IIML NEWSLETTER - 2 October 2012

This is from the 186th in a series of occasional newsletters from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington.   1. Transit of Venus Chris Price will be in Berlin by now – where she joins Hinemoana Baker and Glenn Colquhoun and German poets Uwe Kolbe, Brigitte Oleschinski and Ulrike Almut Sandig for the second half of the Transit of Venus Poetry Exchange. The six poets have all been busy producing new, Transit-related work, and in Berlin this week they'll be even busier translating it all to and fro between their respective languages. Next week they take the results to the Frankfurt Book Fair for presentations in the New Zealand Pavilion.  The Goethe-Institute has produced a little movie about the project, which even includes a glimpse of our workshop room, while Chris has blogged about the experience on the FBF website. 2. Victoria goes to Frankfurt Frankfurt is keeping a lot of us busy. On 9 October Bill Manhire gives the opening literary address on  behalf of New Zealand at the Frankfurt Book Fair's official opening ceremony. He is also involved in events around two publishing projects: a special New Zealand poetry issue of the German literary journal Akzente; and a re-edited, updated version of Some Other Country.  He also travels to Vienna after the Frankfurt Book Fair to give a presentation at the University of Vienna on New Zealand writing in the 21st century. Among his presentations in the NZ Pavilion are a conversation with Icelandic writer Halldór Guðmundsson, and discussion with Kate De Goldi about New Zealand’s Grimms fairytale competition at the stand of the German/French television channel ARTE. On 13 October between 3.00pm and 9.00 pm, Victoria University and the Weltkulturen Museum are presenting a "New Zealand Text and Culture Marathon". Participants include Elizabeth Knox, Tina Makereti, Hamish Clayton, Anna Jackson, Harry Ricketts, Lawrence Patchett, John Sinclair, Jenny Bornholdt and Fergus Barrowman. Many more writers with strong Victoria connections – including Hinemoana Baker, Chris Price, Anthony McCarten, Kate Camp, Lloyd Jones, Sarah Quigley, Kate De Goldi, Paula Morris, Barbara Ewing, Eleanor Catton and Emily Perkins ¬– will be doing their thing in the NZ Pavilion.  You can download a pdf of  the full Pavilion programme here. Among the cultural performances during the Book Fair will be the Norman Meehan/Hannah Griffin Making Baby Float show, incorporating numbers from their Buddhist Rain and Making Baby Float CDs, and from the recently released These Rough Notes book/CD. Back in Wellington, if you listen carefully, you will hear a cry coming from the dawn pavilion.