Of Soup and Winter and Literary Prizes
Of Soup and Winter and Literary Prizes
Blog Number 14: 20 April 2009
Just as I got started on my long suffering (i.e. neglected) novella by way of a careful editing of the first section, and a tentative outline of the plot of the next section, a bombshell blew me away. (Sorry about the cliché but that’s what it feels like).
I received an email from one Jennifer Sobol in London. She is the Programme Officer (Culture) of the Commonwealth Foundation. The upshot of her email is that I have been asked to serve as one of six judges in the forthcoming Commonwealth Writers Prize celebrations next month. The readings and activities are part of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival.
To say that I’m stunned and excited is an understatement.
I enjoy living in Aotearoa. But there are drawbacks. One of the problems of living and writing in New Zealand is that the literary community (if there is such a beast) can sometimes feel claustrophobic or worse, completely invisible.
So to get this chance of meeting eight exciting writers selected from over fifty countries to receive a Commonwealth Writers Prize while in New Zealand is a wonderful gift. So too is the intense interaction that I will be privileged to share with the other five judges.
The weather has turned. Thunderous rain is playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony against the window of my writing room. My thoughts turn to the comfort of home made soup and the coming winter. And to a wonderful book that I have just finished reading, The Kindness of Strangers, (Kitchen Memoirs) by Shonagh Koea, illustrated by Peter Wells.
This book provided me with a powerful reminder that any human life no matter how exotic or daring is defined and shaped by the ‘mundane’ aspects of existence. Shonagh’s difficult life as a child and her triumph of overcoming it through her writing has been shaped by her gift of being able to imbue a sense of style and beauty into something as ordinary as a cake of pears soap or slices of home made shortbread arranged artistically on an antique plate.
I am envious of her talent to make the necessities of everyday life into works of art. I have a purely functional stance, a horrible practicality that could lead me to living in a bare shipping container without blinking an eyelid if the need arose.
This explains to some extent my obsession with knitting an Aran jumper. I’m trying to make something beautiful, stitch by stitch, something with my own hands. And it’s working I think. I have already used a whole ball of wool. Only 19 to go!
Thanks to the readers who sent me emails with helpful hints on how to knit the instructions Tw2R and Cr2L. Trouble is, each knitter gave me a different answer!
I have finally solved the mysteries of most of the stitches. And hey, too bad if there is a dropped stitch or two or if a cable panel wanders off course a little. Proves that it’s home made and not mass produced by a machine.
And that’s what I want.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:45 am
I recall the photo of you in The House at Karamu in which you are wearing a beautifully handknitted pullover with a very complicated pattern near the neck.
My ancient mother sits knitting every night while she watches television. As a 93 year old she tells me she doesn’t like ‘wasting time’. Every so often I stitch together an embroidery I find in a junk shop, turning it into a cushion. I find the rhythmical (sp?) trance very calming and inward. I don’t really think of anything but the mind, left free to wander, meanders off. And the mechanical repetition calms me down better than any pill. Sometimes I think writing, or rather typing at a computer is like this: it actually calms me down. Perhaps this is why people no longer run out onto the streets to demonstrate. We are all, as humans, calming ourselves down by repetitive tasks like typing on computers….