What would you say to teenagers that want to get their stuff published?

>There is two sets of things I would say to young people, one is good on you, I think it’s fantastic, I think if you are a young person and you want to write or do something creative, I think just really believe in yourself and what you do. It took me a long time to get started writing because there was no one around me who said this is a worthwhile thing to do. Most people said it was something that was an optional extra, that if you had done everything else you could spend some time on that. So if you want to write or do something creative, I say it’s really important and it becomes part of the way you live, and good on you, and you are not silly, or stupid, or doing something that is not worthwhile. It is a fantastic thing to do and don’t ever give up that belief in something you want to do.

In terms of how you would get published, and that’s the second group of things I’ll say, if I was a young person writing….if you are writing poems most people send poems off to what we call literary magazines, there is a few in the country, there is Sport, there is Landfall which is a very famous one, there is Takahe, there is Jam, there is Poetry NZ, there is half a dozen journals that are published a couple of times a year, and you send your poems off to them, and if they think they are good enough, they will publish them. Now most of your teachers will know how to get in contact with those magazines, but most poets in New Zealand will probably publish through those magazines, one or two poems and it’s a good way to test yourself. Because they will only publish stuff that they think is good, and if you get a poem in there you are doing pretty well.

The other places to publish are magazines and newspapers, so your local newspaper might publish poems, The Listener publishes poems. The Listener, I don’t know if they still do, they used to have a page for young people to send poems in and writing, they will look at stuff. So you could send off to local newspapers, as well as The Listener, North & South, other magazines, and see how you go. And there’s also some e-Magazines you can send stuff to okay, and your teachers again will have those. But that’s what I’d do, I’d start off small, and there is always sort of school magazines, school journals, stuff like that of course. But I would start off small with a couple of small pieces of work and send them out there and see how they go. But talk to your teachers because they will have a lot of the details of where you send stuff.

But that’s how most people would start off, and they would get some feedback from those. Sometimes they write you letters back and say this is good, but we can’t publish it because we’ve got so many, or else they will say we like this bit, but this bit wasn’t strong enough, you might want to work on it. But sometimes they don’t give you any comments and you just start again. But if you send away 20 poems and you get one published, that’s great, you are doing well, and it doesn’t matter about the 19, but the one will make you feel better than the 19 nos. One yes is better than 19 nos.