff—local people collected the seed and sold it to Manako Station (a large cattle and sheep farm) where it was planted, harvested, cut, and mixed with oats—until its luxurious growth started threatening more favoured plants.
  • In the 1930s a shortage of tung oil in China was seen as a great opportunity for New Zealand to grow tung trees and Kerikeri was selected as a nursery area. It was promoted as an easy profit crop, with ‘no pests, no pruning, no spraying’ required and the nut being simply picked up off the ground after it falls. Unfortunately, of the 4,548 acres of tung trees north of Auckland in 1938, 733 consisted of ‘unsatisfactory trees’ and 3,760 of ‘worthless, dead and dying trees’.
  • The triangle of land formed by Hobson Ave and Kerikeri and Cobham Roads, once used as an occasional pasture for the policeman’s horse, was sold to the County for a car park—a much criticised transaction because of the belief that Kerikeri would never need such an amenity.
  • The local library service was started in 1938 and was variously housed in the general store, Yendell’s Bakery (there were complaints about crumbs on the books), Hewson’s shoe shop, Larkin’s milk bar, and the Plunket Society rooms, before being given its own building (originally the old Pungaere school house) on the Domain in the early sixties.
  • In 2006 a number of taonga were uncovered during riverbank stabilisation works undertaken as part of the construction of the Kerikeri Heritage Bypass

There have certainly been some interesting happenings in and around Kerikeri! We hope these examples get the creative juices flowing. We are looking for poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Submissions are open to anyone who has a connection—no matter how slight—to the Kerikeri area. For full details visit our submissions page.

Ngā Kupu Waikato and Scoria book launches in Northland.

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Ngā Kupu Waikato: an anthology of Waikato poetry and Scoria: Short Prose from the cinder cone, two anthologies featuring Northland writers, will be launched in Northland in the next two weeks. We hope you can join us at one (or both) of our launch celebrations.

Kerikeri launch of Scoria:
Featuring information about Pavlova Press, new calls for submission and readings by Kathy Derrick and Jac Jenkins.
When: TOMORROW Thursday 28th November at 5.30pm
Where: Cherry Park House, Landing Rd, Kerikeri

Whangārei combined launch of Ngā Kupu Waikato and Scoria:
Featuring readings by Vaughan Rapatahana, Piet Nieuwland, Olivia Macassey, Jac Jenkins, Alistar Tulett, Terry Moyle, Kathy Derrick and other talents
When: Saturday 7th December at 1.30pm
Where: The Book Inn, Kamo, Whangārei

About Ngā Kupu Waikato: an anthology of Waikato poetry

Ngā Kupu Waikato is an anthology of work from poets with a strong Waikato connection including Northland poets, Piet Nieuwland, Olivia Macassey, Alistair Tulett and Jac Jenkins. The collection, compiled by Vaughan Rapatahana, also contains poems from Vincent O’Sullivan (former New Zealand Poet Laureate), Stephen Oliver, and Bob Orr. Poem style and content is wide-ranging, and with titles such as ‘With Jean-Paul Sartre on the Banks of the Waikato’ and ‘Waikato-Taniwha-Rau’ the Waikato river is an overarching presence.

In its review of Ngā Kupu Waikato, Poetry Shelf says: Reading the collection is like sitting by the river through all seasons, feeling the way it runs through the blood of the poet writing, a lifelong current, carrying anecdote, beauty, history. It is both the spine and heart of the collection that draws me in closer again and again. A Waikato treasure.

About Scoria: Short prose from the cinder cone

Scoria: Short Prose from the cinder cone is Pavlova Press’s own collection of short prose by Kathy Derrick and Jac Jenkins. These pieces are shaped by examining the small bubbles and glassy fragments of the human condition, just as bubbles and fragments combine to form scoria rock. With sections titled Arrhythmia, Severance and Elasticity, the volume explores themes of connection, separation and regeneration. Scoria’s cover was designed by the award-winning Keely O’Shannessy and perfectly reflects the book’s content. Vaughan Rapatahana says of the authors and the anthology: Their joint imaginations run amok in this conjuring trick of a collection—at times wicked bitch brutal, at other times fairy modmother magical. But always superbly crafted nuggets of hypnogogia.

A sneak preview:

Stigmeology

My mother, a pug-breeder and amateur stigmeologist, showed me the space that can be held in punctuation—how we can exhale commas into chaos, settling a paragraph like a hound winding down around its tail to rest, nose propped on the basket’s edge; how the question mark with its raised brow opens the eyes to that tock between two thoughts; how the full stop holds the tongue of the panting sentence against the next rush of unleashed sound. 

My mother also said that flesh is a hyphen, holding soul to soil. My life with five pugs is a chaos of leashes.