Auckland Libraries

Part 2: In this second part of an interview with Theia, she talks about her love of Carole King, and why she chose the album Tapestry from our collection. We also talk about the band for the Te Kaahu project, and how that came together. References: Tapestry (CD) – Carole King (1971) https://discover.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2323287 Tracks used: You’ve Got A Friend – Carole King So Far Away – Carole King

Part 1: In this episode Dedee chats to Theia about three of her music videos – one of them filmed in L.A. just before the city went into lockdown. We talk about her Te Kaahu project, where she writes and performs songs all in te reo Maori. Theia shares what it was like being forced to come home early due to Covid, but getting to perform online at ‘cyber concerts’, and how this can break down barriers for artists in physical spaces. References: Theia (CD) – Theia (2017) https://discover.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/iii/encore/record/C__Rb3365550 Undertheradar website - Premiere + Interview: Theia x Vayne Share Video For 'CREEP' (Annabel Kean, Thursday 8th April, 2021) https://www.undertheradar.co.nz/news/18408/Premiere--Interview-Theia-x-Vayne-Share-Video-For-CREEP.utr Tracks used: 99% Angel – Theia E Hine Ē – Te Kaahu Celebrity - Theia Creep - Theia and Vayne Music videos: TE KAAHU - E Hine Ē - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IutIfEfrEe0&ab_channel=TEKAAHU (3 August 2021) THEIA – Celebrity - https://

Alison and Ineka present the second part of their preview of the Booker's dozen - the thirteen titles that have made the 2021 Booker Prize Longlist. Listen along and discover some additional read-alike titles to devour while you are waiting to get hold of those mouth-watering Booker books.

In this talk, keen genealogist and MyHeritage representative Elena Fowler explains how MyHeritage can help you learn more about your family history and genealogy. Find out what MyHeritage contains and how to navigate the website. Access to MyHeritage is available through the Auckland Libraries website. Music: When it all falls by Ketsa

Alison and Ineka talk about some recent reads before dipping into the just-announced Booker’s dozen – the thirteen titles that have made this year’s Booker Prize Longlist. They even have some suggestions for books to read while you are waiting to get hold of those mouth-watering Booker titles.

In this talk Principal Oral History advisor Sue Berman takes the listener on an engaging tour of the oral histories and sound recordings available in the Auckland Libraries oral history heritage collection. Check out the oral history collection here: https://kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/collection/oralhistory Music: When it falls by Ketsa

Alison and Ineka discuss fictional lives worth writing and reading about.

In this episode we turn our attention to the Frank Reed Dumas Collection held in the Heritage collections of Auckland Libraries. This most significant Dumas collection outside of France was put together by Frank Reed from Whangarei. It's an extraordinary achievement and fascinating story. In this track Haunui Royal is joined by Kate de Courcy who spent many years arranging and working with the Reed Dumas Collection. Current catalogue reference: tinyurl.com/bxe4c473 To access this collection or to find out more please email: specialcollections@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz And ask about the Reed Dumas Collection

Not many people are aware that the greatest collection of books and manuscripts of the celebrated French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas outside of Paris is housed at the Auckland Central Library as part of Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. Dumas’s most recognized works include The Three Musketeers; The Man with the Iron Mask; and, The Count of Monte Cristo and his works are still enjoyed by readers and movie goers to this day. There is no doubt that Dumas and his works maintain an enduring fascination for the modern audience and reader. In this interview Haunui Royal talks to Kate de Courcy, who recently retired from Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections and who for many years was responsible for overseeing the Reed Dumas Collection. Tune into the next episode to learn about Frank Reed the Dumas collector. Current catalogue reference: https://tinyurl.com/bxe4c473 To access this collection or to find out more please email: specialcollections@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz And ask about the

For this second instalment, Dedee chats to Yolanda and Harriet from Na Noise, about their debut album Waiting For You, which won the Junior Taite Prize (also known as the “Baby Taite”) this year. We chat a bit about their writing process, being asked to cover a Reb Fountain song at the Taite Awards, and playing their first Level 2 seated gig at Whammy bar after the first Covid lockdown. We also discuss their two very cool music videos, and why they only feature in one of them. All tracks used in this podcast are from Na Noise’s album Waiting For You, released on 1:12 records, November 20, 2020. Tracks: - Sun Stone Air - Waiting For You - Dance With Me - Na Noise Music videos: Waiting For You - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJw2zOPyUeo&ab_channel=NaNoise Dance With Me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaxBLE305TY&ab_channel=NaNoise Items chosen from the Auckland Libraries collection: Book: Yé-Yé girls of '60s French pop / by Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe ; [foreword by Lio] Deluxe, Jean-Emmanuel, 1970-

Last year linguist Susan Verran and historian David Verran transcribed the journals of Isaac Rhodes Cooper, which he wrote in the 1850s. In this talk, Susan and David describe the challenges of transcribing the young British officer’s journals and what they learned about Cooper's several excursions around the upper north island (from Taupō to the Bay of Islands). The original journals (NZMS 56a) are available to view online https://bit.ly/IsaacRhodesCooper Isaac Rhodes Cooper later used these accounts as the basis for his book ‘The New Zealand settlers guide…with a digest of the constitution and land regulations https://bit.ly/NZSettlersGuide Image: Isaac Rhodes Cooper sketch of Auckland Province.

During her 32 years at the helm, publishing doyenne, Jean Wishart, transformed the Woman’s Weekly into a highly successful magazine – one that reflected the real lives and interests of its female readership. In this talk, Jenny Lynch, former Weekly editor and author, tells the personal story behind this remarkable woman. Under the covers: the secrets of a magazine editor https://bit.ly/SecretsofaMagazineEditor New Zealand woman's weekly : 70 years from pavlovas to prime ministers https://bit.ly/NZWW70Years

This week our reading has taken us from Roman times all the way through to the year 2024. Join Alison and Ineka on the Literary Lounge time-travellator to find out more.

Award winning writer Greg McGee, best known for his play Foreskin’s Lament, came to Going West in 2015 to talk on writing, rugby, toxic masculinity, female pseudonyms, life in Italy and his novel The Antipodeans - an intergenerational tale of love, blood and betrayal. For this conversation, he is joined by well-known and well-read journalist David Larsen. McGee, an almost All Black, is known for works that have challenged the social norms of masculine behaviours in New Zealand, most notably his hugely popular play Foreskin’s Lament. First performed in 1981, his dark drama set in a rugby club changing room stripped New Zealand masculinity naked and began the demise of the once popular slur "Whaddarya?” McGee went on to be a successful screenwriter, writing based-on-true story dramatisations and mini-series based on the Erebus disaster and the infamous Lange Government, as well as contributing to several popular New Zealand TV shows including Marlin Bay, Street Legal, and Orange Roughies. He also penned th

Working class heroes and poets Serie Barford and Glenn Colquhoun celebrate their working class roots as part of the Going West Oblivion Express as it steams to Helensville Station. Passengers along for the ride were entertained and charmed by this witty pairing of two of New Zealand’s finest performance poets. It is pure working class gold, sprinkled with a West Auckland flavour, as they celebrate their whānau, friends, and community with poems about ceramic swans, the knicker factory, bullrush, and bog filled cars, grapevines and the alchemy of Assid Corban’s orchids. Both Barford and Colquhoun are long-time friends of the Going West Writers Festival and have been regular guests throughout the years. Serie Barford is a poet and short fiction writer of European and Polynesian descent, with a background in performance poetry. She has published four poetry collections: Plea to the Spanish Lady (Hard Echo Press, 1985), Glass Canisters (Hard Echo Press, 1989), Tapa Talk (Huia, 2007), and Entangled Islands (An

Rewi Alley, a quiet bloke from Canterbury, a dabbler in poetry, a farmer, fireman and soldier went "to go and have a look at China" and ended up becoming the architect of one of the world's greatest labour movements. In her book A Communist in the Family: Searching for Rewi Alley, Rewi's cousin Elspeth Sandys presents a layered biography of the Kiwi who became a Chinese hero and "the great friend of the people of China". New Zealand has Special Nation Status in China entirely because of Rewi Alley and his work. In conversation with New Zealand Herald investigative reporter Matt Nippert, Sandys recounts her 2017 visit to China to trace her cousin’s life there. On that visit, she was told there were more statues of Rewi than Mao Zedong. While she thought it an exaggeration, it certainly seemed possible in China’s North West. Intrigued by what he had read about China, Alley left New Zealand in December 1926 to see the Chinese revolution up close. He would stay for 60 years, becoming one of China's best-known

150 years on from the original landmark study of New Zealand’s birdlife, Buller’s Birds were re-imagined and J G Keulemans re-discovered in Geoff Norman Buller’s Birds of New Zealand. This revision and revisiting of Walter Buller’s original ornithological study includes exquisitely reproduced water-colours by JG Keulemans, the most renowned ornithological artist of the 19th century. In this Going West session from 2013, Geoff Norman is joined in entertaining and enlightening conversation by writer, satirist, ornithologist and journalist Steve Bruanias, author of How to Watch a Bird. Many of the birds reproduced in Norman’s book are now extinct; all we have of them are snippets in oral history, scraps of texts, a few feathers and the odd stuffed carcass in a Museum. And, of course, Walter Buller’s book. It was incredibly popular, especially from the second edition, due to Keulemans’ illustrations - though these were poorly reproduced through the printing process of chromolithography. Norman’s new edi

This session from 2013 is titled after the first line of Peter Bland’s poem The Pond, Here Comes that Childhood Pond Again. The conversation between poet, writer, actor and playwright Peter Bland and poet, blogger, and anthologist Paula Green traverses the world of childhood, children’s poetry and writing with warmth, wit and word-play as they frame the world through a poet’s eye. In what is (as noted by Green) a rare opportunity to talk about children’s poetry at a book festival, Bland reads from his books The Night Kite and When Gulls Fly High and Green from Flamingo Bendalingo: Poems from the Zoo written in conjunction with 50 school children. Peter Bland moved to Wellington from his native Yorkshire and emerged on the local poetry scene alongside James K Baxter and Louis Johnson, as a member of the Wellington Group. Peter has published three collections of poems for children: The Night Kite, When Gulls Fly High, and in 2018 The Happy Garden. He has also worked as a character actor, winning Best Actor

Marilyn Waring delivered the Gala Night oratory at the Going West Books and Writers Festival in 2002, speaking to the theme Tracking the Vernacular. Made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2020, and a former politician, scholar, feminist, farmer, author, academic, and activist for female human rights and environmental issues , Waring is an exceptional and inspiring New Zealander. Her keynote address is wise, compassionate, insightful and witty as she tracks what is her personal vernacular, a vernacular partly expressed through her writing. The address is part memoir and part love letter to Aotearoa. This appearance was the first time Marilyn Waring had been invited to speak about her writing in New Zealand - but wouldn't be the last. The 15th woman elected in New Zealand and one of only four women in Parliament at the time, her nine tumultuous years as a National Party MP boiled over in 1984 when she backed the Labour Opposition's nuclear-free policy, prompting then-Prime Minister Robe

In her prizewinning debut novel Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings Tina Makereti confronts the complexities of cultural heritage, the past and the present, and Moriori, Māori and Pakeha identity. The novel is a compelling, powerful and haunting work. In 2014, Makereti came to Going West to discuss her book live on stage with colleague, scholar and poet Selina Tusitala Marsh - who began the session with a poem penned for Tina and her extraordinary novel. The session was an insightful, thoughtful and inspiring one, delving into the process behind the writing. Tina Makereti writes essays, novels and short fiction. Her most recent novel is The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke (longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards Fiction Award, 2019) and optioned by Taika Waititi’s Piki Films for development. Alongside Witi Ihimaera, she is co-editor of Black Marks on the White Page, an anthology celebrating Māori and Pasifika writing. In 2016, her story, Black Milk, won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Pacific reg