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In the time of coronavirus

A collection of stories submitted by the public on their experience of living through the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives. Globally the scale of human suffering as a consequence of Covid-19 has been very great. Everywhere people are now reflecting on what this major and previously unimaginable global crisis means for us, as individuals, living in the 21st century. This forum offers a space for writers to reflect on their experience in Aotearoa and to consider questions such as: What might we need to remember and preserve? What has been my experience, my observations, how might my priorities have shifted, in a good way, as a result of the lockdowns? If you would like to contribute to the re-collective effort through any of the following life writing formats — journalling, nature writing, memoir, commentary, poetry, notes on work in progress during lockdown… — please make initial contact through my contact page. Next prepare a page of A4 writing, starting in the present moment and moving where you need to into the recent past and forwards from that point, with a title, brief bio, photo (optional) and your contribution will be added to the repository of important writings flowering in this space.

“Securing the memory of COVID-19 is the minimum we owe to each other in the aftermath of this catastrophe.”

Richard Horton, “Covid-19 and the Ethics of memory", The Lancet , 6 June 2020
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In the bubble with Janet by Gregory O'Brien

2/8/2020

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Based in Wellington, Gregory O'Brien is a poet, artist, essayist and art curator. His most recent books are 'Always song in the water' (AUP 2019) and Melvin Day--Painter (VUP 2019). An exhibition of his paintings, 'The wading birds of Drybread' opens at the Ashburton Art Gallery in August 2020. His art is also included in the group exhibition 'Wai--the water project' at Pataka Art Museum, Porirua.

 
Janet Frame’s The Carpathians will be the last of the novels published during her lifetime to be translated into French. Esperluete will be releasing the book early in 2021 (a few months later than planned) in a translation by Pierre Furlan. It was Pierre who contacted me in March this year to see if I was interested in doing cover artwork for the French edition. The last time I provided cover art for Esperluete had been a few years earlier—for John Mulgan’s Man Alone (‘Seul’), also translated by Pierre.
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During the course of my correspondence with Pierre concerning the cover, he asked me a few questions about Janet Frame and some minor linguistic details of the book which were perplexing him. After what must have been a useful exchange of emails, he mentioned to the publisher the fact that I had visited Janet Frame a number of times while she was drafting the novel. As a result, they asked if I would be interested in writing an ‘Afterword’ for the forthcoming edition, offering a personal response to the book and possibly a way-in for French readers who, they suspected, might struggle with the strangeness of the novel and the unfamiliarity of its setting.

So it was that, during the Covid-19 lockdown, I found Janet Frame was very much in my bubble. I re-read Michael King’s biography, and I spent many hours mulling over two novels in particular--The Carpathians (‘Les Carpates’ in the French edition) and A State of Siege— both of which felt disarmingly attuned to the present global crisis. To be honest, both novels felt darker—and, certainly, more real—than when I last read them. Janet’s accustomed themes of social disintegration, dysfunction, toxicity, sanity, health and states of well-being had never felt more relevant. She remains, inarguably, the New Zealand writer most attuned to individual and societal manifestations of fragmentation and collapse. Towards the end of The Carpathians, the residents of Kowhai St in Puamahara (a thinly veiled Levin) are swept up in an apocalyptic course of events. It’s easy to start thinking that Janet Frame’s Memory Star, which is to blame for the empty streets and the altered ‘reality’ later in the book, is a precursor of the coronavirus: Covid-19 reconfigured as a satellite or asteroid. Her prescient novel has much to say of our current predicament and how we might eventually come to terms with it: ‘The inner tempests of a street, a town, a country, a world may be sensed, perhaps measured and recorded by poets and other artists, and later by historians, but it is certain they are not announced at the time of their happening.’
 
Gregory O’Brien

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Deborah thanks Rangimarie Kelly and Pikau Digtal for website design and artist Karen Jarvis for her image ‘Writers at the Devonport Library,’ (2023)
Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
The Participatory Model
Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
​From Writing Course to Book Publication
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​Writing on a Theme
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Writers Stories
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Events
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Testimonials
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Media
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Copyright © 2023 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Conference Paper
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Writer's Stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
    • From Being Mentored to Book Publication
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact