In the summer of 1818, when he was 22 years old, the poet John Keats walked northward from Lancaster in England to Inverness in Scotland. He went with his dear friend Charles Brown, who I like to think of as a sort of stolid Samwise to Keats’ wide-eyed Frodo. It took them five weeks and […]

The fallacy of a good art practice, the ideal researcher and how consuming and defining literature ‘incorrectly’ earns me my exclusive right to reimagine it     During the NBA Slam Dunk Contest in February, Aaron Gordon (who plays for Orlando Magic) jumped over the head of his team mascot ‘Stuff the Magic Dragon’. Aerodynamic […]

Several months ago I returned, after finishing a writing project, to the ouija board of creative reading to see what it would spell for me. What will I learn about next? and, ultimately, what will I write about next? I approached the board (in post-writing holiday mood) with a drink in each hand and an […]

Dear You What Ya-Wen Read

Big Shoes and the Bishop of Fenchester I have been thinking a lot recently about being a girl. I know that I am not a girl any more. At 32 I am surely, by any definition, a woman. But I grew up thinking of myself as a ‘little girl’ and then a ‘big girl’ and […]

The checkout girl dropped the Nashi pears in with the dried goods and they’ll probably bruise. Do the job properly mate. I think she’s in the sixth form but you can never really tell these days even though I haven’t been out of high school long enough to get away with thinking that. A man […]

It seems like many, many years since New Zealand was the land of milk and honey. And while there are those who are creaming it, and the hives are still buzzing, many of us are living lives of lack. There are not enough jobs, and the ones that we do have are precarious. There are […]

I started thinking, about two books into my reading, that I had made a huge mistake in the whole premise of my reading list. Sign language in written form is not the same as a written spoken language. It is more like notations of a physical score for dancers – because the language exists in […]

Friday drinks. One colleague asked another about her plans for the weekend. ‘Oh, you know, try to convince my sons to venture outside.’ ‘Minecraft?’ ‘YouTube videos of other people playing Minecraft.’ ‘I see.’ ‘There’s a guy who talks with a pirate voice. I — I don’t get it. They have the game, but they’d rather […]

I Here in New Zealand, climate change is a dark reality which looms in the background of everyday life. It is a phenomenon of such extreme complexity and destructive potential that many people find it too frightening to look at face-on. For some, it is easier to pretend that it is something that will happen […]

“The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there’s a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants.” — David Attenborough, BBC Interview   Early in his career, Wystan Curnow was invited to give a lecture on what it meant to […]

For the last year or so, I have been drawn to news items such as: The Country Fire Authority implores residents in rural areas to make Fire Plans so that when it becomes imperative to leave their homes the temptation to stay may be over-ruled by a rational list of instructions. Asylum seekers intercepted in […]