A media launch for NZ at Frankfurt took place on the 13th October 2011. On this page we feature a report from Sarah Ropata from PANZ and opening comments made by one of the guest speakers, Witi Ihimaera along with an audio interview with Kevin Chapman.
Frankfurt video report
Andrew Wilkins reports from the Frankfurt Book Fair and speaks to Kevin Chapman, president of the New Zealand Publishers Association about the country’s appearance as the 2012 Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. View the audio clip on the Publishing Perspectives website.
Sarah Ropata from PANZ reports
The first two days at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2011 were devoted to setting up the New Zealand stand, and Kiwi publishers arrived any time from Sunday night to the Wednesday morning opening!
Image of PANZ stand at Frankfurt.
Our stand was full-blast on the first day of meetings and our Education Rights Catalogue, both German and English versions, were delivered and available for visitors.
New Zealand’s Ambassador to Germany, Peter Rider and Deputy Head of Mission, Lisa Futschek visited the stand on Frankfurt Book Fair opening day. They were accompanied by Lewis Holden, CEO of Ministry for Culture and Heritage and Theresa Gattung, Chair of Advisory Group for Frankfurt Book Fair 2012.
A number of Kiwi publishers attended the official opening and also the unveiling of the Iceland Pavilion. This year’s Country of Honour’s pavilion took visitors into the living rooms of Icelandic readers through giant projections in an intimate, dark and homely atmosphere. It was a very creative presentation - reflective of Icelandic culture.
Island cultures were the subject of a Weltempfang discussion: The world as seen from the shores of an island. Kate Camp represented New Zealand, sharing the platform with Icelandic novelist Sjon and German cultural scientist Volkmar Billig.
While you were sleeping ... — is the motto of the Guest of Honour New Zealand
“He moemoeā he ohorere / While you were sleeping / Bevor es bei Euch hell wird” – This is the slogan under which New Zealand will present itself as 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair’s Guest of Honour. The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, which is dedicated to preserving the national heritage of Aotearoa, views the country’s selection as the Guest of Honour for the Frankfurt Book Fair as a unique opportunity to present the cultural diversity of New Zealand.
Image of Witi Ihimaera, Juergen Boos and Tanea Heke.
Today’s press conference, which got off to a spectacular start with a performance of the New Zealand haka Ka Mate ritual dance, included speeches by project leader, Tanea Heke; the Director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Juergen Boos; and New Zealand’s Chief Executive of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Lewis Holden, on the opportunities involved for New Zealand as the Guest of Honour. Also present were a number of other famous New Zealanders, including world famous Māori author Witi Ihimaera (The Whale Rider) and the President of the Publishers Association of New Zealand, Kevin Chapman. Hollywood director Sir Peter Jackson and the Chief Science Advisor to the New Zealand Prime Minister, Sir Peter Gluckman, sent their greetings to Frankfurt via video link.
“New Zealand’s role as Guest of Honour in 2012 is an unprecedented high point for our writers, publishers and artists. The opportunity to share our creativity and unique perspective with Germany and Europe at the Frankfurt Book Fair is a once in a life-time opportunity and we are excited to bring our voice to you next year,” says Tanea Heke.
The diverse programme of the 2012 Guest of Honour is being eagerly anticipated. The Director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Juergen Boos, said: “For us as readers New Zealand is a terra incognita – and what could be better than the prospect of a journey into the unknown? New Zealand’s literature has been heavily influenced by a variety of cultures and media formats, so its presence at the book fair promises to be an exciting and intense cultural experience.”
The New Zealand literary scene is enjoying growing popularity. The press conference speakers also emphasised some of their home country’s other extraordinary qualities. Aside from its world-famous spectacular natural scenery, New Zealand has made a name for itself with its technological and scientific expertise in highly developed economic sectors, such as ultra-modern post production and the design of 3D feature films. Chief Executive Lewis Holden drew the audience’s attention to the wide range of presentation options available to New Zealand: “The Frankfurt Book Fair is a hub of energy that creates and shares new ideas that become part of our lives through books, e-books, and films – all the things that give us pleasure in life and inspire us an intellectual way. New Zealand is delighted to be the Guest of Honour for 2012 and to share our stories with the world.”
With New Zealand as Guest of Honour, visitors can look forward to a compelling mix of modern and traditional influences, as well as an outstanding programme of art and culture.
We come chanting, we come singing
Opening comments made by author Witi Ihimaera at the 13 October 2011 media launch.
Many years ago, New Zealand's first great writer Katherine Mansfield penned these words:
I want to write about my own country until I simply exhaust my store -...Oh I want for one moment to make our undiscovered country leap into the eyes of the old world. It must be mysterious, as though floating - it must take the breath."
Ladies and gentlemen, this year was Iceland's moment. Next year it is New Zealand's, and on behalf of all New Zealand writers I have come to tell you how proud we are that it is our time now.
Whakarongo ake au ki te tangi a te manu nei a te ma tui, tui, tuituia! Tuia i runga, tuia i raro, tuia i roto, tuia i waho, tuia i te here tangata ka rongo te Ao, ka rongo te Po!
Katherine Mansfield was referring to the conviction that from New Zealand could come something extraordinary. Although British explorer Captain Cook in 1769 did not find the Great Southern Continent which 18th century scientists thought necessary to balance the Northern Hemisphere - he did find us, a group of islands already inhabited by proud Maori tribes which also soon became the home during the 19th and 20th centuries for settlers mainly from the UK but latterly other parts of the world. And I think we have done a pretty good job anchoring the continents above us.
We therefore have a long line of ancestors, Māori and Pakeha (settler) to whom we are accountable and with whom we have an implicit contract. As Booker-prize winning author Keri Hulme asks in one of her poems:
Where are your bones?
My bones lie in the sea
Where are your bones?
They lie in forgotten lands
Stolen, ploughed and sealed
Where are your bones?
On southern islands
Sawed by discovering winds
Next year come those discovering winds to saw our bones and enable them to sing. From the top of the world we are going to take you to the bottom of the world where, after a long period of blending, our literature has reached what Māori call Te Puawaitanga - The Flowering.
From three extraordinary inventories: 1) our archives of excellence that know no location, race or gender, 2) the oral traditions of the Māori and the Pacific and 3) the European-derived literatures of all our settlers, have come stories, plays, films and music shaped by our strong, creative, vigorous questing spirit; we are indeed Vikings of the Sunrise. Subsequently have arisen books like The Adventures of Vela by Albert Wendt, Aphrodite's Island and The Trial of the Cannibal Dog by Anne Salmond, Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff, and Settler's Creek by Carl Nixon, that could only derive from our part of the world.
This is New Zealand, while you were sleeping.
Ka pine a koe e au ki te pine o te aroha! Ki te pine e kore nei e waikura e!
Yes, we come chanting, we come singing. We are reversing the polarities.
We are writers, filmmakers and artists with a questing DNA, who not only live and practice in New Zealand but all over the world: like Sarah Quigley, author of The Conductor, living in Berlin; or Paula Morris, author of Rangatira, living in Scotland; or Nalini Singh, writing her successful fantasy novels from New York.
We are writers, too, of an older international generation like C.K. Stead, author of My Name was Judas, and a younger generation like the brilliant Eleanor Catton, author of The Rehearsal. We are proud of our filmmakers: multiple Academy Award winning Sir Peter Jackson, filmed a Northern Hemisphere fantasy, Lord of the Rings, entirely in New Zealand; new director, Tusi Tamasese recently premiered The Orator, the first film ever entirely in the Samoan language, at the Venice Film Festival.
Thus our range, styles, techniques and daring are adventurous and entrepreneurial: we are not afraid to tie a bungy around our ankles and jump. They encompass the international styles and clever wordplay of poet Kate Camp, of young writer Hamish Clayton joining the hemispheres in his astounding novel, Wulf, and Alison Wong reminding us in As The Earth Turns Silver that Asian identity is also New Zealand identity.
Our literature is inclusive not exclusive: work for children affirms that the new generation is our greatest treasure; and in our expansive range of non-fiction books - on food, wine and art, for instance - we show that we live in the world's good lung. Nor are we afraid of self critique, satire and humor.
We come chanting, we come singing.
While you are sleeping in the northern hemisphere we are awake, spinning our tales to the rising sun. And so to end this address, let me read from one of those tales, James George's short story, Walking to Laetoli.
New Zealand is always surprising and one of those surprises alluded to by James George is that our bones, sawed by the wind, lie even deeper in the earth than can be imagined. Back in fact to a single shared mitochondrial mother in Laetoli, Africa, 2 million years ago. From her bones, 65,000 years ago, human migrations began out of Africa into Europe, Asia and the Americas which only ended in Polynesia with the settlement of New Zealand 1000 years ago. From Africa to Aotearoa was the furthest distance, New Zealand the furthest country and last sizeable settlement, the last stop of human beings spreading around the world. We were the end of the frontier.
A few million years ago in Africa two figures walked a path among the ashes, walked into our history. Our story, Australopithecus afarensis: that's the name their bones have been given. I guess even bones need names. I reckon they were a father and a son. That's my take on it, anyway...
"A few million years ago in a place now called Laetoli, in Tanzania, a father and son stopped, perhaps looked back at their footprints. I wonder what they thought - maybe that their prints would wash away in the next rain. A few lifetimes ago at Piha a kid and his Dad went walking, towards an old rock that was always just too far to reach...
"A few years ago a father and son took a walk across some cooling ash. Knowing yesterday there had been grass there, soil and roots. Flowers even. Before that, other grass, perhaps trees. Today it was just ash. But tomorrow maybe the wind would clear some of the loose ash, maybe by next year new grass would grow up through it. Sometimes stuff can begin again, if it tries. Even when you think maybe it can't. It can."
You would expect such extraordinary literatures to come from the end of the frontier, which is also the beginning of a new frontier, wouldn't you! From footprints that go all the way back and are not faced to go all the way forward. Sometimes stuff can begin again, if it tries. Even when you think maybe it can't. It can.
Shortlisted Booker Prize author Lloyd Jones pinpointed New Zealand in his novel as Here at the End of the World We Learn To Dance. Well, interesting things happen when you reverse polarities and the current flows the other way. There, at the end of the world, in our flowering, we have also learnt how to become transcendent and indeed, leap into the eyes of the old world.
Do join us in discovering a country of literature, books, films, theatre and music, mysterious as though floating. We hope that it will, indeed, take your breath.
