On Thursday 1 June from 1.30pm to 2.30pm, join our live videoconference
WordSpace: The Writing of Janet Frame
Join Gregory O’Brien and Pamela Gordon in a special discussion about the writing of Janet Frame. WordSpace is a series of videoconference discussions between secondary school students and leading New Zealand writers, brought to you by the New Zealand Book Council and CWA New Media. To participate, your school will need to be a member of the Book Council.
The session will consider questions like why Janet Frame is considered to be such a significant New Zealand author, and how her life influenced her writing. Discussion will cover the themes of her work, and what her legacy to literature and poetry has been. Pamela Gordon will also talk about the new collection of Janet Frame’s poems, The Goose Bath.
Gregory O’Brien
Gregory O’Brien is a poet, painter, and editor. His poems have appeared regularly in most New Zealand literary journals since the mid-1980s. His collections of poems and drawings include Location of the Least Person (1987), Dunes and Barns (1988), Man with a Child’s Violin (1990), Great Lake (1991) and Winter I Was (1999).
He has also published a study of contemporary New Zealand painters Lands and Deeds (1996), Hotere: Out The Black Window in 1997, and with his partner, poet Jenny Bornholdt, edited a collection of New Zealand love poetry My Heart Goes Swimming (1996). They also edited An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English with Mark Williams (1997), which won the 1997 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry. Gregory published a collection of essays, criticism and memoir called After Bathing at Baxter’s (2002), and co-edited Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance (2000) with Te Miringa Hohaia and Lara Strongman, which was a joint winner of the History and Biography category in the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
In 2005 he co-curated the National Library Gallery exhibition Main Trunk Lines – New Zealand Poetry with Jenny Bornholdt, and his most recent collection of poetry is Afternoon of An Evening Train (2005). In 2005, Gregory gave a lecture on the writing of Janet Frame, Where the alphabet ends, at the Wellington City Gallery.
Pamela Gordon
Pamela Gordon is Janet Frame’s niece and literary executor. She graduated in Linguistics at the University of Otago and has taught academic subjects as well as ESOL. She had a close relationship with her aunt and Frame’s only children’s book Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun, was dedicated to her. Pamela chairs the Janet Frame Literary Trust, the charitable trust founded by the world renowned author with the aim of supporting and encouraging other New Zealand writers. She has written a biographical essay for ‘The Janet Frame Collection’ which is a re-issue series of all Janet Frame’s novels, and was involved in selecting the poems for The Goose Bath.
TO REGISTER FOR THIS VIDEO-CONFERENCE, CONTACT digitalconversations@cwa.co.nz BY MONDAY 22 MAY 2006.
Telephone: (04) 382 6506
The Book Council will be creating a DVD of this session, which will be available for schools to purchase. If your school takes part in the session, please be aware that we will need signed permission forms from all participating students.
