The title of this recording is "Now and Then - Same Same But Different writers festival". It is described as: Audio from the session: Now and Then. It was recorded in Auckland University of Technology, 55 Wellesley Street East, Auckland on the 13th February 2016. This is a recording of an event and features the voices of Aorewa Mcleod, Brendan Were, Heather McPherson, Jade du Preez, Julie Helean, Madeline Reid, Matt Wort, Michelle Durey, Paula Boock, Ron Brownson, Ruby Porter and Semira Davis. Their names are spelt correctly, but may appear incorrectly spelt later in the document. The duration of the recording is 1 hour and 19 minutes, but this may not reflect the actual length of the event. A list of correctly spelt content keywords and tags can be found at the end of this document. A brief description of the recording is: Audio from the session: Now and Then. The content in the recording covers the decades 1960s through to the 2020s. A brief summary of the recording is: The "Now and Then - Same Same But Different" writers festival recorded at Auckland University of Technology in 2016 offered a rich auditory tapestry with contributions from a diverse group of writers spanning several decades. The event celebrated literary achievements, acknowledged the past, and delved into the changing landscape of LGBTQI+ writing and cultural expression from the 1960s through to the 2010s. The recording encapsulated the Wallace Arts prize for best short story and commemorated David Linden Brown, a community literary figure who passed away in December. The Pride writing competition, created by Alternative Bindings, was highlighted for its role in fostering a space for both emerging and established writers to express their stories of triumph, joy, pain, and difference. The line-up of speakers included a blend of established and emerging voices such as Aorewa McLeod, Brendan Were, Heather McPherson, and Michelle Durey, each bringing their own stories and reflections to the stage. Ruby Porter, a poet and writer, shared poignant poems that resonated with themes of identity and exploration. The festival provided an opportunity for writers to share their work, while also discussing the evolving challenges and experiences of LGBTQI+ writers. Speakers reflected on historic struggles for recognition and the contemporary barriers still faced by marginalized voices. Through poetry, prose, and personal anecdotes, the event served as a testimony to both continuity and change within the LGBTQI+ literary community. As the festival progressed, the contrast between "then" and "now" was palpable, with discussions on the shifting perceptions of gender and sexuality and the impact of societal change on personal narratives. From the humorous recollections and candid remarks about the challenges of gay dating to the introspective ponderings on identity, the variety of content underscored the complexity and depth of the LGBTQI+ experience. The recordings offered a window into evolving cultural attitudes, the persistence of struggle, and the celebration of identity. It encapsulated the spirit of the LGBTQI+ community's creative and literary advancements over the decades, linking the voices of the past to those shaping the present and future. The event provided not just an occasion to honor literary achievements but also to recognize the profundity of storytelling in the quest for understanding, validation, and human rights. The full transcription of the recording begins:  Hello, everyone. Welcome to the now and then session. Same same, but different. Um, over the next hour or so, you'll be hearing the work of nine writers. Uh, we're presenting the Wallace Arts prize for best short story. Uh, and we'll hear the winner read their work. Uh, and finally, uh, Ron Brownson will give an acknowledgement of David Linden Brown, one of our community's literary lights who passed away in December. I'd like to, uh, start off proceedings by inviting, uh, nod Ghosh and, uh, Jade Duris to join me on stage, please. Yes, Round of the draw. All right, Now, just a brief interlude. The pride writing competition was created two years ago by alternative bindings. Alternative bindings as, uh, Andrew rumbles. Gina Cole. Who's here? Welcome, Gina. Uh, Michael Jacon, who's also here welcome Michael and myself. Uh, we are four individuals who love words, and we're determined to make literary events an important part of pride. The writing competition provides a safe and supportive environment for both emerging and established writers to share their stories. And this year we've been honoured by the support of the Wallace Arts Trust who have provided the generous prize as well as lending their name and prestige to the award. So thank you very, very much. Um, other than the maximum length of 750 words and a theme a Kiwi romance. There were no restrictions on entries, and the stories were received. Expressed the triumph and joy of alternate sexuality or the pain and difficulty of being different. There were funny stories, sad stories, sweet stories, bitter stories, outrageous situations and introspective reflections. The quality of the submissions was astounding, and, as always, the judges had great difficulty choosing a winner. I'm honoured to, uh, welcome to the stage. Uh, Sir James Wallace, who will be presenting the awards. Ladies and gentlemen, Sir James Wallace, the runner up in the Wallace Arts Trust Prize for short fiction is Nod Ghosh. Uh, with it. Nod nod story seven lesbians in a bar of soap. Uh, it was the winner. Nod is a medical laboratory assistant in Christchurch and has had stories accepted in various New Zealand and international publications. Nods, Maxim Writers are like humans, but they watch this television. Thank you. No. The winner of this year's Wallace Arts Trust Prize for the best short story is Jay Dupre. Uh, Jade's story was titled Lily of the Valley. Jade is a gifted and regularly exhibited visual artist. In fact, uh, she's currently studying for a law degree, uh, with a view to a career in wait for it. Human rights. So thank you very much. A round of applause, please. For both of, um, All right. I would now like to invite Jade to read her winning story. Sorry. Thank you very much. Everyone here and obviously to the Wallace Trust and everyone who is organised. Um, I shall be succinct. These are my 750 words. Was 11 when he lost his words Not lost. That sounds forgetful. His words were taken. We said that happened to a generation. I said, Like, I care about a generation. I said, What kind of a name is V, anyway? Guess I got a bit happy on the bourbon. Didn't usually talk to randoms. Curled her mouth like she'd been waiting to be asked a dirty one. She said she looked over the top of her paper cup like she reckoned she was actually in a movie or something. Like she had a crystal glass. That caught the light of the hotel chandelier and that she just admitted to being a double agent. Like she wasn't actually at Stupid King's stupid graduation. Half in the dark on a lawn, turfed up by cars accompanied by a sound system from the nineties. Playing songs from the eighties. Great, I said as flat as I could. You can explain it to the guy over there. I nodded to a flat peak, leaning on a Corolla. Been checking you out long enough? Him? She looked over serenely. Nah, he asked me to ask you. Hey, I stared so he noticed he was nervous. Laughed with his shoulders. Why V grind? Probably because he doesn't know you're a homo. I'm not. I sighed. This is probably the softball thing again. Pity you said then. Even though I never asked. My name is Lily. Was she joking? There was pretty much nothing Lily like about her. Not silent. Not Lily. Livid. Definitely not white. It was updated to Lily of the Valley. Get it? Oh, yeah. Funny I didn't get it, but that wasn't out of our business. V is foster to say easier to yell. She raised her eyebrows closed her eyes could have been in a movie. I forget which one turned out. She was studying languages. A linguist, she had a research project she wanted to speak to. My, you're fine, Not my business. She came over four days after she had a laptop and flash glasses away from that crowd. She spoke differently softly. She pulled out and threaded her sentences through her any line, and she'd weave it into a long winded odyssey of history and policy. It turned out her name was a kind of Homo joke. My liked her. She came over again. Then again, sometimes it was just me at home. Then it seems like we weren't starting new meetings, just that there were some interruptions. In one long one, I called her lily. I wanted to keep a secret part of her. She wasn't a lily, like one of those wild monster ones that crowd out the compost. She was more like one of those bursting ones from the shops, all kinds of bright colours, bright smelling, dropping pollen all over the rug, lingering. She'd come back from uni and release her latest phrases. All the sad German ones, all the stubborn French ones, she said. I love you in 11 languages, three of them had no words. She retold the story of my. She shuffled through photographs and found a likeness in me the way of his lip, Lily said. He's resisting a fight. You do that. I'm not a chicken. I said, Come away with me. She said she'd won a scholarship. She was that smart. She was going south. Then everything went south was given a few months. Max, I didn't tell. Lily just cancelled Our meetings. Wasn't up too much, I'd say. Really tired. Today wasn't her business anymore. I didn't want too many people poking around anyway, full on sorting out the maids food dressing. She didn't need to see that it was 1st. 1st he stopped speaking, then seeing then he was just the pair of lungs in my grandfather's body. In the hospice, I lost my words. I hated all those ones from kind people for the best put to rest, so impressed, blessed, blessed less. I thought that is all that comes no more. I love you. Lily came up sprung from nowhere. Someone must have told her it wasn't their business, but I let it go. I didn't say much to her. Watch the spot on the ground where roots would have been if she'd been true to her name. When we were alone, she read me her research. Put him in the story. I didn't mind that. How does it finish it? Doesn't she said thank you. A well deserved win. Thank you very, very much. Jade, Um, we wish you well in your studies, and we hope to read lots more of your work. Hint, hint, hint. All right, Uh, and there's now an end session. We're exploring how things have changed and how things have stayed the same. Uh, and we'll be doing this through the voices of nine individual writers, uh, each of whom will share with us a piece of their work. Four of these will be established writers noted for the evocation of our challenging past. And five will be new voices emerging largely young writers who are developing their voice in a world that is very different to the world I grew up in. So what has changed for today's LGBT Q I writers? Has anything changed? Each of our established writers has had to struggle against many current social political and in some cases personal just to have their voices heard. Yet despite sweeping changes for our community, it would seem that struggle remains an inevitable part of LGBT. Q. I experience the forces and forms may have changed. The gatekeepers may wear new masks, and the media we use is most certainly morphed into shapes we couldn't have predicted. Or maybe science fiction writers could have. But struggle, it seems, remains. Perhaps it's an inevitable part inevitable fact of life for those of us who often find ourselves on the margins. At the end of this session, each of you will be able to form your own opinion about what has changed about what hasn't an understanding informed by the voices of now and the voices of then I'd like to welcome our first speaker to the podium. Uh, Ruby Porter. Uh, Ruby completed a BAB FA with first class honours and is doing a master of creative writing this year at Auckland University, in which she plans to finish a novel. She has recorded several of her poems for the next six pack sounds available soon on the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre website. Thank you. Hi. I'm I'm feeling a little bit sick. So if I dart off after this, I'm not trying to be rude. And this poem is called Imogen. Her tutor was saying is unimaginable like no true or false? No like or dislike. No love. They could only have touched and untouched. She's untouched, Touched in the back seat by a boy. She doesn't like much. She thinks when she googled vampire squids, she must have seen the babies because they looked more like a lot. Flu says they are orgasmic. She hasn't orgasm in months. She thinks she could be one. Wouldn't mind doing it by herself. Hermaphrodite meaning self-sufficient. They're only scared of each other. She gets that parked up outside Kelly to where she's seen the photos they went. Imagine eerie conversation like Leave her for me, OK? The last time she touched a girl, she was high and in a pool. Now she's below all of that imagines heavy she can swim beneath every everyone she's ever known. That's what an island means, right? Floating wet all over like a foetus. I don't know whether it's too far from us or too close. He means the other parked car. She means the womb and memory we've all forgotten hasn't forgotten that night, except that would be warm. And this would be cold sometimes at night. It's so cold she can't feel anything thinking. Does it struggle to float like walking underwater hundreds of metres down? Apparently, when they come to the surface, they explode. And then this next one's called State Highway one B out the window. Winter's hardness is just beginning to show. The branches of the Po seem to curl inwards for warmth. I put on the heater, but you say you can't stand it. You are always too hot and I am always too cold. What did you mean by that? You mean of course, the way I curl inwards. Pull over. Stop the car. By now you have counted three dead sheep. I wish you wouldn't point it out, but I don't say anything. The snow is crunchy, dirty, only white. From a distance, I sit on the bonnet for warmth while you crouch behind a poplar. There are fences everywhere, but no houses. When you introduced me, you called me clear's friend. What did you mean by that? You mean? Of course, there's no use in counting. The inside of the car is blurring now too. We keep searching, but we only find static. I try to turn on the heater again. But you open the window. You say we need to stop breathing the same air over and over again. Pull over. Stop the car. What did you mean by that? You mean we're moving too fast. But it all looks the same to me. The numbers that go down are just for show. When we left that night, you only held my hand. When we got to the car, I was going to ask where you went. But you say I am too interested in the degrees between us. The space to cool off. And I should try to be more out going over the limit. I want to put my hand on your knee. But I don't know how to spread myself wide enough. And you say Don't bother. This bend in the road is the conversation. Your words are tarmac. What did you mean by that? You mean of course the sign. A few cases back. We must have missed it already. Thank you, Ruby. amazing. What a way to start. That's gonna be hard to follow. Yeah. Wow. The, uh, use of pace and rhythm in that just astounding. Just amazing. My heart's still slowing. Next up, I would, uh, like to call to the podium. Uh, McLeod, many people in this room, including myself, were taught by a in the English department at the University of Auckland, where she worked for, uh, 37 years. Am I allowed to say that? 37 years, uh, she undertook the MA in creative writing at Victoria Victoria University in 2011, and she has published as a critic. She's edited anthologies, but she's probably best known for her book. Who was that woman, anyway? Well, this is a piece I I wrote in 19 in 2016 this year for lesbians in 2016, and I've called it casting off the fan turns slowly, making a tired crack with each circuit. Three women are sitting amidst cartons piled high with books, books donated to the centre by women retiring women downsizing women down decluttering. OK, what about this one? It's Angie, her long tattooed legs sprawled out on the floor amongst the books where she's just up ended a carton. Now this one's got an awesome cover. Hot Pink with two naked embracing women and the titles are lesbian sex. Oh, God, not another one. Beth rummages into the curtain between her knees and pulls out a lurid pink lesbian sex by Joanne Lin, and I bet you've got this one, too. Lesbian Passion By Joanne Lin Purple cover With embracing naked women, we all bought Joanne Lu until the rumour that she'd got married to a man was confirmed in the nineties. Hey, but this one's got an inscription, and Beth reads out to my beloved Gwen on the third year of our rapturous, lifelong journey. Your lover, Pam. Oh, no, Steffie murmurs from her beanbag. I know them. Or rather, I knew them. Pam's had two. Or is it three beloved since then? Yes, it's. Most of them do ink out their names or rip out the cover page. But you know it's awful. I've got all these books on my shelves, yellowing pages covered in dust, and she reads out some of the names, flinging them onto the throw out curtain, tangled sheets, stories and poems of lesbian lust. The lesbian reader, lavender culture, lesbian images, lesbian nation, 19 eighties 19 nineties. We were all so eager, so desperate for information about being lesbian that we'd read anything with the word lesbian on the cover, how we wanted them. We needed them to help us define ourselves. Look here, lesbian ethics. She holds up a very thick book with a serious non pink cover. So far, we've got five copies of this and I've got one at home. Haven't read it for over 30 years. I'm 75 and these are the books that gave me words for myself when I had my first affair in 1960 1960. Would you believe it? I don't think I'd even heard the word lesbian. Do you realise? Stiff says You said, Oh God, oh God, not another one. We'd never have said that in the eighties. Don't you remember what Mary Daly said? God represents the Acropolis of the patriarchy. Wow, says Angie. That's a lot of laughs than a prop of the patriarchy. And and listen to this. She's been thumbing through lesbian sex. Did you really do this here? Page 259 exercises for orgasmic responses. This is hilarious. It's in the homework section, and she and she reads out orgasmic response with yourself. Exercises 1 to 7. Step one. Write a letter to your sexual response. Tell us how dissatisfied you are. Really? Let your body know how it has let you down. Now do you want to have orgasms? Do you feel you're missing something? If you haven't had orgasms? Do you have resentment that your partner has them so easily? Do you think you're not vulnerable and open because you don't have orgasms? And there's so much more? Did you guys really write letters to your orgasms? No. Sorry to your sexual responses. All right, all right, Beth says. No, I didn't. I never got that far in the book anyway, and I never had problems with orgasms. My first lesbian affair was my first orgasm. I just needed to know what to call it. Hey, here's one that looks well used says in our own hands, a book of self help therapy, lots of markings and turned down pages. I remember this book. I was in a self help group that used it, and she grins at Beth. Angie stretches out, grabs the book and reads from the introduction in order to understand the sexism, competitiveness, possessiveness and authoritarianism fostered by the family within capitalism. Oh wow, that's so cool. I love the language. It was a great group, said Beth. That's how Steph and I got together. 1984. It was a lesbian version of the consciousness raising groups that were spreading everywhere with feminism. My God, was it really 30 years ago? Well, says Angie, what should we keep one Sex, one passion, one. Ethics? Nope, interrupts Beth out with all of them. No one would read them now, except perhaps to laugh at them like you. Oh, OK, But here's one that doesn't have lesbian in the title. Macho Sluts. No, it's good. I should have brought it. Now it's got a great cover look. High heeled black boot on someone's black leather back who seems to have a face into someone's black leather crutch. And look, the author's wearing black leather and black shades. I've got that one as well, Beth says. It's it's still on my bookshelf. That was a scary book back in, And was it late eighties? It was about Sadow masochism in the days when we were supposed to be writing letters to our vanilla orgasms. We all brought it, bought it to find out what it was about. She turns back to her desk. I've just catalogued a bunch of new books. The Centre has bought Sam Orchard's Family Portraits, that cute graphic novel about being a trans boy. Trans love, trans bodies, trans Selves. That's the latest thing, not lesbianism. Steph pulls out a limp, battered book from her carton. Here's a female eunuch. That book was so important we did all read that. Actually, I still quite like Germaine Greer. I didn't think her comments about Trans women were so bad, you know, when she said postoperative trans women were not women. Good God, says Beth. Sorry, I forgot. Great God is Beware stiff or and you'll be throwing glitter at you and calling you a turf. Come again. What's a turf? T ER. If it's a trans exclusionary, radical feminist means you're trapped in 19 eighties centralist feminism. Really bad Transphobic Oh says stiff. What are they saying now about grid? An old lady with outdated views? Perhaps that's me, not you two, says Angie. Look how busy. You all are throwing your pasts away. Yeah. Who was that woman anyway? Thank you. That was just stunning. A lovely evocation of now and then. Nothing more needs to be said. Next up. I would like to, uh, invite, uh, Samira Davis to the podium. Samira is another one of our new voices. Samira is a poet whose work has been published in Redraft, E and Landfall. She is studying creative writing at MIT and was awarded one to watch at the 2015 New Zealand Poetry Slam Finals. She's currently working on a short story collection that explores sexuality and human connection. Yeah, that was brilliant. Um, this first poem I'm going to read is called Stier, and it's a response to a poem written about 50 years ago by Mary Stanley. Um, if you don't know the format of a susa, it's six stanzas with the end of each line repeating six words in a very specific order. So that's hence the repetition right now it hurts to look back, giving you that heart shaped cookie to eat. You kept it in the freezer in hope of love, reminding me I am queer deep in my blood You sprouted and grew. What made you change my mind? I said I would write. You didn't mind? Fingers left keys to cradle your back In the winter, our romance grew under thick blankets where we'd eat each other proud and queer. Disturbing the nights with our love. You read my past as lack of love. Nothing I said could ease your mind. The accusations created a queer numbness burrowing through my back ready to pounce and eat buried deep This numbness grew a year of doubt and we grew apart. You questioning my love seeing betrayal in the foods I'd eat as if my body shape would lead me back to men. Or that my mind only saw you as my badge of being queer. You saw me as more straight than queer When the desire to write my past grew strong you fought hard to hold me back You showed contempt and shunned my love Cutting away the passion of my mind You took more than you could eat Those bitter words Those heavy chains began to eat the heart of me till the queer numb surfaced and escaped my mind My lost self returned my strength grew and into words you feared and forced I don't love you I am leaving and won't come back in fear You forced my hand from love your words into reality grew the cookie bark I made up my mind And the second poem or today is interestingly titled Six poems with no barrow However I am wearing one You've carved a pentagram in the wood of your guitar The lighter you hold against the fret is orange sliding up and down My legs are tapped under the neck so I can watch your fingers from behind You make the silent You make me write songs in my head that I'm too scared to sing Because I know my music isn't as strong as yours But it was me who described how we felt that night So you play and I breathed in the sun And tomorrow I will be jealous of myself for having spent the day with you. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. That was amazing. Um, I can feel a bit of a synergy Emerging seems to be a conversation spontaneously forming here between the past and the present. Maybe it will lead us to the future. Next up, I would like to welcome Paula Bock. I simply can't compress Paula's achievements into a 22nd introduction, so skimming the surface of a very deep pond, she has been Otago University's Burns fellow. She Co-founded Longacre Press won the AM best first book award for Outworked Mel won the New Zealand Post Children's Book Award for Dear Truth Promise and has been shortlisted for the US Lambda Literary Awards. She's a television writer who worked on the Strip, Bro Town and Insiders Guide to Happiness. She inaugurated Lippy Pictures, whose productions and until proven innocent and Field Punishment number one who won multiple awards in Australia and New Zealand. And actually, I rode a horse on fear of Punishment Number one. she's an incredibly diverse writer and makes the rest of us feel completely lazy. Nice. Thank you very much. Brendan, um, you can hear me here, can't you The nodding at the back I'm looking for, um I'll have to be quick. Um, I'm gonna read from dear truth or promise, because I don't get very many opportunities to these days, and it was quite nice to pull it out and reread it um, looking forward to this. And because there's something about then and now because I wrote this in 1997. Um, it was the first Y a lesbian novel in New Zealand. There weren't very many in the world, and so it was quite controversial there. I'd like to think such a thing wouldn't be controversial now, but I did write it deliberately, knowing it would be controversial. And, um, because there just weren't any books for young queer women coming out. And there was one book for a New Zealand by a New Zealand writer, William Taylor. The Blue Lawn, um, which explored young gay love, Um, and also obviously, as a writer, I wanted to write it because one always wants to kind of reimagine the most complex and powerful experience of your life. And at that time in my twenties, it was coming out. Um, this is a little excerpt. The two protagonists are Louie and Willa. They're both 16. Um, they're at school. They're kind of going out on a date, I guess. An unusual date. Um, and they have arrived at a patch of farmland in the middle of nowhere, and Lo doesn't know what's in the store there, said Willer. There she is. Louis followed her gaze. They stood about a paddock's length away from the end of the runway, staring straight down two lines of neon blue spots. At the far end were the flashing red and white lights of an aircraft coasting into position. Louis looked at Willa, her heart already beginning to pump. You're mad. You're absolutely bloody crazy. This is your idea of fun. Willer was transfixed by the sight of the plane. They could hear its engines in the distance, the combination of raw and wine that always thrilled. Louie. You wait, Willis said. And Louie looked at her for a moment, noting the fix of her eyes, the tension around her jaw and the little vein pulsing at her temple. I'm out of control, she thought. If she asked me to throw myself under a jumbo's wheels, I'd say front or back. The engines whirred ferociously, and the plane began to move forward at her side. Willa's hand found Louis, and they stood frozen to the spot. At first it seemed incredibly slow, as if it were just rolling towards them and Lou could make up people in the flight deck, dimly lit. Then suddenly the lights at the end of each wing flashed violently, wider and wider, and Lou could see, for the first time the body of the plane, its bulk bearing down on them, rushing at them, huge wings outstretched. The sound was overwhelming, shrieking, blaring. Louie wanted to cover her ears, but she didn't want to let go of Willa's hand. She dug her nails as the plane ate up the runway, murderous, and just before her legs began to dissolve, the white lights at the front lifted and a blast of hot air and thunderous noise burst out from under the aircraft. It screeched above them. It's white body burning through the air and the surrounding blackness wobbling in the heat. The smell of burning rubber and exhaust filled Louis's nostrils and mouth, which was open and screaming, now screaming for all she was worth. She was jumping, too, jumping down, up around, and then her arms were around, Willa squeezing her, still yelling and whooping, and Willa was yelling back, and they leapt about in a circle for a bit before Louis realised she actually had her arms around Willa, embracing her and she decided not to let go to let go would mean to wait until she had this good an excuse again, and she didn't know when that might be. Louie couldn't bear it anymore. To hell with it, she thought. To hell with it. They stopped jumping. They stopped yelling, and Louie gripped on to Willa, hugged tighter even and buried her head in her shoulder. Her heart was still thumping, and she could feel Willers, too, like a bird's belting against a cage. And then Willa's arms moved, and Louis caught her breath in fear. Terrified, she'd pull away. She did it. Her hand cupped. Louis's head ran down the back of her hair, her neck, and lay cool and gentle under her collar. Her other arm moved lightly up her back and rested there. What a difference. The quality of the touch, the subtle shift and placement that turned a hug into a hold. Louis wanted to cry to weep with relief. She relaxed her wrestling grip and leaned into Willa, nuzzled her heavy hair, felt the soft skin under her ear, breathed in her smell when will turned and kissed her. Louie thought in her head. This is my first kiss. Well, it wasn't. Of course she'd kissed the number of guys and more, but she'd never, ever felt as if she were falling off a cliff. She'd never before felt as if her body were being turned to water from the inside out. Or as if they're both whirling through space into an airless black vortex. Louis felt all these things and above all, a disbelief. A wild, terrifying disbelief that this should be happening. No, not that she was in love with a girl, for it seemed suddenly absolutely natural that she should be in love with this girl. But that God only knew how this girl should love her back. Thank you. Thank you, Paula. Amazing. A beautiful, sustained metaphor. I feel myself flying next up. I'd like to welcome Matt Ward. Matt is a graduate of the creative writing programme Man Man Institute of Technology. As part of his concern about the alarming figures around Queer Youth suicide, he has written about the often one dimensional representation of queer characters in young adult fiction and of the straightening of protagonists and narratives that occur in mainstream fiction, something we're all aware of I was personally excited to read some of Matt's work, as this is an area I lecture in here at a UT. It's wonderful to see a young emerging writer grappling with these issues. I see a change coming, Matt. Unfortunately, I've just been set up for a lot of your disappointment. Um, today I won't be boring you with, um, some of my essays. Um, instead, I'll just start, um, I will speak about the biggest threat facing our community. Um, a disease that tears through communities and ruins gay lives all over the world. I am, of course, talking about heterosexuals. I have a great many problems with the majority. But perhaps the most alarming is this. When a straight person finds out you're gay, they will immediately ask you the precise second you knew you were gay as if you went to bed one night watching the NRL and eating barbecue ribs, only to wake up in the morning wanting the entire rugby team to piss in your mouth for three reasons. I will never be a runway gay one. I don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a mesh vest that will eventually cheese grape, my nipples off. Two. The only reason I would spend longer than 10 minutes in a clothing store is if I'd looked at a price tag and died. Death is literally the only way to keep me shopping. And third, I just don't have the cheekbones for that kind of lifestyle. I'll become a model when sweatpants, man boobs and $27 haircuts become high fashion. So I don't want a straight bash all afternoon, although it is my favourite pastime. But I was recently having a conversation and somebody said, Why don't straight people have a parade? So I got down to her intellect, intellectual level and said, Well, sweetie, when gay people burn straight people alive and deny them their rights for hundreds of years, then you can have a parade. In hindsight, probably not the best way to teach a four year old about gay rights. We are, um, straight. People seem convinced that gay people have an insane amount of sex, and the truth, if only for me, is far less sweaty and grand. I realised quite early on in life that my standards were disproportionately higher than my attractiveness, which is hard enough to deal with. But further insult is added when Stephen Joyce manages to get more cock in his face than I do. And another annoying thing is the idea that all gay people know each other a straight will ask, Oh my God, do you know Augustine? And no, I would never associate myself with somebody who had a name like that, and she says, Well, you guys should totally hook up. He's gay, too, As if the only prerequisite I might need to sleep with a man is that he likes my gender. But Sweet Augustine does bring to the forefront another problem in our community, and that is the vast imbalance of bottoms to tops. Strap yourselves into your chastity belt. There's nothing sad in my mediocre life than when I see a guy with a huge muscular body and a scruffy draw line and piercing eyes. And the further I scroll down his profile, the more we fall in love until I finally reach his sexual preferences box. And it just says the one word that ruins me bottom. Nothing is more tragic than a bottom stuck in a top's body, and I have a friend who said, Well, couldn't you just make it work? And as I have to tell my desk with Annelise on a regular basis, two bottoms simply don't make a top. Finally, the stereotype that all gays are hyper emotional beings, which may be true for some, but definitely not for me. I have only cried twice in my life once when my, uh, once out of happiness when my father told me my great nan was dead and secondly, out of sadness, when he told me he was just joking to add some context, she once fed me dog treats. So here's to you, Bertha, you old bitch! Thank you. I'm looking forward to television in the 20 twenties. Next up, I would like to, uh, invite Heather McPherson to the podium, please. Heather's poetry Heather Poetry has been represented in many anthologies, including the Penguin Anthology of New Zealand verse in 1976. Heather Co-founded Spiral as a Journey of women's Sorry as a journal of women's art and literature. Spiral later developed into a publishing house and published, amongst other things, uh, Kerry Holmes Booker Prize winning the Bone People. Uh, she is also a visual artist and curator, uh, one of the strongest voices for women in the arts and a in New Zealand. But in respect of the theme of this session, it is a quote of hers that stands out to me. Speaking of poems she published in the 19 seventies, she said, And I quote, I was then obscuring my identity by using initials. Having been advised, I stood a better chance of being published if I wasn't known as a woman, let alone a lesbian. Hi, everybody. And welcome. I practised too hard during the week. I'm losing my voice. So if you can't hear me, just put your hands up and wave or something. Um, I thought that this was a a kind of chronology that needed to be addressed when I was trying to choose poems to read, but all the issues that I was going to have, I've I've also addressed. So, um, I might as well, I think, turn the chronology around the other way because I'm going to run out of time. I think so. Um, the first one is stuck at the lights and the van ahead flashes phantom build stickers. We never sleep Good grief. 40 years ago, we snuck out leaving the babysitters in charge and did paste ups with our women's gallery mates, having hung the show and set spellbound through Friday poems and rounded up kids after women's dances and look. These days, you can buy somebody else's energy for outreach. It's like government selling our markets as the free trade bottom of the Pacific, and I picture us lugging wallpaper, glue and posters hot off print, collective desks and spirals out of her story and old bags and socialist lesbian type setters and lovers and friends living rooms. But, hey, we split our cages and rattled others. And yes, it needs doing again. Again again. Ask any intimidated girls, gays, wives, others the young, struggling and aged figure lights, green feet we lurch and the Phantom Bill stickers Wait. Our mobility is fugitive. So no, we don't overtake. Just call. Left, Left, right, right. No left, right. Oh, wait, OK. One of the things that we were addressing as part of the general myotomy around the place was who controls what is published or taught, or is is is able to be talked about. Um I was reading Ali Smith and um, she had a photograph. Four women asleep and I wrote this portrait. Four artists with cups Four artists sit close together to hold flowery cups and sauces. All their eyes are shut as an agenda statement, and they embody a tableau. The un awakened woman. Are they heterosexual? Gay, lesbian, gender, queer in between, who decreed their UN presence and casts absentees in my grandparents overgrown backyard. I played at being the prince who helped through Blackberry and Bramble and kissed the princess awake. And we rode her white horse back to the Palace Majesty and married and lived happily, if not ever after. At least now legally, did her husband or her husband take this shot. So artists who were women couldn't be artists again, and nobody knew they'd been their art unseen. Well, Leonora kept painting serenely surreal dreams. Lee Miller's wartime photos winged to Auckland Museum. Her son unpacked them from the attic after she died. Rinse the poison cups, feed the bloody spindle to the fire. Old myths expire and you will you dance awake and we've new miss you and three similar friends ref, figuring the arts and um, finally, because I've only got for that? Um, this book that I wrote in the nineties 1991 it was published and I looked through it and I thought, Goodness, Oh, I was so angry then. Oh, and then I got to the end and I thought, Oh, well, yes, we were angry. We were addressing misogyny, which is a lot about what's in here, including the unfortunate experiment. And then I ended up my lover moves. My lover moves long thighs and capable hands. My lover hammers nails and shovels dirt. My lover cradles breasts and handles horses. My lover strokes my ligaments into water. My lover dances, sings and designs the city, my lover turning heads and filaments and strings. My lover drives through continents and beliefs and sweeping out of spaces where pasts and futures mix. We together in them to undo presents, gifts and go betweens. Climb cliffs and mediations, make births and deaths and deu generations. My lover when she fights, draws ghosts and laughs and opens life. Thank you, Heather. What a beautiful image. The, uh, as Heather mentioned. We're pushing time, so I'll leap further. Forwards. Uh, next up, Michelle Drury. Uh, Michelle is a bachelor of creative arts graduate from MITS creative writing programme. She's co-founder of the New Zealand National Poetry Slam and current MC at New Zealand's longest running weekly poetry event, Poetry Live, which has been running for 35 years 36 36 years as of 2016. Uh, Michelle is also a passionate activist for mental health awareness. Hi. Obviously, I wasn't the, uh MC at poetry life for the last 35 years, as I'm only coming up 40. Um, but I'm very, very honoured to be a part of a long line of, um, M CS. Um, just before I start, I don't have a lot in terms of reading about my sexuality because I'm very happy and and comfortable and don't feel threatened, which is quite refreshing, I would imagine. Um, but also I do want to say that Yes, I am, uh, married to a man right now. And, yes, I have had heterosexual sex to have three Children. That does not make me heterosexual genderless. Imagine when you woke up this morning you were greeted to a world with no visible gender. Your friends, family exes and hopeful love lovers. All genderless. But at the same time exactly as you remember them, with all their beautiful flaws and charms, still putting your desire for human connection on that factory line of life, knowledge and experience. But today, each new encounter begins to expose the absence of intentions, and you realise how difficult it's going to be to determine where your intensity of attraction expressions can and should be kept. You see gender and its easy identity is the upstaging actor on the stage of most days. But today these guidelines haven't been drafted, and sexual preferences and their displays don't even exist. It's like a toddler daycare with no caring parental. As liberating as it seems, the level of your maturity and common sense is too underdeveloped to to slow the sway of Love's consecutive pendulum. Because the Jessie whom you've just met may feel like hypnotism at first glance compared to lifelong friend Terry, whom you've never really wanted to touch. And then there's Danny, whom you want to crawl inside of to hibernate. But just for the two winters, unaware it could turn Joe into the one that got away. But this smooth innocence wrinkles the day as Danny is a flame you need to be physically close to while Joe slips in and out to remind you how much difference a single day in a single friend can make. And Terry's never looked more at home in this world of casual hands and insistent fingers. While you haven't a clue as to how to obtain a clue on whether Jessie and you could have ever been more than just a passionate possibility, you see today has only altered to you. The rest have resided here the whole time, and they cannot understand your shallow ignorance and flippant display of your supposed variety in this genderless society. And as the day sets its sunset, your loved ones feel played unappreciated, used disrespected by someone who is obviously incapable of deep seated love. With all those complexities dressing this genderless society, your naked sexuality is seen as dishonesty. When this day finally darkens, it's exhaustion and futility. You empathising company as you fall asleep and hope to dream away the hours in your in your old world a world you felt a spectator in in sexuality gallery, And that's and that's about as close as I can get you to the difficulty in understanding my world, a world of blurred sexuality, and the last one I was going to read for you very quickly is a love poem I wrote for a girl called teacups. Familiar faces fill already busy spaces, and I can't keep my mind off you, not even in the room. And still your respirator smile slides down the side of my shy guide as I lie to myself. Say I can fly through your eyes before you blink where I can liquidly sink into your mild hideaway and never have to go. Or I can somehow set my flow to a slower show of the grown moments between us and lean us against the screaming in my head For something more, more of you and more of my boredom turn chores into scores of nervous courtship and the quiver of a touch more than friendship. Send skin to thin to vulnerable shivers, so I can't keep my mind off you. Not even the looming thunder of inspiration can make blunder a distraction from the stumbler. Your wonder is tumbling out of me out of meaning to shrink shrink to predictable hints so you can sink closer to me. with your soothing lips Like cloud pillow tips. What a trip they must be to kiss in some hiss Sip of lid clothes bliss bliss Where wind pushes my hands to your hips And my mind won't want to sift and drift from you To sift through this lightning feeling that my tamed heart is wild Once more like desires lamed pot can strive once for once more for my fascination Adolescent explores what is already so easy to see You've stormed more than a teacup in me. Thank you, Michelle. Awesome and succinct. Next one. Next up. Uh, Julie, I'd love you to come up. Please. Uh, Julie needs no introduction. Oh, all right. But I'm gonna give her one anyway. She is a master of creative writing graduate from the University of Auckland. She's been published in Landfall magazine and was the winner of the Katherine Mansfield Literary Award for her short story. Misjudged, uh, her novel, the Open accounts of an honesty box, was published in 2011 and has been produced for national radio. She was also one of the judges, uh, for the Wallace Arts prize. Best short story. Thank you, Julie. Thank you. I'll stand here. And, um, if you can't hear me, please speak up. This is 1989 a few months before the Great Centenary. If you remember, that was 100 and 50 years celebration of the Treaty of Waitangi. And guess what? The anti racism groups are mobilising. She can read the night. She sprawls at the far end of the bus, shelter legs apart and waits for a what the clouds to clear the moon to rise over the ridge, the clock to strike midnight, a particular shade of dark. We should have done the hit ages ago. Instead, we're still hanging around. Richmond rode her hoodie up my beanie down, both of us feeling the cold. But I'm not complaining. I know she needs me. She needs someone nimble and handy with a spray can. And I'm glad because not many Maori will work with, let alone trust us to staunch up when it comes to radical action. Perhaps she hears me sighing because her head turns one eyebrow raised and grinning like she knows what I'm thinking. Like she can read me as well as the night. Oh, it's all clear. What say we do? It now. Hey, it comes out funny. A vibration in my jaw that makes my teeth jut like When I bike over the street bridge, I bury a yawn in the neck of my sweatshirt, thinking I'll be lucky to grab five hours sleep even if things do go according to plan. It's fine for Cat. She can sleep till 10 and still make her Monday morning tutorial. But then cat would crawl over broken glass to attend her uni lectures. Bloody sad that you have to go to university to discover your language and your culture, to get a grasp on racism, to find other Maori students who would offer your first real taste of. But what do I know? None of my business. All I know is she needs a buddy to do the hits with someone on hand and handy with graffiti. Someone who knows their treaty responsibilities and doesn't argue. I jiggle my backpack. Oh, OK, what about Now? I hear the squeak in my voice. No wonder she throws me a lock, blows on the end of her cigarette, then takes another puff. Oh, I'm not nervous. I've just amped up and ready, for fuck's sake. Who's gonna bother two women spray painting the liquor shop wall. It's the police. We need to watch four cops running the lights with sirens blazing, Cops sneaking around in unmarked Holden. Now I've had a thought. Cat sits up and snaps her fingers at me. That liquor shop. It's a white wall, right? White is everything that's good, pure and clean, virginal and angelic. That's what I think. Then she throws me that look goofy grin on her face like I'm dumb or something. Or Cat may be studying politics and the whole Maori studies thing, and she may call herself an academic. But I'd call her 5 ft 10 of hot smoking anger, which is why I almost feel sorry for her. She's the right stuff to become a leader, like the other Maori in the movement, like Denny, like Uncle and Nanny Pearl. Only Cat doesn't have the gene or whatever it is for fear, and sooner or later, all that uppity and all that confidence and all that risk taking is going to end us in a whole lot of trouble. What can I do? When she moved into the flat with her wilting philodendron, she was just another dyke looking for a cat friendly vegetarian house close to uni. Now Jasmine and me had no idea what could happen to a person enrolled in Maori studies. In 18 months, our flatmate became a formerly fledged radical activist, filling the house with books and posters, labels on everything and a whole lot of talk about the treaty. Turns out that Cat's Mom had been too busy with their dry cleaning business in to Give Cat much in the way of and let alone the ins and outs of the Treaty of Waitangi. She's already told me a bit about herself that her mom was a hungry business woman, and her step dad knew every trick in the book for removing stains. There's a satisfied chuckle beside me. Kat's been thinking up slogan. She's pleased with her self and tells me what to write on the wall. Next thing she's chuck in her bag in the gutter, leaps up and stamps her high tops on the pavement. No point sitting around freezing our asses. Come on, Charlie, get going, eh? Stands there with her hands on her hips like she's waiting like I'm the one holding things up the wall of the liquor shop is under eaves and dry enough to take a hit. I give my can a hard shake, tensing at the sound as the ball bearing does its inside the can at 1000 decibels can't be helped. You don't shake, you get a clogged nozzle, and if you rush, you'll throw the letters up nice and big at the start, only to have them bunch at the end. Which leaves the whole slogan looking like some sad fuck doodle on a pencil case. So it's critical that pause to have the picture clear in your mind before you hit the nozzle. No point telling cat to pause. She'll attack the wall with paint. Never mind that has 18 letters, each one needing space to breathe. Next day, Kat's message will be sitting there. Let us rammed up where she's run out of war and the whole thing looking like a graffiti train wreck. Minutes go by nothing but the night closing around us. Go for it, she says. Then something in Maori. While I get to work, she stands behind me once again practising her Maori on someone who doesn't know as she likes to say a from a mhm long, even strokes red venom hissing on to white. I've had plenty of spelling mistakes and smear ups in the past, but this one's a nice white wall. Yeah. My what? Thank you, Julie. Amazing. I'm heading straight home to put out some spray cans and say, uh and finally, I would like to, uh, welcome Madeleine Reid. Uh, Madeleine graduated from Auckland University's creative writing school and has been accepted into a master's of creative writing programme at the prestigious Institute of Modern Letters. As part of the page stream. Congratulations. Uh, she's planning a novel this year. Um, so this is an excerpt from a novel that I'm writing called Dear November. And at this point in the story, Ava, the main character, is having some trouble at work with her boss, who's quite a conservative figure and with a young male guest who won't stop hitting on her even though she has a girlfriend. Pardon my French for the first part. What a complete fucking cow, I said. She threw the covers off the bed and bundled them into a white mound on the carpet. And him she smelled. He's got another thing coming if he thinks he can just play me like a fucking prawn like that prick, you're beautiful and you're angry. Greta, please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. A side and threw herself down into the laundry heap. She let the shirts and dresses cascade over her stomach like a tap and flicked her hair back, casting a brazen look at her girlfriend. It's all right, said Greta, descending too. She kept Ava's head on her arms and began to rock her gently. It will be all right. Soon things will settle down, I promise. How do you know that? Said a. How do you actually know that, though she threw her hands up in the air making a scissor motion. If I'm supposed to work here for the next eight months or so, how am I meant to deal with this? Tell me, Greta. How time will tell, she says. I hope so. She curled around so that a torso was flanked between Greta's hips, her elbows on her knees and her head on her lap. She linked hands with her, enjoyed the smooth and all of her hair being played with and the other woman's breath fluttering against her neck. She kissed her slowly at first and then harder. They kissed until their mouths were cupped and the sweat was beating and their hands were tighter on each other's waists, tugging for something unfound, uniquely, uniquely, un graspable for all of the love and all of the passion administered in those silent meetings in the hallways, shoulders colliding, feet shuffling and tapped on the scuffing lunchroom tables, they both felt giddy and drunk like they were still at high school together, meeting secretly in the music block, practise rooms and having sex with the lights off, the door fastened and the bass drum rolling and rattling away in a dull, harmonious sud. Wait, wait, stop Greta pulling away. What is it? A. Pulled herself out on the bed, reaching desperately for the straps on her puffin glass. They were thick and difficult to undo. Her hands were trembling. I've got this stupid class, said Greta. Suddenly, I've got this class I have to teach now, she motioned to the clock. I only just noticed the time Ava glanced over. It was 7 15 outside the night, air, blinkered through the porter and waves of compressed notes a child falling off their skis, a two in one of the fir trees cooing like New Zealand's only owl. Damn it, she thought. God damn it, Greta. Well, I guess I'm going to the markets in. She pulled her sweater on, hugging it around her angrily. I hope you have a good class. A wait. Don't worry about it, she said, smiling. She kissed her on the powdered cheek and smiled again. I'll be fine. Out on my own. Queenstown hosted a fortnightly night market, selling stools of white fu and oiled spring rolls and candles that smell like time and wick. There were strands of lights roped in, loops across the telephone poles shining luminously from flowered paper boats and taffy cradles. Everywhere was roaring. Everyone was keen. Large groups of fitting teenagers gathered by the central bridge, B puffing Marlborough lights like they were the coolest things out. After Winona Rider in the nineties, Eva walked past him and killed her laugh. She bet they hadn't seen reality bites down by the throat of waterfront. She walked, feeling sad and lonely. She learned on the port side rail, watching the glowing water in our chemical moon. It was beautiful and translucent and wild, like something you couldn't clasp properly. Like something you couldn't see. She fished out her phone, scrolling through the dials and read again. One missed call from Mum. Thank you. Thank you, Madeline. A clear evocation of now, Finally, uh, I would like to invite, uh, Ron Brownson to the podium. Uh, as many of you will know, uh, Ron is a senior curator at the Auckland Art Gallery. Uh, he's going to present an acknowledgement of David Brown for just a few moments. A few minutes. I'd like to remember David Linden Brown. Um, he would be here today, but he's not because he's dead. He died on the 30th of December last year. I met David in February 1971 and I remember kind acts and I He was very kind to me in, uh, 1971. And so what I'd like to do today is just say some things from his writings so that we can just remember him because David has mentored a lot of people as a writer. He had a wonderful service at the Hearn Bay. Um pa pa club. I've never been there before, but um as I was going there, I stopped off at, um, Dominion Books. And in the window was, uh, Vladimir Nabokov's, um, memoir of his time in Russia. Speak memory. So, in a sense, I suppose, the tone that I'd like to take today and thank you, Peter for asking me is one of speak memory. David came to writing later in life. He when he was, in that phrase of his parents' generation, middle aged. He was, firstly, a visual artist, but a somewhat secret and reclusive one. Although David held a number of exhibitions, he never really promoted the fact that he'd been making paintings. In many ways, his paintings were analogues to his writings. His paintings really served as illustrations of moods and relationships operating like visual poems. And I've always felt David's paintings share the presence of yearning communicated best by this phrase. My deep dark pain is love. David's most confident creative medium was as a short story writer and as a poet, he wrote his uh 2007 novella marked Men as an extended narrative, and the book's blurb described it as an eerie novel, taking quote adventure into the realm of crime, sudden disappearances and the violent fantasies of longing. Here is the novella's first two sentences and its final sentence. Not many people know how or when the Institute of Pain began. Just about everyone knows how it finished. The last sentence is really one of the best sentences, David wrote. Come here, I said to the boy and tell me some lies about yourself. David was a fine tuned scopophilia. He was addicted to looking. The cover of his 2009 book of poems, Skin Hunger, has the book's title and his own name projected onto the flesh of a male torso. This is an image that had had to be dreamed of before it was made and carefully preplanned before it was photographed in dark light, David wrote in the Dialect of Desire. Desire is a dialect he uses for all his writing, and it adds stings to his phrasing. From neighbourhood Watch your smoke signals lure me to the balcony reflected in the glass balustrade. I see your hand cigarette poised. I see your stomach. I see the nipples of your chest. Your head is cut off. David cherished the writings of Walt Whitman and Constantine Cava. Like those poets, he was inspired by yearning by craving by wanting by thirsting the title poem. Skin Hunger articulates this need. This poem is written in mucus. It is written in Come, it is written in tears. The poem is about you. This poem is about the span of you, the way you hinge and flex your sublime architecture. This poem is about the grip of you, your caress, your approaches and withdrawals. This poem is about the alliance. No, the allegiance of skin, The prints you left, the little damages. It is not finished. David Lindon Brown's books are hard to find. All were printed in small runs by boutique publishers or some were self published. Few people and few libraries own complete sets of his publication. That's a sad fact, I think. David began his writing in the 19 nineties, and his first collection of stories is the 2001 Calling the Fish and Other Stories. And to prepare this, I reread everything David wrote that had been published, and I really recommend if you haven't read it for a while. Calling the fish needs to be returned to was followed by Mark man in 2007 last year, David told me that he was working on a novel that he thought could never be published. I don't know what the future of that manuscript will be, and some of you will know that during the last couple of years, David wrote four really perceptive reviews and thank you, William Dart for inviting those to happen for Art New Zealand. He recounts one story that he learned from Douglas Wright that could also have been about himself. And I asked Douglas if I could read this, and he's quite happy about it. So this is this is David. Recalling Douglas's story, Wright tells me that when he was a little boy growing up in the South Auckland township of he had an overwhelming urge to dance in suburban New Zealand in the 19 sixties. This was inconceivable. As Wright's mother, Pat, says, and haunting Douglas. It just wasn't done. Boys played rugby, end of story. So Wright sublimated this urge into gymnastics, the old the closest sport there is to dance, and at this naturally, Douglas excelled. When this excellence was rewarded or praised, Wright's classmates would sidle up, murmuring shame shame, shame, Of course, those boys knew instinctively what little Douglas was up to. They knew that beneath the obfuscation of gymnastics lay something unspeakable, and they felt compelled by tradition and the culture of the land to censure him for a daring to excel and B exemplifying the sissy. I want to read four very brief extracts from four stories and calling the fish the first paragraph of cracked. You want to grow some skin. That's what you want to do. Godfrey Sweet sliced a potato in half and inserted a slither of butter. He waited for the butter to melt and then quartered it. And some teeth, she continued. And some guts. Godfrey proceeded to bisect a sausage. Sometimes he wondered why he'd ever bothered to get married. David adored the space between words written and since taken, and this is a technique well used by who hung meaning to on the gap between meaning and suggestibility. That, as you all know, is one of the essences of camp demarcated by Susan Sontag in David's favourite essay, where Susan writes to snare a senses and words, especially one that is alive and powerful, one must be tentative and nimble. And here is the opening to Spanish steps, which is about Kerry Lee, who was David's closest friend at Elam Art school. And Kerry's mother came to New Zealand with my mother. So I knew Kerry well when I was a child, Kerry rattles his Bangles. He threads them onto his right wrist when he drives the bod car to lend glamour to his hand signals. The car is an ugly shaped vlo painted a raucous Fanta colour, the sort of car that could have flames spurting up its sides, the kind that real men drive. With a sneer and an elbow out the window, the Bangles add a free song. For David, that short story was both reportage and evidence. It's a memory of Kerry's provocations, where he laughed off the way gay men were treated in New Zealand in the 19 sixties. Irony is a vehicle Camp Perspectives. David's story, The Mortification of Henry James begins. Henry James was a man of impeccable habits. He was pure of heart and clean of body. Each day. He rose at least two hours before he was due to start work in order to present a pleasant appearance after a light breakfast of one of three cereals he ate in strict rotation. He took a full bath and then rinsed himself under the shower because he had heard somewhere that the Japanese ER race he held in high regard for their cleanliness were horrified at the Western custom of just stepping out of a bath full of one's own filth. He then took a fresh towel, dried himself carefully and slipping into this powder blue terry cloth kimono approached the mirror. Henry James took great pleasure in the ritual of shaving, a procedure most men find irks. He loved the way that the stubble came away beneath the blade, leaving his skin soft and glowing pink. I think every word in that paragraph has been so carefully chosen that we recognise the elegant of thickness tinged with the tonality of committed narcissism. David's writings cherish human foibles, as if he, if as if they were secrets, proving we are real. His powers of observation mirror our discomfort, especially when we find it difficult to cope with appearances that signal difference aloneness that would signal uniqueness, that specialness of individuality that can, for some people, also be a visible visual cross which they wear. And, um, the story of hope is a story washed with challenging moments of pain and triumph that begins hope. Fuller was not only cursed with that name, she was afflicted with a Port Weinstein that ran down the side of her nose and bled onto her cheek. This defect had not only marred her looks. It has also disfigured her personality hope. Fuller easily took Umbridge and was quick to point out the shortcomings of others. It was as though her birth mark had given her special privilege to criticise, and she made no attempt to cover up the market and sometimes seemed to flaunt it by choosing a matching shade of lipstick. It looked as if in a fit of madness or boredom, she had scribbled in the middle of her great big face. And then the story concludes, the only sound to be heard in the aisles of Pack and Save was the Musa version of the way we were. The customers shuffled and stared, the handprints stinging, hopeful as Cheeks merged with her birth mark so that it looked as if she was wearing a purple veil and a kind of trance. She retrieved the cash register, plugged it and sat down to the checkout store and began automatically passing the backlog of groceries over the scanner and gradually soothed by the rhythm of her vocation, the look of her face metamorphosis from one of fury to one of ineffable victory. So I reckon David Linden Brown had much more writing within him. When speaking of the novel he was writing, he described how he would use it raw, and it would use raw and honest language. I saw in David's eyes that look. I long remembered the look of curiosity, the look of defiance and the look of self-worth. There are other parts of David's life, which I have not mentioned this afternoon. Many of you will be aware of his creative mentoring of others. We remember you, David. Thank you so much. Ron. That was wonderful. Uh, we really have run out of time. Um, I would like to remind you all that our writers will be sitting out at the signing table. I think they all have books out there. They're more than welcome to purchase or just come and chat with them. Ask them questions. Thank you very very much for attending much. Appreciate it. The full transcription of the recording ends. A list of keywords/tags describing the recording follow. These tags contain the correct spellings of names and places which may have been incorrectly spelt earlier in the document. The tags are seperated by a semi-colon: 1960s ; 1970s ; 1980s ; 1990s ; 2000s ; 2010s ; 2020s ; AIM Best First Book Award ; Alternative Bindings ; Andrew Rumbles ; Aorewa Mcleod ; Aotearoa New Zealand ; Art New Zealand ; Auckland ; Auckland Art Gallery ; Auckland University of Technology ; Australia ; Bertha ; Brendan Were ; Calling the Fish and Other Stories (book) ; Canada ; Casting Off ; Christchurch ; Coming Up ; Constantine Cavafy ; Cracked (short story) ; Dare Truth or Promise (book) ; David ; David Lyndon Brown ; Dear November ; Douglas Wright ; Elam School of Fine Arts (Auckland) ; Events ; Family Portraits ; Field Punishment No. 1 (tv) ; Four Artists with Cups (poem) ; France ; Genderless ; Germaine Greer ; German ; Gina Cole ; God ; Haunting Douglas (documentary) ; Heather McPherson ; Herne Bay Petanque Club (Auckland) ; Homer ; Ika ; Imogen (poem) ; International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) ; Jade du Preez ; James Wallace ; Joann Loulan ; Joe ; Julie Helean ; Katherine Mansfield ; Katherine Mansfield Short Story Awards ; Keri Hulme ; LGBT ; Lambda Literary Awards ; Landfall (journal) ; Lesbian Sex (book) ; Lily of the Valley (short story) ; Lippy Pictures ; London ; Madeline Reid ; Manukau Institute of Technology ; Marcia Quackenbush ; Marked Men (book) ; Mary Daly ; Mary Stanley ; Matt Wort ; Michael Giacon ; Michelle Durey ; Misjudged (short story) ; My Lover Moves (poem) ; Māori ; National Poetry Slam ; Neighbourhood Watch (book) ; New Zealand First ; New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards ; Nod Ghosh ; Otago ; Out Walked Mel (book) ; PAK'nSAVE ; Pacific ; Pakeha ; Paula Boock ; People ; PoetryLive at the Thirsty Dog (Auckland) ; Pride ; Pride parade ; Queenstown ; Radio New Zealand ; Re-Draft ; Reality Bites (film) ; Robert Burns Fellowship (University of Otago) ; Ron Brownson ; Ruby Porter ; Russia ; Sam Orchard ; Samesame But Different (2016) ; Semira Davis ; Sesqui 1990 ; Sestina (poem) ; Seven Lesbians and a Bar of Soap (short story) ; Sex Poems With No Bra On (poem) ; Skin Hunger (book) ; Space ; Spanish Steps (short story) ; Speak, Memory (book) ; Spiral (journal) ; State Highway 1B (poem) ; Steven Joyce ; Stuck at the Lights (poem) ; Stuff ; Susan Sontag ; Tangiwai - A Love Story (tv) ; Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington ; Te Reo Māori ; Tea Cups (poem) ; The Blue Lawn (book) ; The Bone People (book) ; The Female Eunuch (book) ; The Insiders Guide To Happiness (tv) ; The Mortification of Henry James (short story) ; The Open Accounts of an Honesty Box (book) ; The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse ; The Strip (tv) ; The Triumph of Hope (short story) ; Tino Rangatiratanga ; Tiriti o Waitangi / Treaty of Waitangi ; Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF) ; University of Auckland ; University of Otago ; Until Proven Innocent (tv) ; Vladimir Nabokov ; Waitangi ; Wallace Arts Trust Prize for Short Fiction ; Walt Whitman ; We the Ones ; Wellington ; Who Was That Woman, Anyway? (book) ; William Dart ; William Taylor ; Winona Ryder ; Youth ; activism ; addiction ; agenda ; artist ; arts ; attack ; attraction ; awards ; bear ; beating ; bird ; birthmark ; blood ; board ; bonnet ; books ; boredom ; bottom ; breasts ; bro'Town (tv) ; broken ; bus ; camp ; capitalism ; career ; cars ; cartoons ; casting ; cats ; celebration ; change ; cheese ; children ; church ; class ; clothing ; code ; collective ; coming out ; community ; competition ; confidence ; consciousness raising ; conservative ; conversation ; covenant ; crime ; culture ; cum ; dance ; death ; defiance ; desire ; difference ; dog ; dream ; dresses ; eating ; emotional ; energy ; environment ; exhibition ; experiment ; face ; faith ; family ; fantasy ; fashion ; fat ; fear ; feminism ; fire ; fishing ; flying ; food ; french ; friends ; fun ; future ; gallery ; gay ; gender ; governance ; graffiti ; grandparents ; grief ; growing up ; gymnastics ; hair ; happiness ; hate ; health ; hell ; heterosexual ; history ; hit ; honesty ; hope ; horse ; hospice ; hotel ; human rights ; humanity ; identity ; individual ; inspiration ; journal ; journey ; knowledge ; labels ; ladies ; language ; laundry ; law ; leather ; legs ; lesbian ; lifestyle ; love ; lover ; lust ; macho ; mainstream ; marriage ; mary ; media ; meetings ; memoir ; mental health ; mirror ; misogyny ; mistakes ; mistress ; mobility ; music ; narcissism ; narrative ; news ; orgasm ; other ; outreach ; pain ; painting ; pants ; parade ; pardon ; parents ; passing ; passion ; piercing ; plan ; planes ; poetry ; police ; policy ; politics ; posters ; prince ; privilege ; profile ; publishing ; punishment ; queer ; questioning ; racism ; radio ; reading ; relationships ; representation ; research ; respect ; ritual ; rugby ; running ; runway gay ; sad ; scholarship ; school ; scopophilia ; self help ; self publish ; sex ; sexism ; sexuality ; shade ; shame ; shopping ; short story ; sin ; sissy ; sleep ; smile ; smiling ; smoking ; soap ; social ; softball ; spaces ; sport ; sprung ; stall ; stickers ; straight ; strength ; struggle ; suicide ; support ; teacup ; technology ; teeth ; tension ; the unfortunate experiment ; tikanga ; time ; top ; touch ; tough ; tradition ; trans ; transgender ; treaty ; trick ; trust ; truth ; understanding ; uniqueness ; university ; visual arts ; voice ; voyeurism ; walking ; water ; website ; wind ; wine ; women ; work ; writing. The original recording can be heard at this website https://www.pridenz.com/now_and_then_same_same_but_different.html. The master recording is also archived at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand.  For more details visit their website https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ecatalogue.1089698. Please note that this document may contain errors or omissions - you should always refer back to the original recording to confirm content.