Andrew Johnston
Listener - March 24, 2007
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At Sunset
Language and literature run in poet Andrew Johnston's family. His father was an English lecturer and his grandfather a newspaperman. After 10 years in France, Johnston has come home and published a new book, Sol, which includes "The Sunflower", a long, impressive elegy to his father.
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John Dolan
Listener - December 10, 2006
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The Man Who Loves to Hate
In the new Landfall, poet and critic John Dolan takes on New Zealand poetry. It's a bloodbath: "Poets like Mark Pirie have a huge 'kick me' sign on their backs … I just wonder why a good poet like Eggleton would waste time on a bad dead one like Fairburn … By far the worst is C K Stead's smirking gloss …" So who exactly is John Dolan?
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Riwia Brown
Listener - July 20, 2003
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Ten years after writing the screenplay for Once Were Warriors, Riwia Brown sticks close to Jesus.
A good 400 worshippers swarm to the altar of Paraparaumu church the Centre as American pastor Steve Gray chants, "Do you want it now?" What they want is to be anointed by God through the hands of the charismatic preacher. And in the midst of those being "slain in the spirit", a handsome Maori woman is laying hands: she is Riwia Brown, screenwriter of Once Were Warriors.
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Paul Dibble
Listener - April 13, 2002
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The hard graft of Manawatu sculptor Paul Dibble.
Bronze sculptor Paul Dibble is a big gentle man with hunched shoulders and a complexion like a stretch of unsealed country road. His large colonial Palmerston North home is chocker with New Zealand contemporary and folk art - "You haven't got a nation unless you've got folk art" - while his huge foundry/workshop is sited in an industrial precinct across town. It's not a business for loafers: "We've got to make about $4000 a week just to keep the doors open," Dibble says.
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Wayne Mason
Listener - September 1, 2001
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One of our greatest songwriters, Wayne Mason, continues his love affair with the shape and shadow of New Zealand.
"I love New Zealand's physical nature," says Wayne Mason. "I adore the country. Recently, I hopped on a boat and then rode by bike over to Cape Farewell by myself. I just took two pairs of socks and a shirt and slept out on the beach. I had visited there before with The Warrratahs in 1987, but it was like I'd never been there.
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Ian Wedde
Listener - April 14, 2001
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"Intellectual bullshit artist" and "concept leader for art" Ian Wedde makes his comeback as a man of letters.
Ian Wedde is writing poetry again after a decade's layoff. He rose out of the late 60s an intellectual bigwig, a key writer of his generation, the Big Smoke generation. His poetry, prose and art criticism flowed into our culture for more than 20 years. But an increasing interest in staging cultural events saw him eventually become an exhibition curator and, in 1994, "Concept Leader for Art" at the project that grew into Te Papa (a job he still holds today). And while his life was taking this new course, the poetry all but dried up.
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Peter McLeavey
Listener - February 17, 2001
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The Dealer: The one and definitely only Peter McLeavey.
"It's not just a gallery, it's something more than a gallery," says Peter McLeavey. "I don't quite know what a site is. I suppose it's where something happens. I've never changed the walls. I've never done them up. I can look at these walls and I can sort of say: Billy Apple, 1976, Colin McCahon, Gordon Walters, Milan Mrkusich, Charles Tole. That's Mike Smither. I mean every nail hole. That wall there, that's not a wall. I mean look at all those pick marks.
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Johnny Devlin
Listener - October 21, 2000
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On the road with New Zealand rock'n'roll legend Johnny Devlin.
"Are we having funnn!" implores "The Legend" . "Yeaah," chant the dancers. "You little beauuutees," cries this country's first rock'n'roll star Johnny Devlin.
"We" are at the Levin Cossie Club at Johnny's Shake Rattle & Roll Dance Show. About a dozen dancers, including photographer Janet Bayly and myself, are on the dancefloor. A trio of Johnny's female contemporaries are having a helluva good time dancing together. Two pairs of dancers are pretty slick, knowing all the old moves, and a group of women from the Levin Singles Club are swinging.
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Jacquie Baxter
Listener - June 17, 2000
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Jacquie the woman talks of Jim the man, Baxter the poet - and J C Sturm the poet.
When I rang for an interview Jacquie Baxter asked: "What hat am I to wear - J C Sturm or Jacquie Baxter?" The answer, of course, is both. The widow of the country's most famous poet and the woman who has become a poet in her own right are one and the same, inseparable. Testimony to that can be found in her new book of poems, which is about to be published.
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