Orangutans, Wood Pigeons and Dark Spirits

Wednesday 11 November 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Orangutans, Wood Pigeons and Dark Spirits:

4th Floor 2009 is launched

www.whitireia.ac.nz/4thfloor

Whitireia Community Polytechnic’s new issue of 4th Floor, the online literary journal featuring writing from the Creative Writing Programme, is launched for eager web-readers today. This year’s edition is not only bristling with well-known authors and talented up-and-comers, it features a creative cast of unusual characters in strange configurations and situations.

‘There’s longing and nostalgia, there’s sudden romance and drenching rainstorms,’ says editor, Hinemoana Baker. ‘There’s kererÅ« in gourds and wedding receptions gone horribly wrong. There are river-crossing orangutans, elephants disappearing at the Hippodrome and airports suddenly flooded with men in skirts. One of the most intriguing characters, though, as you’d hope with any good anthology, is the language itself,’ says Baker, ‘and the ways it comes alive in the stories and poems.’

Some of these writers are exploring exciting imaginative territory, she says, while others are bringing the familiar into a new focus. ‘The silence between us feels huge,’ writes Fay Cameron, ‘like maybe we’ll learn to talk in another decade or two…I’ve been told fourteen-year-old girls are like this.’ Poet Jo Thorpe asks the reader to follow ‘the wind-spool...Then, when you’re nearing core, embrace the beautiful danger…’. In a poem called ‘Dark Spirits’, Natasha Dennerstein writes: ‘You chew on half a toothpick which you snatched off the bar before you staggered out of your own daughter's wedding. That was before you slapped the mother of the groom on the arse. That was before you tried to unfold the allegedly folding bicycle you bought from The Warehouse …’

4th Floor has, for several years, offered an eclectic and impressive range of new writing, showcasing the Creative Writing Programme’s best and brightest emerging talents. This year’s edition also features writing from some of the lecturers, tutors and guest speakers who’ve helped build the programme, among them Barbara Else, Rachel Bush and 2002 New Zealand Poet Laureate Elizabeth Smither.

Several of the showcased writers are currently completing the prestigious MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters. There’s also writing from Kapiti writers Apirana Taylor and Helen Heath, and Wellington author Mandy Hager, all of whom have recently launched new books.

Editor Hinemoana Baker is a multi-talented artist whose poetry was a personal favourite of Lord of the Rings star, Viggo Mortenson. His publishing house, Perceval Press partnered with Victoria University Press and published mātuhi | needle in 2004. In 2007 she co-edited Kaupapa, a collection of political poetry from some of New Zealand’s best poets.Â

Hinemoana has just returned from three months in Australia as Arts Queensland Poet in Residence. She was assisted with 4th Floor by students of the Whitireia Publishing Programme, who copy-edited, content-managed and designed a new look for this year’s journal.

ends

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