Ngā Pātaka Kōrero - Auckland Libraries

Rewi Alley, a quiet bloke from Canterbury, a dabbler in poetry, a farmer, fireman and soldier went "to go and have a look at China" and ended up becoming the architect of one of the world's greatest labour movements. In her book A Communist in the Family: Searching for Rewi Alley, Rewi's cousin Elspeth Sandys presents a layered biography of the Kiwi who became a Chinese hero and "the great friend...

150 years on from the original landmark study of New Zealand’s birdlife, Buller’s Birds were re-imagined and J G Keulemans re-discovered in Geoff Norman Buller’s Birds of New Zealand. This revision and revisiting of Walter Buller’s original ornithological study includes exquisitely reproduced water-colours by JG Keulemans, the most renowned ornithological artist of the 19th century. In this Going...

This session from 2013 is titled after the first line of Peter Bland’s poem The Pond, Here Comes that Childhood Pond Again. The conversation between poet, writer, actor and playwright Peter Bland and poet, blogger, and anthologist Paula Green traverses the world of childhood, children’s poetry and writing with warmth, wit and word-play as they frame the world through a poet’s eye. In what is (as n...

Marilyn Waring delivered the Gala Night oratory at the Going West Books and Writers Festival in 2002, speaking to the theme Tracking the Vernacular. Made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2020, and a former politician, scholar, feminist, farmer, author, academic, and activist for female human rights and environmental issues , Waring is an exceptional and inspiring New Zealander...

In her prizewinning debut novel Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings Tina Makereti confronts the complexities of cultural heritage, the past and the present, and Moriori, Māori and Pakeha identity. The novel is a compelling, powerful and haunting work. In 2014, Makereti came to Going West to discuss her book live on stage with colleague, scholar and poet Selina Tusitala Marsh - who began the session with a...

Roger Shepherd, the founder of iconic Kiwi independent record label Flying Nun, joins lifelong music fan, journalist and TV personality John Campbell to share the story of his life with the independent and much loved music label that has been taking the sounds of Aotearoa New Zealand to the world for nearly 40 years. For a worldwide community of music fans, Flying Nun is one of the most iconic ind...

Dame Anne Salmond and Moana Maniapoto take to the Going West stage for a kōrero on Salmond’s landmark publication Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds. They discuss the convergence of Te Ao Māori and Western thinking in Aotearoa, helping us to inform our future together. Salmond’s book explores how lessons from the past can inform our future, providing us new ways of tackling global challenge...

Science fiction writer Phillip Mann, in conversation with journalist and sci fi fan David Larsen, discusses his writing process, the influence of the New Zealand landscape on his work, and the story of having his extraordinary science fiction novel The Disestablishment of Paradise published. He describes this novel as 'a vindication of love'. Despite 40 years of writing, Mann revealed an astonishi...

In her striking work of creative nonfiction What Lies Beneath, novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter and playwright Elspeth Sandys shares her voyage into memoir and its complex relationship with memory. At Going West in 2015, Sandys was joined in conversation by old friend and Festival founder Murray Gray. Eloquent and humorous, she talks of her search for an emotional truth, uncovering the s...

Dame Fiona Kidman’s award winning novel This Mortal Boy, about the life and death of the real life ‘jukebox killer’ 18 year old Albert (Paddy) Black, has been described as remarkable and compelling. It is a masterpiece from one of New Zealand’s finest writers. In conversation with broadcaster and writer Karyn Hay, she discusses the story of Albert Black and his place in New Zealand’s social histor...

Acclaimed New Zealand writer Witi Ihimaera launched his memoir Native Son at Going West in 2019. He gave a powerful and emotional reading from the book, with sonic accompaniment by the multi-instrumentalist Kingsley Spargo. At Going West, we were extremely honoured to host the launch, for what was the second installment of Ihimaera’s planned three-part memoir. To mark the occasion, he read an evoc...

Journalist, media host and food critic Jesse Mulligan interviews journalist, literary editor and anti-food-snobbery advocate Steve Braunias about his book, The Man Who Ate Lincoln Road. In 2016, Braunias set himself a challenge: to eat at, and write about, every fast food outlet on Henderson’s Lincoln Road. Once the centre of the West Auckland wine industry, Lincoln Road has changed vertiginously...

Music and poetry are almost always part of the opening night of Going West, and this performance from 2017 brought the two together in a remarkable set of spoken and sung poetry and jazz - Small Holes In The Silence. The poems performed, in order are: Rain by Hone Tuwhare Warehouse Curtains by Bill Manhire Wild Iron by Allen Curnow - By kind permission of Tim Curnow Blue Rain by Alistair Campbell...

Going West’s Sir Graeme Douglas Orator in 2015 was writer Stephanie Johnson. Addressing the festival theme, Holding the Line, Stephanie delivered a hilarious and biting satire of neoliberalism in New Zealand, donning a wig to take on the parodic character of Amanda *Tauiwi Reinhardt Carlton, the ‘National Party Poet Laureate’. * Tauiwi is a Māori word for non-Māori, used here by Johnson to poke a...

In 2014 Anne Kennedy was selected as the Going West Books and Writers Festival Curnow Reader, a gala night honour bestowed each year on a poet of prominence. Anne speaks of what poet Allen Curnow’s work means to her as both a reader and a writer, commenting that his work grappled with the particularity of place, of history and imagination. Appropriately she begins with Curnow’s much-loved poem The...

This recording is from the second Going West Festival in 1997, but in some ways it is where it all began. What co-founder Murray Grey envisioned, and pitched to fellow founders Naomi McCleary and Bob Harvey, was simple: Maurice Gee reading from his novel Going West, on a train as it travelled west. Gee’s novel Going West, which gave the festival its name, was the Goodman Fielder Watties Book Award...

Russell Brown and Colin Hogg discuss Colin’s book The High Road, an exploration of legal marijuana culture in America, and its implications for Aotearoa. Interested in how legalisation was playing out in the USA, Colin Hogg hit the road to see what moral decline had descended upon those parts of America where the drug is now legal. As high times hit America with laws shifting and attitudes changin...

Business journalist Rod Oram was the Sir Graham Douglas Orator for 2017, and shook off all preconceptions of what he might do by delivering what Metro magazine described as an “impassioned performance” as part of the “opening night of the year”. This piece is highly poetic and jumps backwards and forwards in time, with extensive quotes from diverse characters from the history of Tāmaki Makaurau. A...

With ruthless wit and compelling insights gained as a writer and writing teacher, Paula Morris argues that the skilled use of language is a more powerful ally for writers than ideas or feelings. She draws on persuasive examples of technique grounded in human experience. Paula (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an acclaimed novelist, memoirist, short story writer and creative writing teacher. An insightf...

Tu is the inspired pairing of two powerful New Zealand artists who share a passion for fusing Māori electronic dub music with a politically conscious edge. Prior to Going West 2018, Tu had only been seen by international audiences. Our festival opening night was the first chance to see this remarkable collaboration between Moana Maniapoto and Paddy Free live in Aotearoa. Moana, singer/songwriter a...

As part of an outstanding opening night, poet Selina Tusitala Marsh delivered an electric live poetry reading at Going West 2017. That year we were forced to relocate Going West to the former Waitakere City Council chambers in Henderson, after lightning caused a fire at our longstanding home in the Titirangi War Memorial Hall. Then the newly minted Poet Laureate, Selina delivered her own lightning...

For the very first session at the very first Going West Festival in 1996, it felt appropriate to open with the first language of Aotearoa, te reo Māori, with a session on Māori oral and written literature called Breathing Words. We were very proud to bring three stellar Māori voices to the stage to explore important Māori oral and acoustic traditions through te reo and taonga pūoro, and examine ho...

Earlier this year, professional genealogists Michelle Patient and Fiona Brooker joined us via Zoom to celebrate the first anniversary of their fortnightly virtual lounge sessions Talking Family History. In this talk, Michelle and Fiona chat about what led them to start their online sessions; they discuss family history and DNA, share research strategies and provide valuable tips for overcoming bri...

In this talk, family historian Iris Taylor takes us through a brief history of New Zealand nursing up to the First World War. Covering such incidents as the torpedoing of the Marquette which killed New Zealand Nurses, she describes her 2015 pilgrimage to remember these women. Image: New Zealand Nurses, 1916-1917. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 7-A15887. Music: Ketsa. When it all falls.

Alison and Ineka discuss some recently released books that are full of introspection and intensity, loneliness and liberation. They also ask if a book’s typeface can be aggressive. What does that mean? Listen to find out. Books mentioned in this episode can be requested and borrowed by members via Auckland Libraries catalogue and many are available in multiple formats: Broken Hallelujah / Kelli Jo...