Embargoed until 6.00 pm
Tuesday 18 September 2007

Rt Hon Helen Clark
Prime Minister

Creative New Zealand’s
Prime Minister’s Literary Awards

Premier House
Tinakori Rd
Wellington

6.00 pm

Tuesday 18 September 2007

It is a great honour to welcome to Premier House tonight New Zealand writers, their families and friends, and members of the wider community which supports them.

Tonight we celebrate the fifth Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement.

The past year has seen more New Zealand writers acknowledged at home and abroad and more initiatives to promote our literature.

New Zealand Book Month, taking place this month, is but one of these initiatives. I'm sure that many in this room will have recently purchased a six-pack that has nothing to do with a widely consumed beverage! That six-pack and New Zealand Book Month are all about raising awareness of, and celebrating the diversity and quality of, New Zealand books and writers.

Witi Ihimaera has referred to our "literary whakapapa". That phrase evokes awareness of the blend of cultures and traditions which have produced the essence of New Zealand writing in the 21st century.

Many of the topics and themes of our writings flow around the markers of our Pacific status. Our writers use words and images drawn from our lands and seas and the people who have travelled across them for many generations.

In our literary whakapapa we recite names like Mansfield, Mulgan, or Mason; Baxter, Sargeson or Curnow. More recently, we have included the writers honoured each year with the Prime Minister's Awards: Michael King, Hone Tuwhare, and Janet Frame, the first recipients; and the nine names added to the list since.

Today, our literary kaumātua – our leading writers – take on multiple roles, foremost as workers in words, but also as mentors, advisers and promoters of our literature. They play a crucial part, in word and deed, in encouraging emerging writers to develop their voices, in sustaining published writers, and in forming bonds of friendship with counterparts overseas.

There are those, like Lloyd Jones right now, who are making their impact felt on international competitions and awards. Others, like one of last year's Prime Minister's Award winners, Margaret Mahy, have been rewarded for a lifetime of internationally-appealing work (Margaret won the prestigious Hans Christian Anderson Author's Award last year).

New Zealand writers toured France last year, speaking about their work, as stars of Les Belles Etrangères, the prestigious French literary festival.

Kirsty Gunn, currently teaching at Dundee University, has been named inaugural winner of the Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year award. Tessa Duder is off to Antarctica in October; and Sarona Aiono-Iosefa is on a Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writers' residency in Hawai'i.

Looking further into the future, I'm told that the prestigious Harvard Review will include a special section in its Fall 2008 issue, dedicated to New Zealand fiction. The section will be published in association with the Centre for New Zealand Studies in London and is a great opportunity to raise the profile of our literature internationally.

These are all encouraging signs for the future of New Zealand literature, for gaining it international exposure, and for inspiring new generations of New Zealand writers.

Since 2003, the Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement have been made annually to three New Zealand writers who have written a body of work which has received national acclaim and/or international recognition.

Five years on, these Awards are an established part of the many ways in which we celebrate New Zealand writers.

The award-winners this year collectively demonstrate an extensive, innate knowledge of our land and our peoples; our values and our tensions.

Each recipient is at a stage in their literary life where it is highly appropriate that we pay tribute to their achievements as very significant contributors to New Zealand literature.

It gives us all tremendous pleasure to see recognition through these awards to these outstanding New Zealand literary figures.

I would like to acknowledge and congratulate all those at Creative New Zealand who play such a big role in the administration, nomination and selection processes for the Awards. Thanks also, to Catherine (Chidgey), Finlay (MacDonald), and Jock (Phillips), who have served as the panel of judges this year.

Before I move on to the awards, I also congratulate Neville Peat, on being the recipient of the 2007 Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers' Fellowship. Good luck with your work Neville, over the next two years.

The announcement of the names of new recipients of the Awards for Literary Achievement is always an eagerly-awaited moment in this Awards ceremony.

So … … let us begin!

SCRIPTS PROVIDED BY CREATIVE NEW ZEALAND
TO BE READ OUT BY THE PRIME MINISTER AS SHE ANNOUNCES THE RECIPIENTS

The first award this evening – the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in NON-FICTION – goes to a writer who has had a long and distinguished career as both an historian and a journalist.

Described as an original and independent writer of New Zealand history, this author has followed his own path, pursuing areas of interest which haven’t necessarily reflected what is popular at the time.

His histories have brought new perspectives to a range of episodes in New Zealand’s past. Always thoroughly researched, his books include regional histories, biographies, and autobiography.

He is perhaps best known for being the author of what is considered to be one of New Zealand’s most influential books. Reprinted eight times, this history brought events at Parihaka into the nation’s consciousness for the first time.

The Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in NON-FICTION 2007 is awarded to DICK SCOTT.

Congratulations Dick.

The Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in POETRY goes to a leader in the field of New Zealand poetry.

This poet has had a significant influence on contemporary New Zealand poetry and literature – not only through his own writing – but through his work as a critic, anthologist, broadcaster and teacher.

His poems are described as ‘elliptical’ and ‘enigmatic’ and he writes with skill, wit and wordplay. His work appears in many international journals. He is described as ‘consciously a New Zealander… weaving his nationality into his verse.’

He has published many collections of poems, winning the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry four times. He has won the Montana Book Award for poetry, been a Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate, and a Katherine Mansfield Fellow.

Awarded an Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2005, he was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to literature the same year.

The Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in POETRY 2007 is awarded to BILL MANHIRE.

Congratulations Bill.
Finally, the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in FICTION 2007 goes to an inventive and experimental author who pushes the boundaries with her writing.

She's an author who's been described as one of New Zealand's most versatile; while her work is never the same, it is always of a high quality.

Her writing has the rare feature of being both witty and profound.

A writer of plays, poetry, short stories and novels, she is the recipient of a number of New Zealand book awards including the Mobil Award for Best Radio Drama, the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award, the American Express Award, and the New Zealand Book Award for fiction.

She has held several residencies, including the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship in Menton and the inaugural Rathcoola Residency in Ireland.

In 2007, her latest novel and a collection of her poems.

The Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in FICTION 2007 is awarded to FIONA FARRELL.

Congratulations Fiona

Ends

© Scoop Media