I'm absolutely blown away. Paula Green's fabulous collection The Baker's Thumbprint has debuted at number 7 in the New Zealand fiction for adults section of the Nielsen Weekly Bestsellers list for the week ending 25 May. Thank you to everyone who has bought a copy, especially all you lovely people who bought one (or more) at the two launches. And thank you to the booksellers who have stocked it – especially you fabulous independents who give so much support to local independent publishers. I also found it heartening that there are two other poetry books on the list, at number 4 is Kate Camp's new Snow White's Coffin, which sold out at the Wellington launch/talk last Thursday (fortunately I got in and bought my copy before they ran out); and at number 8 is Elemental: Central Otago Poems by Brian Turner. Hooray for New Zealand poetry.
 Before I've even had time to write about the two wonderful launches we've had for The Baker's Thumbprint (though I will very soon), the first review is out. Auckland-based poet Siobhan Harvey has reviewed Paula Green's The Baker's Thumbprint (and Fleur Adcock's latest, Glass Wings) over on Beattie's Book Blog: http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/poetry-reviews-by-siobhan-harvey.html. You can read it yourself of course, but some highlights: Siobhan begins by saying that Paula's early collections 'were celebrations of the familial and the artistic – of relationships, gathering points, shared food, artistic connections and so forth. In this respect, The Baker’s Thumbprint, her sixth collection, is a return to the familiar authorial terrain, even though much else about the book offers a departure, such as this being her first book published by exciting boutique Wellington publisher, Seraph Press' She goes on to very kindly say that Seraph Press 'garnered a well-deserved reputation for the beautiful production values, not to mention stunning content of their output, including Vana Manasiadis’ Ithaca Island Bay Leaves and Vivienne Plumb’s Crumple.' She talks about some of the characters, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jane Austen and Sylvia Plath, who turn up throughout the book: 'But rather than highbrow exclusiveness, the famous and infamous who people The Baker’s Thumbprint become identifiable characters in a vast, yet personal narrative, one which astutely manages to straddle geographical points here and overseas. The power, personality and personal nature of this deeply engaging collection shines through poems like the final section’s ‘New York’, ‘Te Reo’ and ‘Beam’. And finally: 'Paula Green’s The Baker’s Thumbprint showcases an author who has carved out a distinct set of literary tenets for herself, and offers them – as table laid for a Sunday get-together – for our entertainment and delight.'
Helen Lehndorf, author of The Comforter, and Maria McMillan, author of the up-coming collection The Rope Walk (which we're publishing in July), are doing a couple of Massey University 'Writers Read' sessions at in Wellington and Palmerston North. The first session is at Massey's Wellington campus this Wednesday, and the other is at the Palmerston North City Library a week later. Here's the blurb: The Wellington programme begins with an event featuring Helen Lehndorf, the 2013 Visiting Artist (Creative Writing) in the School of English and Media studies. Lehndorf is a Manawatu writer and writing teacher. Her work has appeared in many journals including Sport, Landfall, Hue & Cry, Takahe and North & South magazine. Her feature writing has appeared in the Dominion Post and her fiction produced on Radio New Zealand National. Her debut collection of poetry, The Comforter, featured in The Listener's '100 Best Books of 2012' list. Lehndorf will be joined by friend and fellow poet Maria McMillan, a poet, activist and undercover librarian. McMillan’s poetry sequence The Rope Walk comes out with Seraph Press in July and her second book Tree Space is to be published by Victoria University Press in 2014. In this session they'll share their poetry and discuss writing, the writing life and their shared love of op shopping. Wellington session:Wednesday 17 April Reading: 12:30 pm | Light refreshments to followTheatre Laboratory (Block 5, Level D, Room 14) Wallace Street, Entrance AWellington Campus, Massey UniversityPalmerston North session:Wednesday 24 April Reading: 6 pm | Light refreshments to follow Palmerston North City Library Helen has written a blog post about her friendship with Maria and their shared love of writing in a blog post: Celebrating a long apprenticeship.
I didn't quite manage to figure out how to get Seraph Press books to the Frankfurt Book Fair last year, but thanks to the good grace and proactiveness of Roger Hickin of Cold Hub Press, Seraph Press books have made it to the AWP Conference twice now. The most recent conference was earlier this month, and Roger has kindly written a piece explaining what AWP is and what he was up to there. At the AWP Bookfair, Boston, 7–9 March 2013 I’d just come from 35˚C in Nicaragua. In Boston the temperature was scarcely above 0˚C and there was a snowstorm on the way. I was in Boston for the AWP Conference. AWP is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, i.e., all the university creative writing programmes in the USA. And each year, in a different US city (this year Boston), they have a big conference, more of a convention perhaps, with now upwards of 11,000 aspiring writers, practising writers, writing teachers and administrators, all eager to progress their careers. Lectures, seminars, discussions, readings, book launches. “Nothing else has quite the packed, desperate frenzy of AWP,” writes my friend Jim Kates, poet, translator, co-director of Zephyr Press, an AWP veteran.  The AWP Bookfair, with the Cold Hub Press and Seraph Press table in foreground There’s a bookfair too, for three days, from 8.30 am to 6.00 pm, with all the associated university presses displaying their magazines and peddling the first books of their ambitious star graduates. And among this orgy of programmatic creativity (“This is, after all,” says my friend, “a conference not of writers, but of writing programs”), like Daniels in the lions’ den, are some independent small presses and literary magazines. These are mostly US-based, but this year Versal was there from Amsterdam and for the second time, Seraph Press and Cold Hub Press from New Zealand. The aspiring writers, mostly unacquainted with world literature, or indeed with anything much other than their tutors’ work and their own dreams of publication, drift by the tables with a casual glance at covers, but there are enough genuine readers, writers, editors, translators to make the thing worthwhile.  Cold Hub Press and Seraph Press books (plus a couple of recent issues of JAAM) Books are examined, admired, discussed, swapped, bought; cards are exchanged, invitations issued to submit work to magazines. On the Seraph/Cold Hub table Vivienne Plumb’s The Cheese and Onion Sandwich (Seraph Press) sold out (it’s a little guidebook to the quirks of Middle Earth after all); John Gallas’s Fucking Poets (a three-volume Cold Hub Press chapbook) was, unsurprisingly, the most scrutinised title on the table and almost sold out. Outside, in a foot of snow, brownstone Boston was doing its best to look like an impressionist painting. But by the time we emerged from the cavernous Hynes Convention Centre for the last time the snow was beginning to turn to slush. Roger Hickin
Isn't it gorgeous! The cover features a wonderful artwork by Michael Hight, which was especially painted for this book. I've just added a page for The Baker's Thumbprint, so you can go there to find out more about the collection, and about Paula: http://www.seraphpress.co.nz/the-bakers-thumbprint.html. There's also a sneak preview of a few poems from the book. The Baker's Thumbprint is going off to print next week, and will be all ready for us to launch it at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, on Saturday 18 March, from 1.15 to 2.15, at Q Theatre, 305 Queen Street. Invitations will be forthcoming closer to the time (and also to the second launch we're planning to have in Wellington later in May), but all are welcome. Unfortunately the book launches don't seem to be included in the listings on the website, but you'll find them in the front of the print booklet. Immediately after the launch, you'll also want to see Paula introducing the Poets Aplenty event later on that Saturday afternoon, which features Fleur Adcock, John Newton and Maris O'Rourke (2:30 to 3:15 in the Limelight Room, Aotea Centre).
It's a great weekend for seeing Helens read poetry on the Kapiti Coast. First up, Helen Heath joins the Rocky Outcroppers: Kirsten McDougall, Pip Adam and Ashleigh Young, and other special guests: Lynn Jenner, Tina Makereti, in an event chaired by Lawrence Patchett. That's at St Peters Hall in Paekakariki, on the afternoon of Saturday 23 March, at 2 pm. (Here's the Facebook event thingy, if that's useful to you: https://www.facebook.com/events/452016948197657/.) Rumour has it there will pikelets and ginger crunch! The event is free, but you'll most likely want to buy their books, so cash is useful. And then the next day, on Sunday 24 March at 4 pm, at Valhalla in Raumati South, you can see (and hear!) Helen Lehndorf and fellow Palmerston Northian Poet Tim Upperton read their poetry. There'll be an open mic before the guest poets wow us.
 Maria McMillan has written on her blog about her 'next big thing', which is The Rope Walk, the poetry collection we're publishing in July. She explains the project's genesis, swhat she's exploring in the poems, and that Jennifer Lawrence could play all the characters, should it ever be made into a movie. Here's a taster: I became fascinated with the idea of waves of people from Scotland and England, leaving their countries, their parents, their siblings, the graves of their ancestors and coming somewhere new. And then sometimes awful ship journeys where babies died, and adults too. And then arriving somewhere so utterly different. There must have been so much grief with that. And then I started thinking about how every generation seems to go through some major losses, men being lost in wars, the soul destroying recession of the 1980s, the suicides, the bitter thread through all those years of violence against women. I think grief often isn't dealt with well, and what does that mean, and how does that get passed on down the generations. All that feeds into the book, You might not realise it reading the poems, some of which I hasten to add, are more joyful than sad, but all that stuff is going on there in the background. Read the whole thing on her blog here: http://mariamcmillan.weebly.com/3/post/2013/03/the-next-big-thing.html
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