Category Archives: Wellington

Expressive Arts at Massey Wellington campus

The Future of the Humanities in the Corporate University

graeme turner photo 2013

Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner

Recently the School of English & Media Studies was lucky enough to host the inspirational scholar who brought cultural studies to the Southern Hemisphere and has shaped its evolution on a global scale ever since, Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner.  During his visit Graeme provided staff with advice and mentoring, as well as delivering a series of talks on the future of the humanities and the future of the media.  Read Bachelor of Communication student Rhiannon Davies’ blog post about his Future of the Humanities talk here: http://www.esocsci.org.nz/emeritus-professor-graeme-turner-humanities-arts-and-social-sciences-and-their-place-in-the-corporatisation-of-universities/

Thank you to the WH Oliver Humanities Research Academy for supporting Prof. Turner’s visit.

Creativity in the Community Returns in 2016

recycling zines

Students produced a zine about recycling (on sustainable paper) with an eye-catching cover.

Expressive Arts staff are delighted with the success of the new and innovative creative activism paper, 139.333 Creativity in the Community, and proud to announce that it will be offered again at both Wellington and Auckland campuses in 2016.

Launched in 2015, the paper generated three groundbreaking and diverse student projects in its first year.  Staff are looking forward to building upon its success and taking it to new heights of innovative creative activism and creativity for social justice next year.

In 2015, one group of students at Wellington who worked in a student-centred pedagogical mode voted to use their project to confront rape culture. They delivered a thought-provoking yet also sensitive multimedia/theatre production and achieved a full house in the theatre lab venue (and we even had to turn people away – an incredible achievement for such a difficult topic). See more about their event at http://www.massey.ac.nz/news/?id=6662  Some of those students’ creative writing work that evolved out of the workshopping process has subsequently been published in Massive Magazine – see for example Lena Fransham’s ‘Blurred Words’ at http://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/blog/16926/blurred-words/, Tessa Calogaras’ ‘Ground Meat’ at http://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/blog/17193/ground-meat/ and Hannah Bridges’ two works – ‘Glitter’ at http://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/blog/17201/glitter/ and ‘For Libby’ at http://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/blog/17184/for-libby/

At Albany, students developed short films, music videos and a theatre performance in partnership with a nearby residential care facility, Aria Gardens, looking at issues associated with living with dementia.  See more at http://www.massey.ac.nz/news/?id=6652

Back in Wellington, a second student group was deeply concerned about environmental issues, and created awareness through a ‘Rubbish Monster’ art installation along with a zine offering practical solutions, which they planned, wrote, designed, produced and negotiated a deal to have delivered for free throughout Wellington city. The zine used slang to grab attention then offered tips that students could easily apply when flatting.  You can read their story at: http://www.massey.ac.nz/news/?id=6764 

“All in all we are delighted with the way that the paper has enabled a range of students to showcase the issues they care about through the channels that matter to them,” paper curriculum designer Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley said. “None of the students found the paper easy – dealing with the messy realities of actual issues, community partners, deadlines, real audiences, ethics and budgets, never is. But they also loved having the opportunity to put into practice the skills learned throughout their degree, and gain experience for their CVs.  They learned heaps – one student even said ‘I could write a dissertation on what I learned in this paper’ and many of them have been coming back for more, signing up to participate in extracurricular creative activism projects such as our forthcoming Climate Change Theatre Action event.”

Creativity in the Community (139.333) will be offered in first semester 2016 at both Albany and Wellington – see http://www.massey.ac.nz/paper/?p=139333 for more information.

 

Waves: Climate Change Theatre Action

Join us for Waves, a provocative afternoon of short plays by international and local playwrights, spoken word poetry, and readings from the finalists in our Expressive Arts Club Climate Change Creative Writing Awards.


imageclimatechangetheatreactionArtCop21-logo

 

 

 

 

 

Waves is our contribution to Climate Change Theatre Action (#‎ClimateChangeTheatreAction‬), a series of worldwide readings and performances led from New York by Theatre Without Borders, The Arctic Cycle, and No Passport as part of Artcop21 – the global cultural programme of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change.

We are the only Climate Change Theatre Action event for Aotearoa – so register now to be part of the audience at 1pm on Sunday November 1st in the Theatre Laboratory (5D14) at Massey University Wellington Campus.

Students and staff from Massey’s theatre studies and expressive arts programmes will entertain, console and confront you with works humorous and intense, problem-illuminating and solution-focussed, powerful, sometimes funny, sometimes catastrophic, often moving and inspirational. The works include exciting new world premiere short plays from David Geary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Geary), Jacqueline Lawton (http://www.jacquelinelawton.com/bio.html) and E.M. Lewis (http://emlewisplaywright.com/). Our own English & Media Studies creative communication tutor and NZ playwriting star Phil Braithwaite (http://www.playmarket.org.nz/playwrights/philip-braithwaite) will give us a reading from his new work, The Atom Room, plus we launch some brand new talents.

Links:
Make sure there’s a seat for you and your party: register now to reserve seats at https://masseyuni.wufoo.eu/forms/waves-climate-change-theatre-action-aotearoa/

See more info and follow for updates at our FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1486295995032736/

Pukeahu: An Exploratory Anthology Launch

Join us in Wellington on Wednesday 12 August for the launch of an exiting new online anthology.

A  collaboration between staff and students in Massey University’s School of English and Media Studies and the School of Design, produced in partnership with the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.

PUKEAHU: AN EXPLORATORY ANTHOLOGY

Edited by Ingrid Horrocks, Lynn Davidson, Lena Fransham, and Thomas Aitken. Designed by Rosie Percival.
http://pukeahuanthology.org/

The launch will include short readings from 6:30pm by:

Angela Kilford
Lena Fransham
Bill Manhire
Vivienne Plumb
Thomas Aitken
Chris Tse
Lynn Davidson

Date: Wednesday 12 August
Time: Wine and refreshments from 6 pm
Location: Te Ara Hihiko/Block 12, Level C.  Massey University, Entrance E off Tasman Street, Pukeahu/Mt Cook, Wellington

https://www.facebook.com/events/1472480426401008/PukeahuAnthology-electronic-invite-final

Massey 3MT Competition

School of English and Media Studies PhD student Sara McBride has won the Wellington leg of the 3 minute thesis competition.  Sara is co-supervised by English & Media Studies with the Joint Centre for Disaster Research and her research is on cracking the puzzle of how we can better prepare people for disaster, particularly earthquakes.  She’ll be off to the finals in August. Congratulations Sara!

Sara McBrideMore information on the 3MT competition can be found on the Massey University website.

Massey Graduate’s First Poetry Collection Reviewed

A great review of Wellington Massey Expressive Arts graduate, Annabel Hawkins’ first collection of poetry, This Must be the Place:

‘The move from a blog, where the posts were an amalgam of structured poems, as well as open-form entries with no real structure, was a challenge. Here, in This Must be the Place, these have been collected, worked on, revised, and her words are bound together with feelings and memories. The form is stricter, but the intentions and honesty remain in the collection. Hawkins avoids high-brow language and form, aiming instead for accessibility. Her language oscillates, as if working to a pattern, between poeticism surrounding time and abstract emotions, and specific language of both time and place—with references to polar fleeces, durries, skateboards, ripped jeans, Briscoes, all carving out an eternal moment in time.’

If you’d like to read more, click http://bit.ly/1Lm1nCx.

clifford-alice-hawkins-annabel-book

 

Holidays, what holidays?

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FreeNZPhotos.com

Didn’t spot your lecturers on the beach this Summer?  Yes some of us were there hiding under our floppy hats and reading novel after novel … but others were still keeping the EMS ship afloat!  As well as teaching Summer School, many EMS staff have been busy on the research front over the break. Here’s a few examples of what we’ve been up to!

• Dr Jenny Lawn presented a conference paper at the Space, Race, Bodies: Geocorpographies of the City, Nation and Empire conference held at the University of Otago between the 8 and 10 December. Titled “Antigone as Male Hysteria: Pakeha Settler Masculinity and the Spectacular Corpse in Carl Nixon’s Settler’s Creek,” her paper explored Settler’s Creek alongside Sophocles’ Antigone as the springboard for an inquiry into the politics of Pakeha cultural nationalism and, speculatively, a consideration of the relationship between kinship bonds and state legitimacy.
• Also at the Space, Race and Bodies conference, Dr Kevin Glynn co-presented with Dr Julie Cupples of University of Edinburgh a conference paper on Postcolonial Spaces of Discursive Struggle in the Convergent Media Environment, focusing on case studies about Maori Television and Air New Zealand.
• Dr Sy Taffel presented a sole authored paper entitled Invisible Bodies and Forgotten Spaces: Materiality, Toxicity and Labour in Digital Ecologies to the Space, Race, Bodies conference. His paper explored social and ecological costs attributable to digital technologies which are borne by bodies and occur in spaces largely excluded from public discussions, from the Congolese children responsible for mining coltan, to the Chinese migrant workers who assemble brand-name products in informational sweatshops, and Ghanaian electronics waste workers who earn US$1 a day treating highly toxic e-waste.
• Dr Simon Sigley gave a conference presentation at Visible Evidence 21, the annual scholarly conference on documentary film, media, culture and politics, held in New Delhi, India from December 11 to 14 2014, and co-hosted by Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia. Titled Adaptations and Relocations, his paper discussed the National Film Unit, Mythic Visions and Historical Conditions in New Zealand.
• A/Pro Angie Farrow launched her book ‘Together All Alone’: 6 shorts plays – at the PNCC Library on 8 December followed by production of plays at the Globe Theatre PN on 10, 11 and 12 December.
• A/Pro Elspeth Tilley co-published with Adult Literacy and Communication research team members Frank Sligo (first author), Margie Comrie and Niki Murray a journal article on young adult literacy learners and their experiences of the text–orality nexus in Text&Talk 2015; 35(1): 101–121.  Based on interviews with young adults in literacy training, the article argues that print literacy training cannot and does not happen in a vacuum from young people’s deeply oral world, and that an understanding of literacy, whether for teaching or research, necessarily must encompass an understanding of the oral-experiential context in which it occurs.
• Dr Kevin Glynn travelled to the USA, Costa Rica and Nicaragua to carry out field work associated with his Marsden-funded project between 13 December 2014 and 30 January 2015.
• Dr Rand Hazou travelled to Sydney to participate in ‘Connecting from a Distance’ which is a theatrical collaboration between Australia and Palestine to facilitate the transfer of skills and knowledge between theatre-makers and performers from both countries.
• Dr Ian Goodwin attended the Dangerous Consumptions Colloquium in Brisbane 11 and 12 December where he presented a work-in-progress piece derived from Marsden research project entitled ‘Precarious Popularity: Exploring Young people’s accounts of Facebook drinking photos’.
• Dr Erin Mercer presented a paper on R H Morriesons’s novel The Scarecrow at the 2015 Gothic Association of NZ and Australia (GANZA) conference in Sydney 21-22 January 2015
• Dr Sy Taffel had a sole-authored journal article entitled Perspectives on the Postdigital: Beyond Rhetorics of Progress and Novelty published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into new Media Technologies, a peer-reviewed journal published by Sage.
• The Nielsen Bookscan 2014 Overall Bestseller’s Chart ranked Dr Thom Conroy’s novel The Naturalist as number six for the 2014 year.
• Tutor Dr Rhana Carusi was invited to speak on TV3 and write a follow-up op-ed piece as an expert on gender in regards to the effects of gendered and non-gendered toys on children, in response to the AU & NZ Green Party’s No Gender December campaign.
• The Aotearoa Creative Writing Research Network (ACWRN), directed by Thom Conroy, launched its website, featuring an introductory video, a Twitter feed on national Creative Writing news and events, a member’s directory, and online resources. Check it out at http://acwrn.ac.nz/
• A/Pro Lisa Emerson was invited to give a keynote address and workshop at the 7th Conference for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.sg/tlhe/
• A/Pro Angie Farrow was invited by the organisers of the Short and Sweet Festival in Sydney to contribute to a workshop on ‘Writing the Short Play’ as well as to attend a production of her play between 26 – 31 January.

 

Research Galore!

Happy New YearNga mihi nui o te tau hou! Best wishes for the New Year!

Whew! We got so busy at the end of 2014 we neglected to post our last quarter English & Media Studies research roundup! We had lots of activity going on, with successes among both staff and postgraduate student researchers, so here are some of the end-of-year research highlights to celebrate our farewell to 2014. We are looking forward to a massive year of more vibrant and diverse research in 2015.

Our interests span the gamut of fiction, nonfiction, media studies, creativity, theatre, poetry, communication and cultural studies (such as work on race, gender, and power). If you are interested in joining us for postgraduate studies, please do make contact – either chat to a staff member whose area of research intrigues you, or get in touch with the postgraduate coordinator Dr Jenny Lawn.

Did you know that in 1991 our own Dr Brian McDonnell came second in New Zealand Mastermind on TV with the specialist subject of ‘The Major Novels of Graham Greene’? Greene was however not only a major novelist, but also a crime-fiction writer, film critic and scriptwriter. For his scriptwriting on the 1949 Carol Reed-directed cinema classic ‘The Third Man’ Greene has been termed one of the founders of European film noir. Brian is currently researching a book on Greene’s relationship with film noir, and in September he presented some early findings in a conference paper titled “Graham Greene and Film Noir” at the international Graham Greene Festival in London, as part of an overseas research trip. Brian is gathering data about Greene at archives in the University of Texas Austin, Boston College, Georgetown University and the British Film Institute.

Associate Professor Angie Farrow won ‘Best Drama Script’ for her new play ‘Leo Rising’ at the Auckland Short and Sweet Festival in September 2014. Directed by James Bell and starring Pippiajna Tui Jane as a grieving jilted bride, Sharleen, the 10-minute monologue follows Sharleen through city streets searching for her AWOL groom and ultimately discovering an unexpected route to revenge. Then in December, Angie launched her book ‘Falling, and other short plays’ at Palmerston North City Library, followed by the launch of a taster season of the plays at the Globe Theatre, Studio 2, Palmerston North. Titled ‘Together All Alone’ and directed by Rachel Lenart and Jaime Dorner, the ‘taster’ showcased the plays: “Goodbye April”, “Leo Rising”, “Happiness”, “The Perfect Life”, “The Real Thing” and “The Body”, works which take a fresh and innovative look at some of life’s quintessential questions and experiences.

Dr Philip Steer won the Massey University emerging researcher medal in December 2014! In November he published an article that broadens our understanding of the conditions that shaped nineteenth-century New Zealand literature. Titled “Antipodal Home Economics: International Debt and Settler Domesticity in Clara Cheeseman’s A Rolling Stone (1886)” Philip’s article appeared in the edited collection Imagining Victorian Settler Homes: Antipodal Domestic Fiction (edited by T. S. Wagner. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014. 145-160). Philip argued that New Zealand’s credit crisis of the late 1870s and the subsequent severe recession had a profound effect on the stories that colonial writers told. He made the case that Cheeseman’s A Rolling Stone—previously dismissed as a typical (and worthless) example of melodramatic domestic fiction—is actually a very good example of the hidden depths in our colonial literature: it explores ideas of debt and reputation in a range of ways that illuminate the dependence of colonial domestic life on international credit flows. Also in November, Philip gave a presentation titled “A Provisional Survival Guide for the Early Career Researcher,” at the Ka Awatea conference in Palmerston North. Philip shared his experiences successfully navigating the early career labyrinth of publishing, funding, writing and juggling research and teaching, by way of a contribution to building Early Career Researcher capacity in College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Congratulations to Dr Robert Redmond on his PhD completion. His thesis, “The Femme Fatales in Postfeminist Hard-Boiled Fiction: Redundant or Reinventing Herself?” was supervised by Dr Doreen D’Cruz and Dr Jenny Lawn. Robert’s research explored the evolution of the ‘femme fatale’ from the ‘hard-boiled’ version of the late 1920s, who “seduced, shot and poisoned her way through pulp magazines, hard- and paper-backed novels, and films for almost fifty years” to new representations of the dangerous woman in the 1980s, in the form of the tough female detective. To what extent, Robert asked, do the changes subvert masculine hegemony and allow for a new female imaginary, and to what degree are new forms still coloured by the old? If you are interested in reading more, you can download Robert’s full thesis at the Massey online research repository: http://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/5645

Well done to Associate Professor Lisa Emerson on signing a book contract with Parlor Press for a book on scientists as writers which is due out in 2015. Lisa notes that scientists are, to a large extent, a lost or forgotten tribe of academic writers. Researchers may examine scientific writing or observe and document how scientists write in the lab, but we still know little of how scientists think as writers – about their beliefs, attitudes and experiences of writing. Conventional wisdom suggests that scientists are poor writers, with little interest in, or enjoyment from, writing well. Lisa’s book will tell a different story. She has collected a series of stories, or literacy narratives, from scientists around the globe. These include stories of scientists reaching out to engage the public with science, scientists who moonlight as poets or playwrights, young scientists who are writing in a vast, supportive community of people who share a common passion, lonely scientists who struggle to write unsupported, reluctant writers who argue that words don’t matter, and passionate writers who would choose to write all day. “My aim in collecting these personal stories of scientists as writers is to help us to see scientists in new ways: as wordsmiths who, mostly, love to write, and who, above all, want to discover and communicate something new and exciting,” she said.

Lisa along with co-authors Ken Kilpin and Angela Feekery also had an article published in the journal English in Aotearoa (issue 83, pages 13-19) in November 2014. The article, titled “Information literacy and the transition to tertiary,” is part of a much bigger project about how students transition from Year 13 to tertiary study, and in particular, how they learn to write across this transition. Lisa and her team have been working with teachers from low-decile schools to teach students how to write and learn in ways that will prepare them for study at university or polytechnics. In the paper, Ken, Lisa and Angela suggest ways in which English teachers can teach literature while supporting students’ writing, information literacy, and development as independent learners.

Dr Ian Goodwin co-published multiple items during 2014 from a large multidisciplinary Marsden-funded research project looking at young people’s attitudes towards alcohol consumption, and their self-representations of drinking culture on social media. Some highlights of Ian’s peer-reviewed outputs from throughout 2014 included:
• Niland, P., Lyons, A. C., Goodwin, I. & Hutton, F. (2014/online May). Friendship Work on Facebook: Young Adults’ Understandings and Practices of Friendship. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology.
• Niland, P., Lyons, A. C., Goodwin, I. & Hutton, F. (2014). “See it doesn’t look pretty does it?”: Young Adults’ Airbrushed Drinking Practices on Facebook. Psychology and Health 29(8), 877-895.
• Goodwin, I., Lyons, A.C., Griffin, C., & McCreanor, T. (2014). Ending Up Online: Interrogating Mediated Youth Drinking Cultures. In A. Bennnet and B. Robards (Eds.) Mediated Youth Cultures: The Internet, Belonging, and New Cultural Configurations, pp. 59-74. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Griffin, C., Lyons, A.C., Goodwin, I. McCreanor, T., & Niland, P. (2014). Young Adults, Social Media Alcohol Marketing and the Culture of Intoxication in Aotearoa New Zealand, paper presented to Kettil Bruun Society 40th Annual Alcohol Epidemiology Symposium, Torino, Italy, 9-13 June 2014.
• Moewaka Barnes, H., McCreanor, T., Goodwin, I., Lyons, A.C., Griffin, C., Hutton, F., Niland, P., O’Carroll, A., & Samu, L. (2014). “So Drunk Right Now! Anybody Wanna Join?”: Young People, Alcohol and Social Networking Systems, paper presented to Kettil Bruun Society 40th Annual Alcohol Epidemiology Symposium, Torino, Italy, 9-13 June 2014.
• Goodwin, I., Lyons, A.C., Griffin, C., and McCreanor, T. (2014). Beyond ‘The Profile’: Multiple Methods in Facebook Research, invited presentation to the Australasian Audience Research Symposium (University of New South Wales), Sydney, Australia, 22 April 2014.

Ian also co-published a refereed article on ways in which heterosexual biases and assumptions marked the media coverage of the marriage equality debate in New Zealand: Goodwin, I., Lyons, A. C., & Stephens, C. (2014). Critiquing the Heteronormativity of the Banal Citizen in New Zealand’s Mediated Civil Union Debate. Gender, Place and Culture 21(7), 813-833.

Associate Professor Bryan Walpert had a creative non-fiction essay, “The Lazy Gardener,” published in the U.S. literary journal Rock & Sling in November. That is also, incidentally, the title of Bryan’s blog about life in New Zealand, which you can read at http://nzlazygardener.wordpress.com/

Dr Erin Mercer gave a fascinating seminar in the WH Oliver Humanities Academy series, recuperating the work of mid-20th-Century New Zealand writer Sylvia Ashton-Warner. While Ashton-Warner’s work sold extremely well overseas and received good reviews internationally, it was slated at home – Erin argues because of a lack of fit with a dominant tradition of masculinist nationalism in New Zealand literature. Here’s a link to Erin’s talk, titled “The Strange Cadences of Sylvia Ashton-Warner”: http://webcast.massey.ac.nz/Mediasite/Play/89300489315e4c8f9f4420bc12af384c1d

Also in the WH Oliver Humanities Academy series, Dr Ian Huffer gave an absorbing talk on ‘Film Consumption and New Zealand Society’. Drawing on data from the New Zealand Film Commission and NZ On Air, Ian mapped changes in consumption due to online access to movies, critically examining popular claims that open access ‘democratises’ the circulation and consumption of film. Online access differed by gender, income, age and other factors, Ian found, meaning consumption was not necessarily more democratic – watch his full talk at http://webcast.massey.ac.nz/Mediasite/Play/9bf1d98de33c41cabb7dc1b7c636d5f01d

Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley presented at the Ka Awatea conference at Palmerston North in November, discussing the participatory ‘citizen science’ project, ‘It’s My Life’. Entitled “It’s My Life Youth Smokefree Research Project: A tale of four colleges, 15 academics and 269 Massey students (plus some lives saved and a lot of lessons learned),” her talk covered both the processes of large team research and the outcomes of the 15-month by-youth, for-youth campaign.  Survey research showed that the lifespan of the campaign coincided with changes in young people’s attitudes including increases in both their desire to quit and their anger at the tobacco industry. The Smokefree It’s My Life project also launched its world-first by-youth for-youth DVD documentary in November. The DVD was created by Bachelor of Communication Honours Summer Scholarship students Janaya Soma and Catherine Moreau-Hammond with technical support from Mark Steelsmith under the supervision of Dr Radha O’Meara and A/P Elspeth Tilley. (Readers who work with young people are welcome to request a free copy of the DVD by emailing teamsmokefree@gmail.com and one will be posted out to you. You can also download individual chapters from the It’s My Life website at www.smokefree-itsmylife.org.nz ).

In November, Dr Tyron Love, Associate Dean Māori, Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, School of Business and Economics, Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury and Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, School of English & Media Studies, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa Massey University Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington co-presented on “Temporal discourse and the news media representation of Indigenous- non-Indigenous relations in Aotearoa” to the WH Oliver Humanities Research Series. Their talk analysed examples of media coverage of important Te Tiriti o Waitangi negotiations and showed how non-Indigenous cultural assumptions moulded the debate in particular ways. You can view the talk at: http://webcast.massey.ac.nz/Mediasite/Play/d7271aea37764aec851f6884602d9a5e1d

Massey Master of Creative Writing graduate Carol Markwell launched her latest play ‘Alice, what have you done!’, published by Steele Roberts, in December. A gripping local murder-mystery set in Napier in 1915, the play chronicles the trial of Alice May Parkinson, who fatally shot her lover. Her trial and its aftermath cause controversy throughout New Zealand. Is she a feminist heroine or a callous killer … or simply a desperate woman who ran out of choices? See more at http://steeleroberts.co.nz/books/isbn/978-1-927242-60-5

EMS Senior Tutors Tim Upperton and Joy Green, together with Spanish lecturer Leonel Alvarado, read from their “Kete Series” poetry collections at public readings throughout November. The Kete Series is the brainchild of Palmerston North-based boutique publishers HauNui Press, which specialises in alternative, ingenious ways to produce and market local books. The three poets’ books were bundled together in a traditional woven harakeke bag or ‘kete’. Tim’s collection, titled ‘The Night We Ate the Baby’, was his second book of poetry. His first, titled ‘A House on Fire’, was published in 2009, and his poems have been published widely in New Zealand and international magazines and anthologies. He won the Bronwyn Tate Memorial International Poetry Competition in 2011, and the Caselburg Trust International Poetry Competition in 2012 and 2013. Joy’s collection was her first published book of poems. Titled ‘Surface Tension’, she has performed many of the poems in festivals and literary events, and has published her work in a number of anthologies in New Zealand, Australia, the United States and Europe. See more about the three poets and their work at http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=cd91f2ec-9d4e-c4a4-2584-6a4840966c7b

Congratulations to Master of Creative Writing graduate Janet Newman, whose poetry collection beach.river.always–written during her MCW–was runner up for the 2014 Kathleen Grattan Prize in December. Janet also won the Journal of New Zealand Literature Prize for NZ literary studies in October. Her winning essay, on the poetry of Michelle Leggot, was adapted from her Honours Research Report. Eight of nine judges placed Janet’s essay first (out of three short-listed entries).

Our Senior Tutor in Theatre, Rachel Lenart, was nominated for ‘Festival Director of the Year’ at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in December. Her production called ‘Constellations’ was also nominated for ‘Production of the Year’, best musical composition and two nominations for best acting. The Dorothy McKegg Actress of the Year award was taken out by Erin Banks for her work in Constellations.

EMS PhD student Angie Enoka presented her research on a media analysis of the Pacific Temporary Workers Scheme coverage to the Pasifika @Massey Annual Research Conference in November. Angie also participated as a ‘Volunteer Service Abroad’ contributor, providing pro bono media communication strategy, in Samoa at the United Nations Conference on Small Island Developing States, in September 2014, and was successfully confirmed in her PhD candidature in October.

EMS staff and students from the creative writing program worked very hard to successfully host ‘Minding the Gap: Writing Across Thresholds and Fault Lines’, the Australasian Association of Writing Programmes (AAWP) 19th Annual Conference 2014, 30 November- 2 December at Massey University in Wellington, with keynote speakers Hone Kouka, Emily Perkins, and Martin Edmond. Conference Organising Committee members from Massey were Dr Ingrid Horrocks and Dr Thom Conroy, with conference assistance from Nick Allen, Dr Hannah Gerrard, Shazrah Salam, Thomas Aitken and Lena Fransham (all Massey University). The AAWP was established in 1996, and is now the most important forum in Australia for discussing all aspects of teaching creative and professional writing as well as for debating current theories on creativity and writing. ‘Minding The Gap’ is only the second AAWP conference to be held in New Zealand. The new Poetry New Zealand journal (edited by Massey’s Dr Jack Ross) was also launched at the conference.

Following on from the conference, Dr Ingrid Horrocks co-convened, with Cherie Lacey, the ‘Placing the Personal Essay’ Colloquium. Supported by the W.H. Oliver Humanities Research Academy at Massey University, the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture at the University of Otago, and the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University, the colloquium brought together writers, historians, literary critics, cultural theorists and interested others for a discussion about new ways of writing about place in contemporary New Zealand. It featured Martin Edmond, Tina Makereti, Ian Wedde, Lydia Wevers, Alex Calder, Tony Ballantyne, Alice Te Punga Somerville and others. See more detail at: http://placingthepersonalessay.weebly.com/

In December the Visiting Artist scheme announced that Jaime Dorner has been appointed to direct the 2015 Summer Shakespeare offering of King Lear. We look forward to a fabulous season of this most powerful work!

Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley published a team-authored article about immunisation communication in November in the journal Media International Australia: Tilley, E., Murray, N., Watson, B., & Comrie, M. (2014) New views on a ‘stuck’ issue: Communicating about childhood immunisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. MIA Issue 152 (2014). The article explores the value of qualitative and participatory research methods in shedding new light on the issue of declining immunisation rates.

Research into the Bachelor of Communication graduate outcomes found that employment data from all graduates of the Bachelor of Communication since its inception as a degree, shows a 96% employment rate. The research was conducted by Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, Malcolm Rees, Judith Naylor, Professor Frank Sligo, and Dr Raquel Harper, as part of a SIF project led by Dr Jenny Lawn. Further analysis of the data is ongoing and more results will be released during 2015. In general they show very positive employment results for Bachelor of Communication graduates, and for many a fast track to more senior positions in the years after graduation.

Australasian Association of Writing Programmes (AAWP) Conference

From 30 November to 2 December 2014 Massey University hosted the 19th Annual Australasian Association of Writing Programmes (AAWP) Conference at the Massey Wellington campus (http://www.aawp.org.au/19th_annual_conference).  The conference featured three New Zealand keynote speakers: playwright and screen-writer Hone Kouka, novelist Emily Perkins, and creative non-fiction writer Martin Edmond.  Other major events at the conference included the Wellington launch of Poetry New Zealand, now edited by Jack Ross at Massey University, as well as the launch of the Aotearoa Creative Writing Research Network (ACWRN).  Martin Edmond’s keynote talk also dovetailed with the opening of the Placing the Personal Essay Colloquium (http://placingthepersonalessay.weebly.com), co-organised by Ingrid Horrocks of Massey University and Cherie Lacey of Victoria University.

This is only the second time that the Australasian Association of Writing Programmes conference has been hosted in New Zealand, and conference co-organiser Thom Conroy said, “This event marks an important development for collaborations and conversations between creative writers in New Zealand and Australia”.  Other conference organisers included Gail Pittiway from Wintec as well as Ingrid Horrocks and Hannah Gerard of Massey, Wellington.  Nick Allen, a Massey PhD student in literature at the Palmerston North campus, served as executive conference coordinator