Three writers who map the human condition via its intersection with the landscape read and reflect on the significance of place in their work. Californian Robert Hass champions a concept of community that extends to the natural world. He believes environmental beauty must be tended to and that caring for a place means knowing it intimately. Many of Brian Turner’s poems are deeply embedded in the Central Otago landscape he calls home. In 2005, Timeless Land – his collaboration with writer Owen Marshall and painter Grahame Sydney – became a multimedia work (with music by Anthony Ritchie) celebrating the grandeur of the Maniototo. Still deeper south lives Cilla McQueen, who has long explored the landscapes "that we trample / or stroke with our toes or eat or lick / tenderly or pull apart". Her latest poems evoke the textures of life in Bluff and reconstruct her ancestors’ lives on Scotland’s remote St Kilda Island.

 

 

Concession Pass to 15 Writers Upfront sessions of your choice: $150 [FR $140]

 

If this event interests you, you may also like Beyond the Edge of the Alphabet: Janet Frame and Mana Wahine: Strong Women of the Land.

 

16 Mar, 12:10pm