Standing Room Only for Sunday 20 March 2022

12:15 Upstart Press buys New Holland publishing 

There's been a major shift in New Zealand independent publishing this week. Auckland publisher Upstart Press has purchased the entirety of New Holland Publishing, including their extensive backlist of Aotearoa non fiction  titles. 

Upstart Press was formed in 2013 by former Hachette NZ Managing Director Kevin Chapman. Upstart has been publishing New Zealand non-fiction, fiction and children's books for a decade now. They're also a distributor and Kevin isn't shy about his ambitions for NZ independent publishing. 

 

12:30 NZ film composers take the stage 

The three composers up for the 2021 APRA Best Original Music In A Film Award each faced entirely different challenges with their scores. They've also had to wait a long time to find out which of them has taken out the top prize.  The original in-person event was first scheduled for October last year, then November, then early this month.

It's finally happening this week, sadly on-line. Vying for top honour for Film Music are Arli Liberman for Savage,  Ewan Clark for the adaptation of The Turn of the Screw and Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper for Shadow in the Cloud. 

Lynn speaks to Arli, Ewan and Mahuia about the different challenges they faced on these huge projects. 

 

12:45 Libraries reach out for a new generation of librarians

Well before the pandemic, many of the country's libraries were facing uncertain times. Many school and community libraries have been struggling to compete with other calls on stretched school and council budgets. So are young people being attracted to a career as a librarian and replenishing the current experienced but aging workforce?

In an effort to make it a more appealing option, library organisations have joined forces to offer new tertiary study grants. Philip Miles is  on the Tertiary Grants project advisory group, a Library and Information Association of New Zealand council member and part of the Auckland Libraries team.

 

1:10 At The Movies

Simon Morris welcomes back the Baftas, and looks at three small films whose virtue is mostly their own reward – a minor Brit-com, a documentary about African wine-buffs and a salute to an art-film legend.

 

1:33 The poetry of complaint 

Tomorrow is World Poetry Day and poets around Aotearoa have been busy beavering away to celebrate it. One of them is Associate Professor Sarah Ross, from Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington who has been compiling an online index of poems penned by Renaissance women. 

The Early Modern Women's Complaint Poetry Index brings together poetry about love, loss and protest, written by women living from 1530 to 1680. Sarah co-led the project with Professor Rosalind Smith from Australian National University and they've just picked up an award from the Renaissance Society of America. 

 

1:50 Diana Halstead: Archetypes 

In the 1990s Artist and political activist Diana Halstead spent a miserable few years living in Devonport - she found it claustrophobic after living in the wilderness of the Waitakere Ranges. Each day she expressed her frustrations in her art, creating a remarkable series of spontaneous works of hybrid human-animal figures from crayon, oil paints and watercolours. For decades the pictures have been stored under her bed at her current home in the Coromandel, but she's hauled them out and now published many of them in a book called Archetypes.

 

2:06 The Laugh Track - Rob McLennan 

Dunedin based comedian Rob McLennan is one of many performers who'd love to be on stage right now, but it just hasn't worked out this year. But Rob has forged ahead and taken his show Pool Shark online as part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival. He's filmed his comedy special around the streets of Dunedin and it's available to watch at your leisure. He shares the things he finds funniest for this week's laugh track. 

Rob's picks include Steve Martin, Stephen Fry, Carl Barron, Leslie Neilson and Stewart Francis. 

 

2:25 Chris Tse: Super Model Minority

Moments of joy to fortify the soul are promised in the latest poetry collection by Chris Tse, Super Model Minority. They're not all soft and tender poems though, as Chris once again mines tough times he experienced growing up as a young gay Asian man in New Zealand. The first two books in what he calls a loose trilogy were called How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, and HE'S SO MASC.

 

2:40 Stephen Johnson: Boxed 

Thriller writer Stephen Johnson sends an ambitious TV news team into dangerous territory in his new book Boxed.

The expat Australian tv producer and tour guide, was a finalist in the 2020 Ngaio Marsh Best First Novel category with Tugga's Mob, the first outing for Kim and Jo and the rest of the Melbourne Spotlight TV crew. 

This time the nightmare of an imprisoned woman unfolds alongside a murder mystery involving greyhound racing trainers.

Stephen Johnson's novel Boxed is published by Clandestine Press.

 

2:49 Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda

The wealth of feminist art by Pacific women Aoteaora and across Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean, is being celebrated in a new exhibition  at  Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Art Gallery. Ane Tonga, the gallery's inaugural Curator of Pacific Art has spent a couple of years selecting work that encompasses sculpture and moving image through to performance art. Gender and the politics of representation are ideas she's explored in her own art practice over the years. 

She's calling the exhibition Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda.  Lynn Freeman spoke to her and to one of the artists included in the show, Suzanne Tamaki, who uses fashion and photography to create images with strong political and cultural messages. 

 

3:06 Drama at 3 - New Zealand Lamb

Our Classic Drama this week is a comic fantasy from one of our great radio playwrights, starring a real-life mother and daughter.   Here is New Zealand Lamb by Angie Farrow, with Stephanie and Katherine Wilkin, set on Suffrage Day, 1993.

Music played in this show

Artist: Beach Boys
Song: Fun fun fun
Composer:  Love-Wllson
Album: Endless harmony
Label: Capitol
Played at: 12.30

Artist: Richard Stilgoe and Peter Skellern
Song: Joyce the librarian
Composer:  Skellern
Album: A quiet night out
Label:  HR
Played at: 12.26

Artist: Arctic Monkeys
Song: Library pictures
Composer: Turner-Arctic Monkeys
Album: Suck it and see
Label:  Domino
Played at: 12.45

Artist: Ella Jenkins
Song: The Children's Librarian
Composer: Jenkins
Album:  Little Johnny Brown and other songs
Label: Smithsonian
Played at:  12.58

Artist: Carla Kihlstedt
Song: Rooting for the shy librarian
Composer: Kihlsted
Album: N/A
Label:  Hannibal?
Played at: 1.07

Artist: Go Betweens
Song:  Karen
Composer: Forster
Album:   Til 79: The Lost Album
Label: Jetset
Played at: 1.44

Artist: Camera Obscura
Song: French Navy
Composer: Campbell
Album:  My Maudlin Career
Label: 4 AD
Played at: 1.58

Artist: Robert Preston
Song: Marian the Librarian
Composer:  Wilson
Album: The Music Man
Label: Angel
Played at: 2.05

Artist: The Magnetic Fields
Song: Swinging London
Composer:  The Magnetic Fields
Album: London Pride
Label: Uncut
Played at: 2.58

Artist:  My Morning Jacket
Song:  Librarian
Composer:  James
Album: Evil Urges
Label: Spunk
Played at: 3.05

Artist: The Pains Of Being Pure At heart
Song: Young adult friction
Composer:  N/A
Album: Young Adult Friction
Label: N/A
Played at: 3.58