Turbine 14 highlights new and established literary talent

Turbine 14 highlights new and established literary talent

New writing from emerging and established writers and the latest graduates of Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) is featured in the 2014 edition of literary journal, Turbine.

The annual online journal offers a sampler of work by 2014 Master's students, alongside poetry and fiction extracts from internationally regarded writers such as Maike Wetzel from Germany, Lesley Wheeler from the United States, and award-winning Kiwi poets Lynn Jenner and Marty Smith.

Victoria University chaplain John Dennison contributes poems from a collection to be co-published in 2015 by Auckland University Press and Carcanet in the United Kingdom.

The 2014 Victoria University/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence Hinemoana Baker talks to Fulbright scholar and poet Max Chapnick about her current project, whether her writing has an implicit or explicit political awareness, the joys of late-night writing, and the similarities between writing and looking after a dog.

Recordings by five poets bring their poems off the page, including work by the 2013 Biggs Family Prize in Poetry winner, Morgan Bach, whose first collection will be published by Victoria University Press in 2015.

Re-imaginings of Greek myth sit alongside geological analyses of Kapiti-coast soil types; a family recipe book provides a basis for an exploration into the Portuguese psyche; toilet humour, shipwrecks and Robert Redford mix with work on Fiji, Samoa and Pacific waves.

This edition of Turbine is characterised by themes of place, identity, safety, memory and connection.

“Turbine continues to demonstrate the vigorous health of contemporary New Zealand poetry, and we can expect to see books by a number of the prose writers who appear here published in future,” says IIML senior lecturer Chris Price.

Turbine 2014 was co-edited by Max L. Chapnick, Ben Egerton and Patrick Hunn.

Turbine can be viewed online at www.victoria.ac.nz/turbine

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