Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Pānui
The Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Pānui (formerly the Book Council Lecture) is a prominent part of the literary landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand. It provides an opportunity for one of our country’s leading writers to discuss an aspect of literature close to their heart.
This event seeks to enlighten – and also to provoke. As James K. Baxter said: “It is reasonable and necessary that… every poet should be a prophet."
2022 / The heart of the matter
Dame Fiona Kidman
Marking the 50th birthday of the organisation, Dame Fiona Kidman’s Pānui, The heart of the matter, spans her own personal reading journey to her job as founding secretary of the then New Zealand Book Council, a career as a celebrated author, and her lifelong love of the written word.
The heart of the matter will take the listener on a journey from Dame Fiona’s childhood, where she learned to read in a Kawakawa hospital, to her instrumental and often hilarious accounts of early Book Council days, where she helped set up the programmes, like Writers in Schools, that continue to make their mark on the literary landscape of this country.
The heart of the matter is a celebration, a history lesson, and most of all, a passionate statement for the importance of reading and how it can transform our lives.
Dame Fiona Kidman is a fiction writer and poet whose first novel A Breed of Women was published in 1979. Since then she has published a wide range of novels, short story collections, poetry and memoir, often exploring women’s lives and themes of social justice.
In 1988 she was made an Officer, Order of the British Empire for services to literature, followed by a Dame Companion New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature in 1998.
Read NZ Te Pou Muramura CEO Juliet Blyth says it’s an honour to have Dame Fiona deliver the Pānui this year.
“As one of the founding members of the then Book Council, her voice is so fitting in this 50th year of our organisation.
“While so much in our country has changed since 1972, we believe Read NZ Te Pou Muramura has stayed true to its original kaupapa, and many of the programmes Dame Fiona helped to establish continue to flourish today,” she says.
The 2022 Pānui was held at the National Library auditorium on November 9.
Audio of Dame Fiona’s Pānui will be available soon.
Download the free ebook or pdf.
Read NZ Te Pou Muramura is grateful for the generous financial support of Luke Pierson in delivering this Pānui.
2021 / If you don’t get your head out of a book, my girl, you’ll end up on Queer Street
The life-changing power of reading and literature is explored in 2021's compelling Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Pānui.
Ōtaki playwright Renée (Ngāti Kahungunu) will deliver If you don’t get your head out of a book, my girl, you’ll end up on Queer Street.
Born in 1929, Renée identifies as a ‘lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals.’ As a leading dramatist, poet and fiction writer, most of her writing is a direct expression of those convictions.
She is best known for her trilogy of plays, Wednesday to Come (1985), Pass it On (1986) and Jeannie Once (1991), which follow four generations of working-class New Zealand women.
In her Pānui, If you don’t get your head out of a book, my girl, you’ll end up on Queer Street, Renée will reflect on the books that shaped her, proving the transformational powers of reading. Books led Renée to discovering ‘Queer Street,’ a scene filled with community, education and action:
‘On Queer Street, we had to struggle and march and smile and shout, we had to sit and talk and argue, we had to read and tell our stories, we had to write a new ending and we had to heal ourselves.’
In 2017, Renée received the Playmarket Award for significant contribution to New Zealand theatre, and in 2018 she was awarded the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement.
More information here.
Download If you don't get your head out of a book, my girl, you'll end up on Queer Street as a PDF
Watch the livestream on our YouTube channel
2020 / If Nobody Listens Then No One Will Know
Ben Brown
The weight of words and the power of reading unheard voices is explored in our 2020 Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Pānui (formerly the Book Council Lecture). If Nobody Listens Then No One Will Know affirms the vital importance of writing, reading and knowing each other through our stories.
Lyttelton poet Ben Brown (Ngāti Māhuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Pāoa) delivered our 2020 address, If Nobody Listens Then No One Will Know, exploring the complex concept of youth justice in Aotearoa.
In early 2020, Brown taught a writing workshop at Te Puna Wai ō Tuhinapo, the Oranga Tamariki Youth Justice Residence facility at Rolleston near Christchurch.
The workshop was part of Writers in Youth Justice, one of our Writers in Communities programmes that take place across the country in different iterations.
This workshop resulted in an anthology of poetry by the YPs (Young People) who took part titled How the F** Did I Get Here, edited by Brown.
Copies of the anthology have been published for youth justice residents and Oranga Tamariki staff, and will soon be available to the public for purchase.
The 2020 Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Pānui was held at the National Library auditorium on November 18.
2019 / Stories from the Wild: Reading and Writing in the Digital Age
Lani Wendt Young
"... ask yourself, who is missing from the conversation? Who should be here, and isn't? Whose voice should be leading this discussion?"
Stories from the Wild: Reading and Writing in the Digital Age is a brave and personal charting of the current realities and possible futures of publishing, reading and writing. In her lecture, Lani addresses representation in literature, gatekeeping in the publishing industry and how emerging digital technologies are disrupting traditional publishing and offering new opportunities for both readers and writers, and, as always, she explores these topics with her distinctive honesty, humour and passion.
Read Stories from the Wild:
PDF version – For reading in your browser or on your PC.
Mobi Version – For reading on your Kindle. To access, right click, select SAVE AS, and then send that file to your Kindle in the usual way.
Epub Version – For reading on your non-Kindle e-reader.
Stories from the Wild: Reading and Writing in the Digital Age was delivered at Wellington High School on August 28, 2019.
2018 / The Power of Story
Joy Cowley
The Power of Story
In her warm and engaging talk The Power of Story, Joy draws on a lifetime’s experience of inspiring children to read.
Recalling her own childhood reading journey, and that of her four children, she describes the circumstances that led her to begin crafting stories for a young audience.
Entwining practical advice on how to spark a love for reading with her thoughts on how the power of story can inspire lifelong learning and critical thinking, Joy speaks to parents, educators and avid readers alike.
Read The Power of Story
Delivered at Te Marae, Te Papa on October 4, 2018.
Owen Marshall
Short stories: yay or neigh?
New Zealand’s foremost short story writer Owen Marshall examines and challenges perceptions around short form literature in his 2017 New Zealand Book Council Lecture. Taking us from attempts to classify the nature of the short story to his personal favourites both past and present, Owen’s thought-provoking lecture will have you questioning: is the short story merely the work of lesser writers? Or at its best, a poetry of prose?
Listen to Owen's lecture on Radio NZ
Delivered at the Wellington Club 2nd November 2017.
2016 / Tala Tusi: The Teller is the Tale
Selina Tusitala Marsh
The Sāmoan word tusitala means storyteller – but what about its inverse, tala tusi, where the teller is the tale?
Poet and academic Selina Tusitala Marsh powerfully explores the relationship between our stories, ourselves, and the fate of our literature if we ignore the wisdom offered by ‘tala tusi’ in her remarkable 2016 New Zealand Book Council Lecture.
Read Selina's lecture
Download the print friendly version
Listen to Selina's Lecture on Radio New Zealand.
Delivered at the National Library of New Zealand, Wellington in November 2016, and at the Dunedin Writers Festival May 2017.
2015 / Where is New Zealand Literature Heading?
Witi Ihimaera
What is New Zealand writing and what does its future look like? Witi Ihimaera explores some of the essential questions of our literary culture. His thoughtful and often humorous lecture inspires us to ask ourselves: where is New Zealand literature heading?
Delivered at the 2015 Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival.
2014 / On Craft: Paradox and Change
Eleanor Catton
Why do you have to go to Oz to discover there’s no place like Kansas? Why, if you love her, do you have to let her go? Why might you become your own worst enemy?
The 2013 Man Booker Prize winner, Eleanor Catton unpacks these plotted paradoxes to investigate how change happens in fiction, whether it is a change of state, a change of mind or a change of heart.
Delivered at the 2014 New Zealand Festival Writers Week.
Lectures in earlier years have been given by Louis Johnson, Lauris Edmond, Maurice Gee, Roger Hall, Ian Wedde, C.K. Stead, Helen Garner and Elizabeth Knox.