Write Space Literary news, views and reviews http://taurangawriters.org.nz

This week's Write Space by Jenny Argante.

Do we need to be both shaken and stirred by experiences to write our best poetry?

It's a theory that was put harshly to the test for Christchurch poet Jeffrey Paparoa Holman during this past year of earthquakes and aftershocks.

Certainly it has caused him to reflect deeply on the significance of such events for what he calls ‘the poetry of place'.

Where we are and what happens to us there can indeed inspire us, whether those events are deeply personal or shared by a community.

Holman, recently Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, will be speaking to this topic on Courage Day.

Celebrated annually on November 15, Courage Day honours writers internationally who staunchly defend our rights to freedom of speech – often under duress – and, no less importantly, to freedom of creative expression.

One important role of literature and arts is to reflect back to us the power of the human spirit under stress.

Courage Day is organised by PEN International through the New Zealand Society of Authors, and the Bay of Plenty branch was delighted when Jeffrey Paparoa Holman agreed to come to Tauranga as our special guest of honour for this occasion.

Christchurch poet Jeffrey Paparoa.

Holman grew up on naval bases in Auckland and Christchurch, and later in mining towns on the West Coast of the South Island.

He has been a sheepshearer, postman and bookseller and now teaches part-time at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch and the Hagley Community College's Writers' Institute.

A prizewinning poet, Holman's collections include Strange Children, Flood Damage and As Big as a Father – longlisted for the Montana.

His title poem took the Whitirea Prize and can be found in Essential New Zealand Poems. His poems and short stories appear in The Listener, The Press and Landfall and in anthologies such as Big Sky and Land Very Fertile.

His most recent work is Best of Both Worlds: The Story of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau (Penguin, 2010).

This focused on the 1895 meeting in the rugged Urewera ranges between Best, a self-taught anthropologist and quartermaster, and Tuhoe chief Tutakangahau, and which permanently changed long-held views on traditional Maori society. Holman himself is fluent in Te Reo.

He has been described as ‘bending the New Zealand tradition in new and interesting ways' with a ‘nice balancing of humour and serious language games.'

In The Late Great Blackball Bridge Sonnets (Steele Roberts, 2004) Holman, according to reviewer David Eggleston, ‘affirms the working-class spirit ... [with] poetry as local history and vice-versa'.

This interest in what Holman calls ‘the poetry of place' will form the first part of his presentation on Tuesday November 15th, and will be followed by a reading of his poems about the Christchurch earthquakes.

The venue is the recently-vacated Richard Harris Cafe, kindly rented out for the evening by the landlords, in State Insurance Arcade, off Grey Street or approached from the Red Square end of Willow Street. Entry is $10 on the door and includes refreshments.

Enquiries to nzsabop@gmail.com or to Nyree Sherlock by email to nyree@waikato.ac.nz

And who is Nyree? Creator of ambience extraordinaire, the hardest-working community education adviser known to us, and the Bay's biggest supporter of New Zealand writers and writing. Thanks for being you, Nyree.

Finally: why not check out Holman's blog at http://paparoa.wordpress.com/? This is a poet who is so in his write space, write now.