Kate Sheppard Memorial (still there, post quakes!)

Yes, on this very day, in 1893, New Zealand women achieved the vote.

New Zealand was not only the first country in the world to grant women suffrage “at all” (although I believe the state of Wyoming in the US granted women the state legislature vote in 1869), but granted it to all women, regardless of age, class or race. (Quite right, I hear you cry, but also understand that was not always the case.

“Canterbury had an integral part to play in the Women’s Suffrage campaign. Both the leader of the women’s campaign for women’s votes, Kate Sheppard, and the leader of the Parliamentary campaign, Sir John Hall, were Canterbury people.” (Source: Christchurch.org)

Kate Sheppard, who led the campaign for the vote

Something to be proud of, neh? And I am proud of it—although with women’s wages still lagging at around 85% (a very ’rounded’ average) behind those of men, and the continuing prevalence of violence against women in society, including family and domestic violence, the work of suffragists such as Kate Sheppard is far from done.

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Suffrage Events in Christchurch Today:

5.30 pm at the Bridge of Remembrance, Cashel Mall: A Suffrage Day Event–Rebuild our Vote for our Schools, City and Environment

Here’s the Panui:

“We are arranging a community, family-friendly event to Rebuild Suffrage on Suffrage Day 19 September–this Wednesday 5.30- 6.30 at the Bridge of Remembrance in central Christchurch.

The goal is launch a new petition for democratic decision making for our schools, our city and our environment.

Why? Three big changes have removed meaningful local democracy:

1. A sweeping array of school closures and mergers threatens to take the heart of many communities away. These school communities have supported us and our children through disaster. Some ideas may be welcomed, others not. Many communities need much more time and support and information. School communities should debate and vote for their school futures via school board elections!

2. Real decision making power has been taken from the voters for Christchurch City Council and given to an unelected Government body CERA with no plan in sight for how this power will be returned. We may not have all agreed with the City Council, but it was ours! Local democracy and city votes must be at the heart of our rebuild!

3. We have lost our right to vote for our Regional Council ECan, which makes decisions about our children’s environment, water, air and public transport. If Government-appointed Commissioners are doing a good job, let them stand for election to win our support!

To recover from disaster we must take people with us. Our tamariki need to grow up with a clean environment, local schools and to be listened to with respect in rebuilding their city. It is undemocratic, unwise and unfair to force rushed change, and experiments while removing our voice. Change must be achieved with the people’s vote through our school boards, city council and regional council.

If you share our concern come along to launch the petition ‘Kids Vote Canterbury’ on 19 September, Suffrage Day, at the Bridge of Remembrance.

An online petition will also be available shortly.

Bring / Wear/Pledge:

–Bring white, purple and green balloons for Suffrage Day
–Wear a white camellia
–Bring along some signs, or come down early and make some!
–Pledge to support suffrage for our children, city and region by signing our petition ‘VOTECANTERBURYKIDS’
–Bring your families!! This is a community and family-friendly event. 🙂

Follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/votecanterburyk
Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/events/113307418819925/?ref=ts
Website: http://votecanterburykids.wordpress.com/ ”

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7.30 pm: Middleton Grange School—Join Women on Air for their celebration of Suffrage Day & the end of 20 years of broadcasting!

The event will include:

•  actress Helen Moran as Kate Sheppard; and
• Port Hills MP Ruth Dyson will read the maiden speech of Elizabeth McCombs, New Zealand’s first female MP.
• Comedienne Michele A’Court will read a piece called “A letter to my daughter”

As well as:

•  music from singer-songwriter, Rachel Dawick, and Fiona Pears
• performance poetry from Tusiata Avia

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So, protest or party, or both—there really is something for everyone happening this September 19 in Christchurch, for Suffrage Day.

Rhian Gallagher

As my Tuesday Poem feature today, I am linking to my recent Women on Air interview with poet, Rhian Gallagher, author of the poetry collection , “Shift.” Rhian recently won the NZ Post Book Award for Poetry 2012, again for Shift.

To listen, and also hear Rhian reading ‘Under the Pines’ and ‘Gaze’  as part of the interview, click HERE.

Then either click on the ‘Play’ icon, or download the MP3

You may also read my post on her NZ Post Book Award win, here.

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For more re Shift, Rhian, and her work, check out the following features:

• Tuesday Poem: “Windowpane” by Rhian Gallagher, October 24, 2011
• Tuesday Poem: “Between” by Rhian Gallagher, June 29, 2010
• “Feeling for Daylight: The Photographs of Jack Adamson” (by Rhian Gallagher). July 10, 2010

In addition,  I featured Rhian and Shift when I was guest editor for the Tuesday Poem Hub on August 23, 2011. You can read the poem Butterfly, here.

Enjoy!

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

Well, one thing I am clearly doing as you will know from my two update posts from last week, here and here, is working on Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Series Book Three. Be assured, that shall continue ‘until it’s done’ and I will bring you the occasional up date from time to time–but JanB says I am not to ‘tease’ you, so I shall try not to do that either! 😉

I have not been doing so many guest post gigs recently, but I do have my current series “Fun With Friends” on SF Signal, which comprises an interview per month with an Australian or New Zealand SFF author. To date I’ve interviewed Kim Falconer, Juliet Marillier and Tim Jones, and the interview I have coming up for September is with local writer, Jane Higgins, author of The Bridge, which you may recall I talked about here.

But in fact I do have a guest spot coming up in the next month or so, with book blogger Abhinav Jain on his Sons of Corax site. The series features newer SFF authors on the international scene, with each author to post on the significance of names in their Fantasy writing. Abhinav talks more about the series, here. The deadline for getting the articles in was September 15 so my contribution, titled The Power of Names, is done, but I have to say that I had a great deal of fun writing it, looking at exactly how I do approach names and naming systems in my work. I will cross-post when the article goes live—although with so many authors that could be some time away—and hope to give you some advance warning if at all possible.

And of course I am keeping up with my regular Tuesday “date” with The Tuesday Poem. This week I shall be linking to my recent radio interview with NZ Post Book Award for Poetry winner, Rhian Gallagher, and featuring links to other posts where I’ve fatured her poetry in the past. I have other great poems and poets coming up over the next few weeks, too (how not?), and then on October 16 I shall be the guest editor for the Tuesday Poem Hub.

That’s probably “it” from me for now, but here’s a few “extry” links to what’s happening around the traps:

•  At Civilian Reader, guest Daniel A Rabuzzi posts on the potential of the 18th and 19th centuries for Fantasy literature: “The Fantastical 18th and 19th Centuries, or, Dragons Dancing at Almack’s”

• Jo Fletchers Books features a guest post by blogger Jared Shurin on the influence of both High and Low Fantasy in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, here

• Alison Croggan acknowledges defeat on her Theatre Notes blog—a position for which I have considerable sympathy and wish her all the best for the next month dedicated to her novel

• While the Bad Astronomer features a solar eclipse seen from Mars (awesome!)

And on that note: Happy Monday!

On Thursday, I posted on the latest and 5th instalment of the The Aotearoa Blog Carnival,which is part of celebrating New Zealand literature and letters as part of New Zealand being the official guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year.

The theme for the fifth instalment of the The Aotearoa Blog Carnival is “A View From Here” and reflecting on the theme, I did feel there were so many slants and angles into it. On Thursday, I also said that I intended to develop the post into four views, from the micro to the macro, centered on being a writer living in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The four perspectives were to be the view from: my study, from Christchurch, from New Zealand, and as expressed through my books.

In terms of the actual carnival, the “View from Christchurch” did rather take over the show, and the link to that post is here.

Wattle in flower

But as stated then, I shall also post on all the other sub-themes—and today it is the micro of micro versions, the view from the writer’s study!

Yup, this is literally what I see when I am seated at the writer’s desk and look left, out the window.  It’s  a wattle tree, a hardy and evergreen Aussie import that has recently withstood earthquakes and unprecedented heavy snowfalls—and although it is a little late this year, it’s still one of our southern hemisphere spring’s first harbingers in my garden, producing a tracery of pale yellow blossom.

And that’s it—nice & simple, huh?! (Especially after Thursday’s “weighty” post! 😉 )

Ruth Todd, producing Women on Air for 20 years

Today from 10.00 am-12.00 noon, after twenty years—twenty years!—will be the very last show for Women of Air, on Plains 96.9 FM.

I must admit I feel incredibly sad, not only because I have been doing “books’n’writer” interviews for the show for the past six years, but because I think it’s a great loss for Christchurch women, to have their dedicated voice “on air” fall silent.

But really, today is all about Ruth Todd and Morrin Rout who have been producing the show for all of those twenty years, with a wonderful support team through both Plains FM and also the whole of the Women on Air crew.

If you’re in the Christchurch area, get your ears on and listen in on 96.9 FM. If not, there are still some great podcasts to check out, here.

Back to properly “bookish” ( 😉 ) posts today—and I’m very pleased to say that the weather has improved since I posted on this same topic on Wednesday, here. Hail, sleet and cold has given way to bright sunshine, although the wind was still more than a little chilly when I snuck out for my consitutional yesterday.

(Are any of you “…on Anything, Really” readers Deadwood fans? If yes, then you may “get it” when I say that the constitutional, on a day of sunshine but cold wind, doesn’t get beyond a little “perambulation.” 🙂 )

But another reason for just sneaking out and quite quickly back was that you may recall that I also talked of “pieces of the puzzle … finally … clicking together” on Wednesday, when I posted about the writing of Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three. Those clicks were coming thick and fast yesterday, and when that happens you definitely want to stay with the roll!

Of course, I can’t tell you what’s actually happening—because that would mean “warding sign: spoilers!“—except that there was action, and backstory, and the characters-de-jour were Malian and Raven… Most of the last few weeks have been Kalan, but this week I returned to a Malian sequence.

Hmmm,  I’m thinking that I need to get some sort of “proper” Daughter of Blood “icon” (or “avatar”?) for the site so that every time I talk about the book from now on I can have a visual to go with… Waddya reckon, sound like a plan to you?

This year, New Zealand is the official guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Aotearoa Blog Carnival is part of celebrating this focus on New Zealand literature and letters, and the theme for the fifth instalment is “A View From Here.” Reflecting on the theme, I felt there were so many slants and angles into it—and I did intend to develop the post into four views, from the micro to the macro, centered on being a writer living in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The four perspectives were to be the view from: my study, from Christchurch, from New Zealand, and as expressed through my books. But when I began writing the view from Christchurch, it just took off and had a life of its own. So I’ve decided to go with it.

This is the view from here as, not even a writer, just a person living in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the spring of 2012.

A View From Here: Being In Christchurch—The Introduction

“A view from here” for anyone based in Christchurch has to include the aftermath of earthquakes that have defined the city for the past two years, with major events on September 4, 2010; December 26, 2010; February 22, 2011; June 13, 2011; and December 23, 2011. The most destructive and devastating of these was the earthquake of February 22, 2011. Part of my personal view on these events can be found in both my Earthquake Reports, commenced post February 22, here, and my Earthquake Poems, collected here.

This was a friend's neighbour's home

As the worst of the earthquakes themselves appear to be passing away, a view from here becomes coloured by many other considerations: a city that is about loss and destruction; people without homes, or living in homes that are physically broken; extortionate rents and property prices in the less damaged sectors of the city; friends and family leaving; so many businesses gone, too; uncertainty around insurance and the rebuild or repair of damaged property; doubt as to what form of “new” will replace the “old” that is gone…

A View From Here on Health:

And then there are other factors that bear on that view: the number of elderly residents who are believed to have died, ostensibly of natural causes but “untimely” because of the shock of the earthquakes and their after-effects; reports of children in counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder; newspaper reports to the effect that statistics for winter flu infections are running at four times the national average, as well as increases in respiratory disorders from earthquake, demolition, and repair works’ dust. (The former two of which may/may not be imbued with asbestos.)

To give you some idea beyond just my own view, here are links to three health-related articles that appeared in The Press newspaper very recently:

•  Infection, Frustration, Stress

• Life becomes Harder for City’s Disabled

• CERA Neglects Peoples’ Plight – Psychologist

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A View From Here On The Royal Commission of Inquiry Into Earthquake Deaths:

Running in the background to all of this everyday reality we have the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the deaths that arose from the earthquakes, mainly from building failures, most notably the CTV and PGC buildings, but a number of other smaller premises throughout the city also figure. As always in these cases, what comes out in the wash leaves a lot to be desired. I can only feel for those who lost loved ones as a result of these failures—which reading between the lines, seem to extend beyond “acts of God” and/or “acts of Nature” to include “acts of People.”  Like many, I will await the report of the Royal Commission to see whether it confirms this impression.

A View From Here On Infrastructure Rebuild:

On almost every street...

“A view from here ” does includes positives, though. A big part of part of the current “city of grunge” is not just demoliton, but a huge amount of infrastructure rebuild, particularly of services such as sewer and stormwater, power and roads, which is taking place as well. Although that makes the city really hard to get around right now, it is still a positive view, a looking forward to a better future.

A View From Here On Democracy, Justice, and Government:

CERA and The Recovery: What Happened to Democracy, Legal Right of Redress, and Community?

The broken bridge

Far less positive from my view, and I believe—or maybe only hope!—that of many other Christchurch citizens, is the way the government (both parliament and the executive) has responded to the earthquakes by granting the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), and the minister who oversees it, war time powers of fiat that appear to effectively be taking away many of Christchurch citizens’ legal rights with regard to their properties, as well as a community focus on the central city’s rebuild.

The Proposed Central City Rebuild: Where Did Natural Justice Go?

Recently, and this is only one example but of major concern to me, the Minister and CERA unveiled a “gold-plated” rebuild plan for the city, that is to be completely paid for by the city’s residents. Now this may be fair enough in principle, although I note that Christchurch is also New Zealand’s second largest city so from that point of view it could be argued that there is in fact a national interest in seeing it gets back on its feet as soon as possible. (Atlhough whether roofed over sports stadiums and giant convention centres count as getting the city back on its feet has to be questionable at best.)

From the other side...

But, well and good, fair ’nuff and all that, Christchurch’s rebuild is a matter of local interest only and to be paid for entirely locally. So far so good: I can live with that. What I can’t “buy”, is that the people who live in those broken homes I mentioned above, or can’t live in their homes because they are too broken and so are paying both rent and  a mortgage, or are living in cars and tents and caravans because there isn’t enough housing to go round, or the rents are extortionate as also mentioned above, are the ones also having to pay a 10% increase in their rates to pay for the rebuild.

Except here’s the thing: that 10% increase still won’t cover the gilded rebuild plan, that our own parliament has enacted legislation to ensure we get no say as to whether we want, or not.

Does that sound like the icing on the earthquake devastation cake to you? Well, from where I’m looking right now, I have to tell you that it’s a pretty wretched sort of view.

Traditionally, the dictum has been that it is those who pay the piper who should call the tune. For anything else to be the case–for an agency such as CERA to have the ability to take your money for a plan you have no say over at all, either through local or national elections to appoint those who legitimately set taxes and strike rates, seems profoundly and fundamentally unjust. The just scenario, in my view, would be to say that if Christchurch is paying for its own rebuild solely out of its own pocket (because there is no “national” interest) then it is Christchurch citzens who should decide on the style of coat that is to be cut to fit our financial cloth.

Anything else is contrary to natural justice and adding a further social and financial burden to those already imposed by the earthquakes.

And that’s a pretty tough view to have to wake up to, every day.

And Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse… It Does! The Great Environment Canterbury Debacle

Yes, as if that is not enough, on top of everything else, there is more.

But because this could otherwise get to be a really long, not to mention “incredibly depressing” post on “a view from here” I shall chiefly refer you to:

The Press editorial of last Saturday, 8 September, here: “Black Day for Democracy In Canterbury and the Nation”

What About The Writing Part?

Die Erbin Der Nacht: The Heir of Night; forthcoming in Germany Aug '13

Now you may say: wow, I thought this was a writer’s blog and there is not a great deal, if anything, about books and writing in the above.

My reply is simply this: every writer is a human being and a citizen first, and after two years of natural disasters and their aftermaths, the view from Christchurch is very much going to be coloured, first by human concerns and secondly what it means to be a citizen in “this place.”  Mine is only one view from here, as a human being and a citizen who happens to also be a writer.

But if there is a writing perspective, besides the Earthquake Poems referenced above, it is that this is the environment within which my writing is currently happening. How I try and ensure that the writing still continues to happen, despite of or as part of everything else discussed above, will have to be the subject of another post, however.

Conclusion

I think we all hope the view from here will get brighter, but at the moment there are still as many, if not more, clouds than silver linings in post-earthquake Christchurch, and what feels like a great many big challenges ahead for our community—but also, in terms of some of the larger issues of government and accountability, for the whole of the New Zealand community.

That’s how I see it anyway. And however one-eyed or misguided, this is my personal “view from here.”

Magnolia stellata

It is now officially spring here, as my posts of September 1 and 9, here, attest—but those posts were all about the ‘balmy’ and the ‘mild’ and the spring flowers, whereas spring, as you probably well know, is also the most changeable of seasons–so yesterday, the mild (warm) norwesters were banished by the southerly, blowing in from the Antarctic and bringing snow to many regions and hail showers to Christchurch. Which was ok, as it turned out, because the power stayed on (by no means a certainty post-earthquakes) so I was able to stay at home with the heater and the cat (the two being pretty much a “single unit deal” these days when it’s cold) and work on writing Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three.

Just before you get the wrong idea, it wouldn’t have mattered what the weather was like, I would have been writing Daughter of Blood anyway—but there is something about cold blustery weather outside, keeping you indoors where it’s warm, that is very conducive to writing. Rainy weather is also very good…

So I thought you might like to know, whether because of the southerly (also known as the ‘southerly buster’, which may give you some idea) and the hail or not, the writing went quite well. I have been working on a section of the book that has proven particularly difficult, with sections moving in and out and around—all very fluid—not to mention ‘characters behaving badly’, by which I mean, having their own idea of what they want to do, which may or may not marry up with mine. But over the past few days all the pieces of the puzzle have finally been clicking together—which is rather a nice feeling, especially when it involves sections of story that up until now have been behaving as though they are irreconcilable.

Storm on the Wall of Night; artist, Peter Fitzpatrick

One thing I have learned in my writing life to date though, is that nothing is ever completely irreconcilable. It’s more a matter of me, as the author, being patient and listening to the story and the characters and “working with” them to find the “right flow and direction” for the book, rather than trying to impose my will unilaterally from above. So far, that has never ever worked for me in terms of achieving a good result for the story.

Needless to say, it is both a very nice feeling and a considerable relief when the pieces of the puzzle do start fitting together.

It’s also very rewarding, as I think: “Yes, yes, this is exactly right for the character”, and not only that, but the story really starts to move along!

And right now, as I “pen” this post, and that wild southerly wind is soughing in the wattle outside my study window, I can’t help thinking about those far more terrifying storms on the Wall of Night, and what difficulties and adventures Malian and Kalan might be encountering right now, whether together, or separately…

Re-vision

There is a moment, somewhere, when I see you.
Truly see you.    A gift.
………………………………….   Before a glass, a Renaissance self-
portrait.  Maybe in a courtyard, a Gothic arch

Or by a Roman column: unruly curls snaking,
your father’s smile.  Sicilian sun.
………………………………………………….A fishing harbour,
gulls rising through blue, many steps, and you
carry my burden. Ionian light and Jason searching
for himself.                     ………………………A spear
of light in a dark atrium; you sparkle.  The trickle
of water.
………………………………………………….The old so new.

Or perhaps in relief
against a white wall; always white walls.
Blue-and-white tiles and men mending nets.
The voice of the market. Bull-fight roar in the wind.

Twin iron beds in a whitewashed room. A fan
to cut hot heavy air. A small table:
bread on white paper, a knife
beside cheese, sharing stories
and red wine thicker than water.

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© Karen Zelas

Published in Night Glass Table, (Interactive Press) 2012

Reproduced here with permission.

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About the Poem:

Night’s Glass Table is Karen Zelas’s first book of poetry and one of three collections launched at the recent Christchurch Writers’ Festival. Published by Australia’s Interactive Press, it also won the Interactive Publications 2012 IP Picks Best First Book competition.

When I first read Re-vision, I was struck by the way it instantly transported me to the sunshine and sense-of-history of the Mediterranean, where the relationship between the poem’s narrator and companion is established within a continuum that is both present and past, real and mythic—and finally grounded in the here-and-now of:

“bread on white paper, a knife
beside cheese”

and the red wine, which like blood, is “thicker than water.”

A beautiful, elegant poem, with just the right balance between present and post, the concrete and a sense of the ephemeral.

Night’s Glass Table is available from bookshops in NZ and directly from Interactive Publications, here.

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About the Poet:

A former psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Karen Zelas has been Fiction Editor of Takahē literary journal for the last five years. Her poetry has been widely published within New Zealand, including in Landfall, Poetry New Zealand, Takahē, pending in JAAM and broadcast on radio; also Australian ezines Snorkel and Eclecticism and recently blogged by Interlitq (UK).

Several anthologies contain Karen’s work. She was editor of Crest to Crest: Impressions of Canterbury, Prose and Poetry (Wily Publications, 2009) and her historical novel Past Perfect, published by Wily in 2010, has now been republished as an ebook by Interactive Publications, Brisbane [see here].

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

On August 2, I introduced my first “…on Anything, Really” book review by guest reviewer, Andrew Robins — in that case of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “2312.”

Today Andrew is reviewing John Scalzi’s “Redshirts.”

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Review: “Redshirts” (TOR, 2012; 314 pp) by John Scalzi

by Andrew Robins

On one level Redshirts is a relatively straightforward vehicle for a clever idea. If you are a fan of classic Star Trek or other shows in the genre, you will “get” this book and have an enjoyable read.

In jokes abound. Scalzi is an accomplished writer, with a well established audience. This book is very much for them.

The US edition consists of a 230 page “main sequence”, and four Codas that together encompass another 84 pages. Given that I did not flick ahead at any stage while reading, I found this to be a bit confusing. The story certainly felt like it was finishing, and yet plenty of pages remained.

Confusion quickly turned in to satisfaction, as I found the Codas to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the book. They served to reveal a number of subthemes that while present in the main story, had not had a lot of airtime, and wrap up various subplots in a satisfactory fashion.

They also widened the perspective of the story (in particular giving a female point of view that up until then had been somewhat lacking) – and gave it some added gravitas.

Whether or not you think this was required or not will depend on the type of reader you are. But for me this worked. It shifted my view of Redshirts from a “read once, enjoy once” book, to a “maybe sit down and write a review” kind of book.

Now, one of the first things I realised when I came to write this review was that there was not a lot I could say about the main sequence of the story without major spoilers. If you have seen classic Star Trek, especially the more budget constrained later episodes, then you know the setting. As you can probably guess from the title of the book, the stories’ protagonists are not particularly exalted members of the crew – and as such they face some pretty unique challenges staying alive. Their struggle to do so pretty much defines the book, and to a certain extent the characters themselves. None of the characters are particularly complex – but they don’t really need to be in order for the story to work.

That’s pretty much all I can say without spoiling the story.  I enjoyed Redshirts. I suspect if I was more of a Star Trek nerd I would have enjoyed it even more.

For more information on John Scalzi and his writing, see his site, here.

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About the Reviewer:

Andrew Robins is a long time reader – and sometime reviewer – of science fiction, fantasy and history. People pay him to test stuff, mainly radios – which most of the time is more fun than it has any right to be. Any and all views expressed in this review are entirely his own.

To read Andrew’s review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “2312”, click here.