Critic-at-Large: Ockham New Zealand Book Awards

They Got It Right This Year (Almost)!

Ah, the Ockhams. Or, as Susanna Andrew coined last year, the “Shock-’ems”! Her point was not just that there’s something a little weird and very milk-loving-Briscoes-sale-deck-furniture-Kiwi about our national book awards being sponsored by a massive construction company. Nor was it just that her pick for the fiction award didn’t make the shortlist—though that was true, too. She also thought that, in an industry as small as New Zealand books, it was so unfair that great, steadily-selling books could be passed over, seemingly on a whim, by the awards’ panels of (let’s be honest now) dubiously qualified judges: moreover, by panels whose makeups change every year. A new New Zealand novel might spend a few weeks in storefront displays at bookstores; then it will pass into its section, alphabetised by author’s surname on the shelf; and if it makes the Ockham longlist, perhaps it’ll have another surge in sales and interest; once the longlist is culled into the shortlist, though, half of those novels will be filed away again in their sections; and once the winner is announced, and we have a shiny new book to add to our canon, it’ll be only a few months later that most of what was written here that year, by us and about us and for us, will be falling quickly into obscurity, falling quickly out of print. Of course, the Shock-’ems aren’t to blame, really. It’s no controversy to say that New Zealand doesn’t have a strong reading culture, and that, as our government continues to slash arts, culture, and education funding, our taste for the local—literature, film, TV, music, and so on—becomes admonished by the so-called “market choice” for convenient globalised streaming services like Netflix and Spotify. Look, I’m no elitist, but in the face of such Neoliberal disgrace, you’ll find me happily afloat in my increasingly-niche bubble of “those who read contemporary New Zealand literature.” We’re okay by ourselves—but we want you to join us, dear reader.

Earlier I mentioned that the panels of judges—about three per category (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and illustrated non-fiction; with corresponding “Best First Book” awards given out in each category as well)—change every year. And that’s another difficulty with the awards: their unpredictability. There isn’t really Ockham-bait in the same way that there’s Oscar-bait (although me and my writer friends often joke about it). I’m in two minds about this unpredictability, as on the one hand, looking at a glance across the years, it seems to produce a spread of winners reflective of the diversity in style and content in our literature. On the other hand, there are some really odd picks. And, looking within the years at those writers who were shortlisted, longlisted, or passed over completely, you might find yourself raising an eyebrow at the choices. To get back to Andrew’s point, though, if we direct our frustration at the winners, that feels misjudged and unproductive. We don’t need to phrase it in the negative: it’s not that so-and-so shouldn’t have won, it’s that—holy shit!—we’ve had so many other absolutely stellar local books released this year. And it’s such a shame that that other honours system in the book trade, that of commercial success, isn’t alive and well enough in our country to balance out the choosy awards system. 

Well, all that being said, I actually reckon the picks this year were pretty good! Here are a few Wellington-specific highlights... and snubs!

SUBHEADING Big Wins for Te Herenga Waka University Press (THWUP)

Once again our most excellent university and its most excellent press has come out with some truly well-deserved wins. But first, I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read any Ingrid Horrocks, a poet and essayist whose first work of fiction, a collection of short stories called All Her Lives, won the big award of the night: the fiction prize, dubbed the “Acorn” for the name of its sponsor. Judges call her book “Elegant, probing [...] Emotionally intelligent and historically alert,” which is also what my ex-boyfriend called me when he dumped my ass last year, so I reckon this book is for me. THWUP also took home the poetry award with Nafanua Purcell Kersel’s strong debut collection, Black Sugarcane. The poetry is deeply lyrical—it craves being spoken—and yet it also trades in abruptness and hesitation in its streak of poems that remember the 2009 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Samoa. Challenge and difficulty and unvoiceability has an important place in New Zealand poetry, especially poetry that, on our colonised land, needs to account for racial, sexual, or gendered difference—but still I find it so refreshing to hear from a poet who encourages us, in the verbal qualities of her work but also, y’know, in a recent Spinoff interview, to read out loud! And last but certainly not least, beloved writing teacher Tina Makereti took home the non-fiction award for This Compulsion in Us. Best known as a novelist, the judges say that Makereti’s foray into essay-writing here renders an “alternative memoir of one person’s discoveries about her whakapapa and childhood family, and her place in national society and within Māori literature.”

SUBHEADING Snubbed!

Wellington is currently producing our country’s most significant, accomplished, and widely-read poetry. Three very excellent Wellington poets (full disclosure: I also know them socially) didn’t even make the longlist. If I’m being optimistic, I guess that just says how strong poetry in New Zealand is, that there are so many titles worth your attention alongside the chosen longlist. But really I just think of these snubs as errors. Kate Camp’s Makeshift Seasons will be familiar to readers of this column already. Camp’s a poet of quiet observation and first thought: here’s the world as it comes into contact with her steady mind. But she’s intellectually a lot heavier than the lightness of her touch would suggest, and I don’t know if readers yet have accounted for the metaphysical tilt in her work that this latest book in particular tracks (not to over-egg it, but sometimes I honestly catch flashes of the Keats of 1819). Meanwhile, Cadence Chung’s Mad Diva, a campy romp through the “mad” women of myth and opera past, shows its author’s voice come to first full articulation—Chung has been publishing pretty consistently since she was a tween, but Mad Diva is no accident or bout of beginner’s luck: it’s the result of good and hard work. Nick Ascroft is a cheeky craftsman, a bit of a wordsmith, a dodgy rhymer (and a scrabble champion!). But don’t underestimate his new book, It’s What He Would’ve Wanted, that teases in signature Ascroft lyrics and listicles none other than death itself, a longtime preoccupation, of, well, us all!