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Frankfurt Bookfair 2012: An Aotearoa Affair

~ A Blog Fest from Kiel to Kaitaia

Frankfurt Bookfair 2012: An Aotearoa Affair

Monthly Archives: March 2012

Blog Carnival #2: PAST MYTHS, PRESENT LEGENDS

27 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by Dorothee Lang in blog, carnival

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Past Myths, Present Legends: new blog carnival at Aotearoa Affair Blog Fest. Guest edited by Rachel Fenton: “In Past Myths, Present Legends, writers and artists collude to bring you the visual word from a Northern shore to a Pacific shore, through time and place, all connected in tangential, elliptic, and surprising ways; a round table of ideas. Pull up a seat, feast your eyes and satiate your minds.”

Contributors: Helen Lowe, Chris Slane, Ant Sang, Scott Hamilton, Tim Jones, Andrea Quinlan, Adrian Kinnaird, Himiona Grace, Tommpa, Trish Nicholson, Martin Porter, David Tulloch, Gonzalo Navarro, Raewyn Alexander, Maureen Sudlow, Mike Crowl, Maurice Oliver, Vaughan Gunson, Rae Joyce, Dorothee Lang, and Michelle Elvy.

Link: Blog Carnival #2: PAST MYTHS, PRESENT LEGENDS

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Highlight: Trish Nicholson

26 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by Michelle Elvy in highlights

≈ 1 Comment

Writing Character

It was the walking stick that caught my gaze. Its rubber tip worn down to a custom tilt; its handle polished by decades of grip and lean. To see such a dependable old friend abandoned to a jumble sale is a sad sight: it can mean only one thing.

She was 92 when she died. No-one begrudged her the time-off. What was her name? “That old lady who lived on top of the hill? Don’t know, love.” Nobody knew her anymore: her generation had gone, new people arrived; she became part of the landscape they passed through.

“These two harlequins were hers, too. Real porcelain – the hands and faces … amazing. From out East somewhere, I reckon.” They were on top of an old black and white television set when the house was cleared. They still smile, shyly, dusty and faded where a window must have stood behind them. Houses on hill tops have a lot of sun – and a lot of view. Perhaps she looked at that view more often than the television, and smiled at the harlequins’ generosity.

The stall holder rummaged through the bric-à-brac – seeing I was interested – and brought out a flower fashioned from purple, leaded glass. “I reckon she made that herself, a bit rough – pretty, though, eh?” Yes. I bought it all for a few dollars.

Not a lot to show for a life, but a treasure chest for a character …

That walking stick. With assurance of her own identity, a sense of humour and imagination, she made it unique. Those who didn’t know her knew whose walking stick it was.

And from what distant land had she brought the harlequins, wrapped with infinite care – inside tissue paper, inside a box, inside her suitcase? Or were they cushioned in a sweater in her rucksack, even further ago. Were they the Yin and Yang of a young girl’s hopes, the romance that begins with shy smiles and ends in side-by-side fidelity by a window with a view?

Or perhaps she travelled much later in life, after the twosome had become lonesome: the harlequins a bitter-sweet souvenir of a life and a love once known.

And the leaded glass flower – a bit bendy where it shouldn’t be – was it made of gritty determination with shaky hands and cataract-veiled eyes? With an irrepressible desire to make a thing of beauty that caught the light, a small, stained-glass epitaph? Or was it the expression of a young girl’s vision – unfaded, still smiling … shyly?

No-one here knows her name, but I like to think of her as, Beatrice, who preferred to be called Bea.

***

If you have read this far, I hope you have understood, now, why there is no introduction to this piece; no mention of useful techniques, advice, reasons. Quite simply: it is all in the seeing.

*

About ‘Writing Character’, Trish Nicholson says:

The wonderful thing about writing is that you can be inspired anywhere, anytime. I wrote, Writing Character, after a visit to our local market where I learnt something about drawing characters that I wanted to share by ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’.

Trish wandered far from her Manx roots to become an anthropologist, working on aid and development projects, travelling in a score of countries, before settling on a hillside in New Zealand. She lives in the Far North, where ‘winter’ means picking oranges between showers, and writes full-time. Last year, Trish signed up with Collca, a UK based e-publisher, to write a new series of BiteSize Travel books, which allows her to indulge her passion for photography. Masks of the Moryons: Easter in Mogpog, was released in December 2011; On a Flying Tiger: a journey in Bhutan, will be out on April 20th. Trish’s other passion is writing short-stories. Encouraged by a few wins and anthology publications, she is working on her storytelling skills which she believes are equally important for writing non-fiction. She applies this creed to her weekly blogs at Words in the Treehouse, which include stories, reviews, travel tales and photo-essays as well as posts on writing. And there really is a tree-house.

New Zealand authors at the Leipzig Book Fair

20 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by Dorothee Lang in feature, highlights

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Tags

authors, book fair, Leipzig, New Zealand

The city of Leipzig always has been a place of culture and trade: Wolfgang Goethe and Johann Sebastian Bach lived here – and since the 17th century, the city is home to the Leipzig Book Fair

The Leipzig Book Fair (“Leipziger Buchmesse”) takes place in spring and is the second largest book fair in Germany after the Frankfurt Book Fair. It is open to the public on all days, and emphasizes the relationship between the authors and the readers. In contrast, the Frankfurt Book Fair is larger, and focuses on the business aspects. More about the history of both fairs, further below.

The main topics of this year’s Leipzig Book Fair were: Authors at Leipzig (an author meeting), audiobooks, book+art, the region Central/Eastern Europe, Children – Youth – Education, Comics, Digitalization, Young German Literature and Music.

You can find more about all these themes at the Leipzig themes page: Main Topics of the Leipzig Book Fair

There also is a video with impressions from the fair:

.
New Zealand in Leipzig

As this year’s Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, New Zealand also offered a first taste of its literary and cultural programme at the Leipzig Book Fair.

The New Zealand Authors who visited Leipzig were: Kyle Mewburn, Antonia Steeg, Barbara Ewing, Allan Duff, Damien Wilkins, Elizabeth Knox and Jenny Pattrick (photo: Buchmesse Frankfurt).

During the four-day presentation, the New Zealand authors read from their current publications both on the international stage of the Leipzig Book fair as well as on the stage at the Frankfurt Book Fair’s stand. In panel discussions, they shared personal insight into their country, its culture and its people, and got readers interested in their country on the other side of the world.

The 4-day presentation was rounded up by a discussion panel with graduates of the International Institute of Modern Letters at the Victoria University of Wellington: Elizabeth Knox, Kate Camp and Damien Wilkins talked about Creative Writing and the promotion of young authors in New Zealand.

Impressions from the Leipzig Book Fair

The NZatFrankfurt website features several articles on the authors’ visit at the Leipzig book fair:

Inside the Glass Hall – on visiting the book fair: ” Alan Duff summed it up well. “I think we’ve all been astonished by how many people have come to this book fair,” he said at an authors’ reading yesterday. “There are more people here than at two rugby tests in New Zealand.”

Kyle Mewburn at Leipzig talks about writing children’s books: there’s a “magical little element to it that you can never guess,” he says. “You cross your fingers every time you write a book.”

Poet Kate Camp talks Rilke and life in Berlin: “I have been reading a lot of European poets in translation, and particularly reading a lot of Rilke, his poems but also his letters. I think this has introduced a different tone into my work.”

Germany’s two main book fairs: Leipzig and Frankfurt
The history of the Leipzig Book Fair also reflects the history of Germany and the political changes: the tradition of the Leipzig Book Fair reaches back to the 17th century. In 1632, the fair for the first time topped the fair in Frankfurt am Main in the number of books presented, and kept thriving.

After 1945, things changed due to the cold war: During the GDR era the fair remained an important meeting place for book lovers and sellers from both East and West Germany, but Frankfurt turned into the main fair for book trade, especially for publishers and agents.

After unification, the Leipzig fair moved to a new, modern location outside the city center. Since then, the Leipzig fair experienced a renaissance and continues to grow.

A walk through Leipzig

Leipzig isn’t only home to the book fair – it’s also the place where the democratic revolution in East Germany started in 1989. The centre of the revolution back then was the Nikolai-Church in the centre of town. Beginning in 1980, people gathered in the church every Monday for prayer. First just a few met, then more, until in 1989, thousands came together there every week for Monday mass, which was followed by a walk of protest.

It’s still moving to walk across the church square, and to see the photo that was taken during one of the Monday walks. The banner says “Friedliche Revolution — Aufbruch zur Demokratie” / “Peaceful Revolution — Rise for Democracy.”

PS: For a personal impression of visiting the city of Leipzig and the book fair in a previous year, try this link from the editor’s blog: East west Real Life – a short trip to Leipzig

RELATED LINKS

  • Leipzig Book Fair
  • New Zealand at Frankfurt
  • NewZealand/German Blog Fest: Crossings

Highlight: Mike Crowl

13 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by Michelle Elvy in highlights

≈ 4 Comments

The Sestina is a unique and complex structure for a poem with a rotating pattern of ending words, which recently fascinated Mike Crowl with its structure:

Sestina system (wiki image)

—–

THE TRICKS OF THE SESTINA

I mentioned the Sestina in a recent post, and gave a graphic version of it, which, when I came to try and use it, wasn’t that easy to work with after all.  Stephen Fry lays out the ground plan for a Sestina like this:

ABCDEF 

FAEBDC

CFDABE

ECBFAD

DEACFB

BDFECA

That is, the word that corresponds in each case to A or B or C, etc, and appears at the end of a line, gets shifted around as the poem winds its way through the spiral.  At the end of the six stanzas we have an Envoi, a kind of final greeting to the reader, which uses this pattern  BE/DC/FA, squashing up the six key words into three lines.

It’s rather difficult to explain, so here’s a properly formed example from W H Auden called Paysage Moralisé.  In this poem you can see how the key words at the end of the first six lines (valleys, mountains, water etc) wind their way around the poem.

Being keen to have a go at the Sestina, if only to say I’ve actually tried it, I produced the item below (notice I don’t call it a poem).   I discovered shortly after I started that I’d begun to rhyme the key words instead of actually re-using them; hence the variations.  However I think the scheme is intact, and by the time I got to the envoi the words were back where they belonged again.   The metre isn’t consistent because it’s not easy to concentrate on getting the metre right as well as all the other juggling of words, but since this is only a practice run, I’m not fussing about that too much.

I’ve written out the key words at the beginning, with their alphabetical symbol beside them.  I haven’t thoroughly checked but I think they’re intact, at least in terms of rhyming with the original.   The group of six letters are only at the side to give you an idea of where the key words/rhymes have gone to.   I was originally going to use a bunch of words that I came across in relation to trailer hitches, but they proved a bit of an obstacle in the way of getting the Sestina off the ground.  And anyway the ‘poem’ found its own way home.

A.     Hitch, B.  state, C. more, D.  this, E. sans, F. did

To start a poem with a trailer hitch ___________ABCDEF
Seems likely to put me in a state
Of dislocation, and furthermore
I haven’t a clue where I’m going with this
Which makes it a drive in the night sans
Headlights, which my brother-in-law did.

Well, now I’ve the problem that this grid_______ FAEBDC
Called Sestina needs to work one stitch
At a time, like a number of hands
All pulling, as if pulling their weight,
But in fact, pulling that way and this,
Between table and chair, window and door.

And now I’ve made it a chore _______________CFDABE,
Since I should stick to the grid
And not rhyme; how did I miss
That instruction? Surely some hitch
In my reading. So I’m now in a state
And reverting to form as a man’s

Wont to do if he just lets his glands________ ECBFAD
Rule him and acts like a boar
In a china shop throwing his weight
Everywhere, breaking this lid
And this plate, sending every which
Way and that crockery, with a hiss

And a roar, and unlikely to miss ___________DEACFB
Any item he can lay his pig hands
On, or, with a whiskery twitch,
Like his cousin, the Minotaur,
(distant, I know) known to be hid-
den in his labyrinthic state

And rashly inclined to lie in wait____________BDFECA
For Heroes arriving in a bliss-
ful state of ignorance, fidd-
ling with their sword in their hands,
Relishing a fight and the gore
That would follow without hitch.

I’m sorry to state the heroes sans
Brains lose on this, and furthermore,
Only Theseus did the deed without hitch.

*

Mike Crowl is a writer, composer, actor – and recently retired from an 8-5 job.  He lives in the South Island of New Zealand, and has been actively involved with amateur singers and actors in various theatre productions and concerts for most of his adult life.  He’s been writing for publication since the late eighties, and runs some five (or is it six?) blogs.  He’s always had an interest in writing poetry, but has only begun to get to grips with it (and with some of its forms) in the last few years. 

Highlight: “Zehnseiten” – Online Readings

05 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by Dorothee Lang in highlights

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A place where German authors read 10 pages from their new books: that is “Zehnseiten.de“, which translates to “Tenpages.de”.

The startpage offers a list with the new additions on the left side, just click a name, and the author will appear on the screen. Then click the arrow, and lean back and listen.

Some extra links to author blogs that offer photos and blurbs in English:

Author Christopher Kloeble presents his first book, Meistens alles sehr schnell (Most Times Everything Very Fast). He also has a webpage with a lot of photos from places he visited in the last years: From India to Izmir, New York & Montauk, Holland and Israel, and if you scroll further, you even will find photos from Germany: Christopher Kloeble homepage.

Annika Reich‘s reads from her second book, 34 Meter über dem Meer (34 Metres Above the Ocean). She has a blog with notes, links and a street moment she came across, a window photo of a book-person: “I’m in love…”

Frank Goosen reads from Sommerfest (Summerparty). His website offers texts, videos and photo pages.

Welcome!

Featured

Posted by Dorothee Lang in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

This Blog Fest is a collaborative web initiative in anticipation of the Frankfurt Bookfair in October, where New Zealand is the Guest of Honour.

In these pages we’re highlighting Kiwi and German writers in 2012 and creating a space for interested readers and bloggers to connect and share related posts. If you are a Kiwi or German living anywhere in the world, or if you are from somewhere else but have settled in New Zealand or Germany, we want to hear from you.

This blog fest is a celebration across geographic and temporal boundaries and an ongoing conversation. From Kiel to Kaitaia: please join us! Here you’ll find:

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The Blog Fest at Facebook

Join us at Facebook in our Blog Fest Group: Aotearoa Affair: A Blog Fest From Kiel to Kaitaia

Blog Carnival

Blog Carnival #3: Bi

Blog Carnival #2:
PAST MYTHS, PRESENT LEGENDS

Blog Carnival #1:
CROSSINGS

The Blog Fest at Twitter

  • FLASH ACROSS BORDERS! edition #4 of the Aotearoa Affair Blog Carnival is up: 26 flash fictions + 8 flash-meta-quotes: crossings2012.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/car… 10 years ago
  • new highlight online: lyrikline - Poetic translations from Berlin into more than 50 languages: newzealandgermany2012.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/hig… #translation #berlin 10 years ago
  • The new #NewZealand #Germany blog carnival is up! It's all Bi - bilingual, bisexual, bicultural. Bitteschön --> crossings2012.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/bi-… 10 years ago
  • @wordpressdotcom : Hi! It's World Book Day tomorrow (23.4.). Maybe this is an interesting blog link for the day? newzealandgermany2012.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/wor… 10 years ago
  • World Book Day! - a celebration with books, readers, reviews, photos, notes, bloggers, maps, links.. enjoy! newzealandgermany2012.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/wor… #books 10 years ago
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