Show Notes
This is a photo of me not writing in my End Greyhound Racing New Zealand T-shirt. You should totally check out this amazing compilation album which raises awareness and support to end greyhound racing - here’s a link I have been not writing for months now. It is the first time in a long time I have felt like I am ‘not writing’. I am totally surrendered to the fact that I may not write again but also, I really wanted to talk to some writers about writing, some artists about art-ing. A bit selfishly to try and see if I could explore a bit more deeply my relationship with the practice of writing - I kind of want to make any re-entry meaningful. I don’t want to waste this stasis. But also cause the state I’m in at the moment - where writing seems like something impossible and foreign - seems like an interesting one to talk to people about their projects. So here is the new series. At first I thought it would be a neat series of talking to people at the start of a project, others who are in the middle and others who are at the end of a project. I’ve now recorded an episode and I realise these neat phases don’t reflect the actual process of writing. I am hoping this series will be quite fluid - maybe as my relationship to writing changes the structure of the series will change. At the moment, I’m asking guests to bring an object they are ‘using’ at this phase of their work. Then we’ll have a chat about what this phase looks like. So yes, this is just to let you know this series, with no name, which may change, starts next week with an amazing conversation with Whiti Hereaka. Thanks again for all your support.
More from Better off Read
On the 5th of September this year, i was lucky enough to be in an event at Word Festival called I Wish I Wrote That with an incredibly talented line-up of writers including Jon Toogood. Jon had an event before ours and i watched him perform 'Home Again' on acoustic guitar from the Green Room. Even backstage and through a screen i found myself moved to tears - it's an incredible piece of songwriting that just seems to hit me more and more profoundly. About five minutes into Jon's book signing i needed to go to the foyer and it was wild. One thing became really clear - people love Jon and Jon's book and Shihad. During our event, Jon read a really beautiful piece about Aldous Harding's song 'Treasure'. One of the really great things about Jon's memoir Home Again is the way he writes about music, not just the music he makes but the music he loves.
Helen and i have been friends for a long time. Over the years her work has been incredibly inspiring to me. When i say 'Helen's work' i mean her writing, her activism, her visual art, her journaling, her essays, her thinking, her teaching, her friendship, her family-ship, her gardening and all the other amazing things she does. i also admire the way it is quite hard to separate these 'works' out from each other. If there is such a thing as an artist's life i think Helen is a really great example of that. When we met a few weeks ago, Helen brought along her journal as the object to act as a starting place for this conversation.
September is such an exciting month because it sees the launch of The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances an amazing novel written by Terri Te Tau and published by Spoor Books
i loved talking to Molly Crighton over Zoom earlier this month about her new novel The Body and the Blood out with Hachette New Zealand
i'm really grateful to Tīhema Baker for speaking with me about his new novel One Day a Taniwha (Hachette) i was a massive fan of Tīhema's last novel Turncoat and i've enjoyed hearing Tīhema talk over the last few years. i was lucky enough to read Tīhema's book last year and i loved it. i reread it for this podcast and i still love it. Maybe even more. It's an incredibly compelling story set in several planes of experience - centrally the waking and sleeping lives. It's an incredibly intelligent and beautiful novel. Through this deft craft i think it makes possible new ways of thinking about fatherhood, work, mental health and how these are effected by colonisation and colonialism. In our discussion i touch on how fresh and cutting edge Tīhema's depiction of fatherhood is. i just can't recommend it enough. This podcast was recorded over Zoom.