Vivienne Plumb interviewed on Radio New Zealand

As I've just blogged over on my shiny new Seraph Press site (which suddenly seems to have grown 'like' and 'tweet' buttons that I'm not entirely certain I like) Vivienne Plumb is going to be interviewed by Lynn Freeman on the Arts on Sunday show this Sunday (at 2.30 pm). More details on the Seraph Press site: http://www.seraphpress.co.nz/1/post/2011/02/vivienne-plumb-talks-about-crumple-on-national-radio.html (go on, humour me and have a look - I've just managed to get Google Analytics to work on the site, finally, so every visit will make me happy.)

I'm really excited about this interview, and the fact that I have been involved in organising three upcoming Seraph Press-related readings - I'm feeling like maybe I'm not such a totally useless publicist after all.

More details about the readings will follow, but the first one up, which is the most finalised, is Helen Cubed (me, Helen Heath and Helen Lehndorf) at the March Ballroom Poetry Cafe in Wellington.

Me on the radio, part 2

My interview with Lynn Freeman about My Iron Spine played on National Radio this afternoon. I think it went pretty well - I didn't ramble too much. I hope I managed to make the book sound reasonably interesting.

If, like me, you were off doing something worthwhile with the sunny afternoon (we went to the Botanic Gardens with my parents and one of my brothers - unfortunately, so did most of Wellington as it turned out to be Tulip Sunday) you won't have heard it. Neither will you have heard it if you live overseas, unless you are Karen, who was alerted by her father that I was going to be on the radio and tuned in from New York to hear the first NZ accents, other than her own, for some time.

But if you want to here it, it's online here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/podcasts/artsonsunday.rss (this one for podcast/mp3), and here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/artsonsunday/20080928 (this one is streaming).

I totally love the way you can listen to these interviews over the net. I spent part of yesterday afternoon (while I was putting the final touches to JAAM 26, which will go to print tomorrow - but more on that later) listening to interview with writers over the last month or so. They were so cool to listen to - I got quite addicted. It's such a treasure.

Me on the radio!

I'm terribly excited. I'm going to be on National Radio tomorrow (Sunday 28 September), interviewed by Lynn Freeman about My Iron Spine for the Arts on Sunday programme. The schedule for the whole thing is here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/artsonsunday. I'm going to be on between 2.30 and 2.50 - most likely at around 2.40.

It will also be available on the net for 10 weeks after, so I'll post a link to that.

I did the interview on Thursday - Radio New Zealand is in the same building as where I work, and actually only one floor up, so I was away from my desk for only 15-20 minutes.

A little nervous, I put on lipstick beforehand, to make myself feel more confident and grown up. 'I know you can't actually see lipstick on the radio', I said to my colleagues. 'I think you can hear lipstick on the radio', said one, helpfully. See if you can hear it - it's bright red.

Lynn Freeman was lovely, and the interview was a lot like a chat - except with me trying to be more eloquent than usual (though I think I did a little bit of my usual digressing). We talked about specific poems, and about using people you know in your poems, and some of the women in some of the poems. And then I read 'Passion'. I probably should have read one of the ones we'd talked about, because they play the poem first, but I was prepared to read 'Passion', and when you're nervous it's hard to change your plans.

The highlight for me is that Lynn Freeman said she liked my book so much that she was going to keep it - for someone who was a book award judge, and who gets review copies of everything, that's quite a compliment.