I discovered the Pecha Kucha format of presentations on Wednesday night, featuring speakers from the Photography Festival currently running in Auckland. Each speaker shows 20 slides for 20 seconds and speaks at the same time. A simple concept but a good one, the speakers are forced to get to the rub of it all, strip it all back and present in short, succinct...

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We gather things together, hunt them out like magpies, drag them into our rooms and then we sit amongst them, looking about ourselves, happy and feeling well represented. "Skulling white wine while searching for the perfect cottage to rent in turkey (the lycian coast) on a sunday afternoon. getting drunker and more languid and happy I stretched my arms and neck and looked...

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Philip Clairmont, Fireplace, 1970. The Fletcher Trust Collection Since I've arrived back home in New Zealand, and supposedly for 'good', I'm attempting to educate myself on our arts and literature culture, I am embarrassed to say I know next to nothing of it, a few Katherine Mansfield books from school, a couple of well known artists  and several photographers. But I am pretty...

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It is the business of a poet, I think, to be destitute as well as honest. He may have money; but he should recognise that it is dirt. He may have prestige; but let him hate it and wear it like an old filthy coat. Then he may be able to stay awake a little better. Love will not harm him, though. It...

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