In her new book, distinguished writer and former Te Mata Poet Laureate Elizabeth Smither takes readers on a journey into a writer’s life, using her favourite quotations from other writers as signposts.

The Commonplace Book (Auckland University Press) will capture the attention of the many readers and literary festival attendees interested in seeing inside the mind of a writer.

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Smither makes fascinating connections between her own writing life and the quotations she has selected; the two illuminating each other in ways that are both surprising and appealing.

Leaping from her garden to a favourite café, the library to a dinner party, Paris to Melbourne, racing through first drafts and plodding through proofs, Smither offers a sparkling glimpse into the influences and inspirations of a far-from-commonplace writer.

A “commonplace book” is a repository for a personal collection of other people’s words: quotations, extracts, poems and pensées, the found and overheard. In vogue from the late sixteenth-century, their devotees include John Milton, W H Auden and now Elizabeth Smither.

“Unlike a diary,” Smither explains, “a commonplace book is something to write in when the occasion demands. A quotation presents itself and is written down, perhaps on a scrap of paper, unlike a diary which is written up every day.

“Why one quotation appeals and not another remains a mystery, akin to liking paintings or novels. Sometimes there are curious juxtapositions: the secret order inside the miscellaneous or what might be called serendipity.

“The personal life that appears around and between the entries is influenced by the excerpts which seem to act as guardians: there is an element of self-improvement or aspiration as well as falls from grace.”

Keeping a diary has never appealed to her, she says.

“But the idea of keeping a commonplace book, a collection of miscellaneous quotations, extracts, pensées, interspersed with suppositions, incidents, memories springing from the entries themselves, is something I have always loved. A miscellany of profound or light or provocative items, not all equal in seriousness (wise things need not be ponderous; significant events may present as miniatures) might form the linkages of a life as it is lived. Particularly the life of a writer as it is affected by the writings of others.”

In The Commonplace Book, there are no platitudes or sententious maxims. The quotations that have inspired her range from the pensive to the funny; by the great and famous to the little known; from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to Elizabeth Bennet, Charles Simic to Montaigne, Monty Python to Henry James.

The Commonplace Book was launched last night at The Women’s Bookshop Ponsonby (6 April) and will be launched by David Hill at Poppies New Plymouth on 8 April.

Elizabeth Smither will be appearing at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival in May 2011 as part of the National Library Poets Laureate event.

About the Author
Elizabeth Smither published her first collection Here Come the Clouds when she was in her mid 30s and “at once established a distinctive, even idiosyncratic, poetic manner. The short poem, usually but not always unrhymed, witty, stylish and intellectually curious, has remained her forte...”. (Oxford Companion to NZ Literature). She has since “written some of the best short lyrics ever produced in this country”, according to critic, writer and poet Gregory O’Brien in the NZ Listener.

Elizabeth Smither is the author of five novels, five books of short stories and fifteen books of poetry. She has twice won the major award for New Zealand poetry and was 2002 Te Mata Poet Laureate, the first woman to hold this position. She has held creative writing fellowships and in 2004 she was awarded an honorary DLitt by the University of Auckland and an MNZM. She received the prestigious Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2008.

Her most recent books are The Commonplace Book (AUP, 2011), the novel, Lola (2010), and a short-story collection, The Girl Who Proposed (2008).

A former librarian and journalist, she has spent much of her life in the New Zealand city of New Plymouth where she still lives today.

The Commonplace Book: A Writer’s Journey Through Quotations
By Elizabeth Smither
Published by Auckland University Press
April 2011
PB; RRP $34.99

ENDS

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