BM: What is your earliest memory of writing?
I used to sit at my father’s typewriter and write stories before the words on the page actually made sense.

BM: Do you have a writer/poem that you keep returning to – a sort of inspiration for all that means ‘writing’ to you?
It wouldn’t work for me to have one beacon to return to or write towards. I think I have a paddock of writers that have inspired me. Maybe a whole farm: a paddock of children’s writers, a paddock of poets, and a paddock of novelists. The poet paddock includes Italian women poets from the 16th century (how did they ever manage to write and get published against the grain of what women ought to do?), Michele Leggott and Bill Manhire (two quite different poets who make quite different demands on the reader, but who are equally satisfying in the way they move, amuse, and stretch me), Janet Charman (gosh, this poet knows how to electrify language, I am in awe!), Dante, Anne Carson, Gertrude Stein… the list could go on and on. I do keep returning to rather a lot of poets and there are of course a whole bunch of new arrivals of whom I am completely in awe.

BM: Where was your first writing published? What was it and how old were you?
My first poem was published in Landfall. I was in my thirties studying Italian at university. It was called “Trentasei notti del vento.”

BM: Your collection of short stories for children is due out next year through Random, is it your first experience of writing prose?
No I have always written prose, prose before poetry. Random House is publishing a junior chapter book next year called The Terrible Night.

BM: Do you feel you have any adult fiction in you?
I started off writing adult fiction and have written a couple of novels, but as time goes by I feel less and less inclined to get published in this genre (if ever). I like keeping this part of my writing private, and I don’t want the degree of attention novelists get.

BM: What moves you most about West Auckland? And is it inspiration for your work?
I like to live beyond the boundaries of a city but within striking distance of a city. So we live in the rural part of west Auckland where you can see sky and bush, the tail end of the Waitakere Ranges and the occasional speck of human habitation. I like the space, and I like the sounds that fill that space (landscapes are never silent!). Looking at land and sky on a daily basis is very restorative; like a good breakfast it sets you up for the day. And I still have easy access to all the advantages of a city.

BM: How do you like to spend your leisure time?
I love cooking, reading, watching movies, listening to music, catching up with friends. I also love getting outside. I love going for long walks (we walked the Abel Tasman track in March) and shorter walks around where I live, cycling, swimming, kayaking, skiing… not that I am very good at any of these things.

BM: Your daughters were contributors to Flamingo Bendalingo. Have you encouraged them to write? If so, how, or have they come to it through mimicry?
I think it is a nature-nurture mix… with nature playing a very strong role. My daughters have grown up in a house full of books and readers, I have read to them since they were babies, but I have never had much input into them as writers. They just spontaneously write … little books, poems.

BM: Do you belong to any writing organisations?
NZ Society of Authors and The NZ Book Council.

BM: When do you write best?
Mornings nowadays.

BM: What are you reading at the moment?
Charlotte Grimshaw’s superb short stories, and I am editing Best New Zealand Poems this year so most of my reading time is spent with the poetry books and poems that were published in NZ in 2007. That is a real treat. I like to read a lot of poetry, but this really extends the range of my reading and I like that.

BM: Which NZ author/book have you not read that you have on your wish list?
Peter Well’s new novel, Sarah Laing’s short story collection, I have just bought David Eggleton’s new book on contemporary New Zealand art (he is an astute and generous reviewer of poetry) but I would also like to read Hamish Keith’s opinions on art in his new book sometime. And… a few new titles from VUP: Nigel Cox’s Phone Home Berlin, Acts of Love by Susan Pierce, and Still Shines When You Think of It.

BM: Is there anything that you’d like to do better?
I would like to be a better swimmer and to remember how to play the guitar. I used to play it all the time.

BM: Do you have a favourite children’s book/author?
Again it is a paddock, a lot of people for different reasons, but there is one author that shines out in my paddock: Margaret Mahy. I admire her for so many reasons. Everything about her writing rises above the mundane, yet she uses the ordinary as a starting point for the extraordinary if that makes sense. Her language gets under my skin it is so good, her characters are gorgeously human in all their quirky, funny, memorable and lovable ways, and at the heart of each book is a jolly fine story. Margaret also demonstrates a rare generosity of attention towards other writers and other books that I find very moving. I have witnessed this at festivals: she goes out of her way to have spent time with the writing of other participants.
I also admire David Hill’s transformation of difficult subjects for young adult readers into magnificent novels. Part of being a children’s writer is the private writing you do at home, but it is also the time you spend out there interacting with your readers. David Hill does this terrifically well.

BM: What are you reading to your children at present?
The only things I read to my children now are my own stories and poems. When I was writing Aunt Concertina and her Niece Evalina they would race in the door each day and say, “have you written any more?” I have nearly finished a new collection of poems for children which I keep testing out on my girls. They are very good, honest critics.

BM: Your partner is Michael Hight, the artist. Do you find that you ‘work’ together and inspire each other, or are you autonomous?
We usually work apart in our own spaces on our own things with no overlap. And that works really well. He is going to illustrate Aunt Concertina (to be published by Random House 2009) for me so I am really excited about that.

Vanda Symon’s candid admission in last week’s blog prompted me to review my past year in the light of the “y” word and the more reluctantly offered “no” because this year I have said “no” to quite an uncharacteristic degree. I have said “no” to class trips, book tours, poetry readings, blogs… to name a few. This didn’t come out of any sudden resolve to shift from being agreeable, but from what I can only describe as a sojourn in the margins of possibility. A mammogram last November picked up something uncertain with only the faintest statistical indication that it might be anything sinister. But as I moved from one appointment to the next, from one operation to the next, and from one radiotherapy session to the next, I kept finding myself in the margin; in the tiniest percentage of women that this or that happens to. And so out of self-protection and a desire to preserve time and energy for my family, I began to say: “No.”

Yet there, are of course, other ways for your resolve to melt. I am always curious about why we write and the origins of what and how we write. I say I write out of love and out of need, but there are countless other reasons. The prompt to write a particular thing can come from anywhere, and I am usually startled by its arrival in my head. And this is how, against all expectation, I found myself saying, “yes,” this year. Stories landed in my head, feeling like they were completely out of the blue, begging to be written. After the intimate poetry that formed Making Lists For Frances Hodgkins, I found my head filling up with ideas for children. And then I found myself writing them.

Each statistical margin I occupied seemed to give rise to another story, another character, another “what if?” Somehow or other I entered the world of extraordinary possibilities where real life was/is observed through colourful filters or peculiar re-actions or a belly full of laughs. Don’t get me wrong though, this demand to start writing children’s stories didn’t just pop into my head as an (very fitting!) antidote to surgery and radiation. I think the impulse to write children’s stories has been waiting in the wings for ages. I went to Wellington Teachers College and expanded my love of children’s literature, I taught in London where telling stories was a sure way to keep a class’s attention, I have told stories to two daughters.

Writing for children is so challenging… and in that challenge I experience supreme fun. And then of course there is the live audience. Children’s stories have a life on the page, but they most certainly have a life spoken in the air. My daughters act as guinea pigs to most things I write, but I also like to test out my poems and stories on children at the local school. This is always a slightly scary experience to begin with, yet children make an unbelievably rewarding audience. Children love to laugh. They love to predict. They love to feel concerned or to feel empathy. They love the glorious feats that words can do when you place this word against that word in some kind of gentle tremor or crazy spark or head-zinging explosion. Children love the way your story can open up new possibilities for their stories so that their stories begin to fill the room and your story moves into the background.

Saying “yes” to unexpected things takes me to unexpected places. These places are often scary, often demanding, often involve something I have never done before but are always satisfying. Next year I will be back into the routine of class trips, book tours, poetry readings and blogs along with all the domestic activity that holds my life together… and I will also celebrate the publication of my first children’s story with Random House. So yes, as my daughter says: “It’s all good!”