ARTS
Has Kiwi Racism Become An Artform?
New Zealand's centrist-libertarian ACT party has criticized the Labour Government for funding the promotion of a racist poem, and calling for the withdrawal of NZ $107,280 in taxpayer money. The poet at the center of the controversy, Tusiata Avia, 56, is a local poet and writer whose Savage Coloniser Book has been adapted into a show for the prestigious Auckland, Tauranga, and Wellington Arts Festivals.
New Zealand born of New Zealand-European and Samoan parents, Avia was schooled locally, then won a Fulbright scholarship, and was artist-in-residence at the University of Canterbury. She received, among other Kiwi government grants, NZ$25,000 as an Arts Foundation Laureate, and was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. So what was Avia's goal in penning this poem? Did she succeed? And was it worthwhile?
My take is that Avia intended to write a provocative 'poem' that would create a furore, enhance her reputation, and attract donors for larger projects. As an apparently privileged pakeha (non-Maori), she wisely chose to misdirect the reader by packaging her work inside a trashy brown rapper. Consider for example the 'voice' of that rapper delivering these lines, (click below to hear brief clips from the work, read by the poet herself):
The tone and cadence put me in mind of a 1980's spray-canned graffiti message I admired on a dilapidated, red-brick Harlem wall: Yo, Bitch, where's mah money? That fellow sure could pen a poetic line. Rap itself became a worldwide phenomenon later. These days, sensitive souls might accuse Avia of cultural appropriation, but no matter. The message of Avia's rapper is not for one lonely prostitute, but for yesteryear explorer Captain James Cook and imagined modern-day colonial males who happen to be white. Other than that, the threat is the same: I'm a victim, and you'll pay when I find you.
Well, yes, Avia truly did finagle a furore, garnish her maverick reputation, and attract donors for larger projects. Art, like truth and beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, of course, so Avia's work may well qualify for that label. But, alas, it is also infinitely more artful and cynical than most readers will ever realize. Who else could use the mask of a sometimes funny but always rage-filled rapper to deftly promote and excuse the killing, cooking and cannibalising of fellow human beings who happen to be white? And, who else, if challenged, via her brown rapper mouthpiece, pretend that it's all just a laugh?
So, was the poetic effort worthwhile? Well, it seems to me that Avia, who clearly knows better, has coarsened the current kiwi debate over what constitutes racism. In the supposed cause of 'decolonisation', she has advocated mayhem and murder on the basis of skin pigmentation, thereby increasing the level of fear on the streets, and diminishing the mana of every New Zealand citizen. Worse though, are the funding bureaucrats. To be fair, well-informed private funders might have been as hard to find as vegan diners feasting upon the roasted carcase of intrepid British Royal Navy explorer, the late Captain James Cook.
The Crown and that infamous Panorama Bashir/Diana Interview
A poetic distillation of Martin Bashir's infamous Panorama interview with Lady Diana (now featured by Netflix in The Crown) has been released online, in the form of an apparently secret recording by Diana herself.
The poem opens with Diana's confession, 'Being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be', then shares the lessons of her marriage, and finishes with a exhortation to 'be a free spirit, hear your heart sing / or call on me, and I will come running.'
The poem first appeared in John Wareham's anthology Sonnets for Sinners (Everything One Needs to Know About Illicit Love), America's #1 bestselling sonnet anthology when released on Valentine's Day 2010.
View 97-second video of Diana love sonnet
View 4-minute video report by noted literary critics here now.
Video of Contentious Critique of Love Triangle Sonnet Now Online
Following the National Arts Club Inquiry into 'non-fiction within fiction' a video of Professor Brian Sutton-Smith's critique of the Chancey On Top sonnets is now online.
In the course of his seven-minute lecture, Professor Sutton-Smith lauds the sonnets as 'poetic gold', but suggests that author and novelist John Wareham did not pen them.
John Wareham, accepted the professor's criticism as a compliment. "I created precisely such a blue-blooded ingenue for my novel, then wrote sonnets in what I imagined might be her voice. So, I thank the professor for believing the character was a flesh and blood person -- the greatest praise, surely, that a critic can pay a novelist."
In the sonnet itself -- 'ThinkingOfYou' -- by way of bidding a final farewell to her all-too married paramour, fictional teenage poet Elan Haverford vividly uses the name of that poem to conjure a melancholy village, which may well claim a place in the heart of every lover. . . . Click this link now for video of Professor Sutton-Smiths' critique and to hear the sonnet itself delivered by noted stage actor, Isobel Mebus.
John Wareham Features in Poetry Slam
Life, Love, Death, and a Meeting with the Grim Reaper
John Wareham is perhaps best known for his sonnets, but in this offbeat slam poem, he shares the bizarre scenes he faced upon returning to his New Zealand homeland, 'that bastion of warrring gangs, and, some say, an alien Land of the Wrong White Crowd.' Tapping into themes of life, love and death, John enters a local New World supermarket and shares ascerbic perspectives on 'wiry, deeply-lined, grim matrons' who 'prod forbidden fruit', 'Kiwi Kenny toyboys' and 'bouncy-blousy Barbie Dolls.' The sight of a 'bayoneted butcher' with a crimson carving knife sparks an apprehension of his own mortality. He then confesses fondness for a 'blood-red Pinot Noir' to quell his fears. When, finally, he comes to pay the piper at the cash register, John engages with none other than the hooded Grim Reaper, who, propped upon his crooked scythe, confides a startling personal message. Listen to John deliver this poem, click here now.
National Arts Club Inquiry Appended to Chancey On Top
Formal inquiry attracts ACLU acclaim, and high praise for sonnets within 'wildly entertaining literary novel'
By way of offering full transparency, a new edition of John Wareham's metafictional novel Chancey on Top appends an allegation of 'literary malfeasance.' The accusation appears in an appended transcript of a formal New York National Arts Club Inquiry into the dilemma of non-fiction within fiction.
Wareham's accuser, Professor Emeritus Brian Sutton-Smith of Penn University, attempted to argue that five sonnets vital to the novel were not written by Wareham, but were the work of an unidentified 'brilliant sensitive British aristocrat lass'. He also criticized a scene involving a sexual liaison between a protagonist and the late Princess Diana.
Professor Sutton-Smith was one of a three-person panel conducting the inquiry into Wareham's novel. Other panellists were Nadine Strossen, chief executive of the American Civil Liberties Union, who hailed the novel as 'brilliant and compelling'; and Charles DeFanti, Kean University professor of literature, who said the work was 'a superb example of Wareham's realist cinematic writing style'.
Asked to comment on the new edition, author John Wareham said, "I can't think of a higher compliment than for a critic of Professor Sutton-Smith's stature to believe that sonnets I created for a work of fiction were in fact penned by a sensitive British aristocrat. So I'm delighted to have this NAC Inquiry appended to my work, it's a perfect fit."
Listen to Haverford Sonnet and Professor Sutton-Smith's critique
To read full Transcript of National Arts Club Inquiry, click here now
A WICKED EVENING OF ILLICIT LOVE ENDS WITH A BANG
Review by Lorraine Steele, Flatiron Press
'A Wicked Evening of Illicit Love', the stage adaptation of John Wareham's anthology of 'Sonnets for Sinners', closed with a bang not a whimper.
Top actors delivering sonnets from classic and modern poets, and contemporary celebrities, drew gasps, sighs and outright hilarity, as the production made good on its promise of 'a night of love, laughter and enlightenment'. Passion, poetry and epiphany indeed played out as a literary voyage chronicled sinners' journeys from attraction and fever, to heartbreak, understanding and transformation.
Their public utterances having been artfully distilled into sonnets by playwright John Wareham, a galaxy of contemporary celebrity sinners came to life on stage and to engage with the likes of William Shakespeare and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Warm applause again punctuated the #metoo line within a Monica Lewinsky sonnet, splendidly delivered by Gail Huff-Brown, wife of American Ambassor Scott Brown.
Enlightenment came in a cluster of memorable closings, with the poignant 'Princess Diana Love Sonnet', and 'In my dream inner spring came rising' by Elan Haverford.
The audience included chief of the Shakespeare Globe Centre Dawn Sanders, eminent playwright Dave Armstrong, and noted Kiwi actor Nick Blake who flew in from Bangkok to catch the show.