LONG OVERDUE UPDATES!
Updated: Sep 4
With one thing and another, it's been a bit hectic since Chinese Fish was published on June 1st...
On the 28th of June, I dropped in at READINGS Carlton to sign a wee stack...
and bumped into the one and only Alexis Wright! Naturally, once I paused
fangirling (!) we had to take a photo for the Giramondo Publicity Team...
On the 2nd of August, I had a chat with Mel Fulton on Triple R 107.2FM's Literati Glitterati program. We had a great conversation about archives, voices and multiple narrators.
Here's the link: the interview begins around the 43min:43sec mark:
The entrance to Triple R radio station - can you spot the buzzer...?
Coffee with the brilliant (check out the light above his head!) romesh dissanayake, a writer from Aotearoa, who recently moved to Melbourne. I can't wait to read romesh's novel When I Open the Shop, which is out with Te Herenga Waka University Press (previously Victoria University Press) in 2024.
romesh read at the launch of Chinese Fish on the 9th August at The Alderman in Brunswick East, alongside fellow ex-Aotearoa poets (from left) Alison Wong, Manisha Anjali, Saradha Koirala and Xiaole Zhan - what an honour it was to be supported by so much talent!
Alison's speech framed Chinese Fish from the perspective of her / our settler Chinese roots in Aotearoa. The poem she read, about stumbling on the 'marriage market' in Shanghai, was hilarious! (I'm holding the flashlight here because, despite appearances to the contrary, it was quite dim in the room...)
Saradha read from her latest poetry collection Photos of the Sky, and a new, very moving
poem about her father...
Xiaole's poems have such great pace and rhythm - no surprises that Xiaole is also a musician. One of the poems they read, about their relationship with their Pakeha family in Aotearoa, was so poignant...
romesh spoke of how confronting and triggering he found (parts of) Chinese Fish to be (!) The coming-of-age poem he read was replete with sharp observations and superb sensory details...
Very much looking forward to Manisha Anjali's book Naag Mountain, out with Giramondo next year. I was mesmerised by the surrealist yet precise imagery in her poems, highly evocative...
Due to unforeseen circumstances, Marion May Campbell was unable to launch Chinese Fish, but we were very fortunate, and honoured, to have Lisa Gorton (who edited the book) step in to deliver Marion's speech...
Links to Marion's speech:
https://giramondopublishing.com/transcript-marion-may-campbells-launch-speech-for-chinese-fish/
and mine:
https://giramondopublishing.com/transcript-grace-yee-at-the-launch-of-chinese-fish/
Coral Campbell, who did a fantastic job of reading the part of the Colonialist Orientalist narrator...
Some of the lovely audience...
With Grace Gassin (left), Curator of Asian New Zealand Histories, at Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand in Wellington, and Alison Wong (centre), who, with Paula Morris, edited A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2021)...
The brilliant Helen Gildfind (aka HC Gildfind), who tirelessly read numerous versions of, and extracts from, the manuscript; nothing was ever too small - or too big! - to nut out with her...
Thank you so much to Brunswick Bound's Saskia, for doing such a wonderful job as MC, and selling almost all of the books!
I recall going to Claire Gaskin's launch (for her brilliant collection Paperweight) about ten years ago, but for the life of me can't remember what was so funny here...
Leigh McKinnon is the Research Officer at the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo - after the launch, he was off to see the giant lobster in South Australia...
Stephan bought four copies for his family...
Thank you to the wonderful staff at The Alderman - especially Lara - and to Kate at Giramondo for all the marketing and promotion!
P.S. I post more frequently on Instagram @graceyeepoet