Finally, a round-up of day two of the Going West Festival…

The Sunday was begun for me with Nigel Cox (pictured – photo by Gil Hanley, mucked about with by me – and for those who may have already seen the previous pic, sorry, it all went to my head I'm afraid) being interviewed by the clever, funny Mike Johnson.

Mike has been instrumental in forming the careers of aspiring writers at Auckland University. I myself, ahem, too many years ago, remember well a slightly mad evening in the company of himself and his friend John Pule towards the end of a course I did with him. Said course, for me, established… er, nothing but the fact that the only thing I should ever try to write is a letter. Or a blog.

Anyway, he’s a bloody good interviewer, and had Nigel well on form. They started with some musings around the issue of responsibility – being, of course, the name of Nigel’s latest novel since the redoubtable Tarzan Presley of Montana runner-up fame.

Nigel has spent the last five years in Berlin – Responsibility was written there – and was, like Mike, BITF (born in the fifties). This makes both of them right old hippies, with all the Peter-Pan-esque, hello-trees-hello-sky-hello-acid ideals of most of that generation. Lucky buggers.

Anyway, Nigel said that this inherent hippydom, combined with growing up in the fifties/sixties pop-culture of small town NZ, had a major effect on his geeky young mind. Pop music especially was a favourite (witness Tarzan Presley), and back then there were only a few radio stations which meant that everyone was listening to the same stuff on a Saturday. So he really believed all those cheesy love songs.

Then he found himself not only a parent but living in the country in which some of humankind’s most deeply-felt tragedies (and triumphs: the Wall) have been played out in the last century. Indeed, in his role as Head of Communication and Interpretation at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, he must have been pretty relentlessly steeped in the horrors of the war. The effect of which was a quite sudden and sobering sense of … responsibility.

And it kept coming. For example, when 9/11 happened, within four hours there was a tank outside the Museum, razor wire was set up and heavily armed blokes were walking up and down outside looking ‘very interested’. All a bit of a shock for the boy from the peace and love generation as seen in the Wairarapa, who says he’s never thrown a punch in anger and as a kid ‘didn’t ever really get his hands dirty’. He was inside listening to the radio.

Mike Johnson wanted Nigel to talk about the ‘tough guy language’ in the book. He said it came from several directions: his deep and abiding love for the testosterone glamour of the John Wayne type western books he used to love and the noir tableaux of Chandler mysteries… Martin Rumsfeld, the hero of Responsibility is aware of his own part in the potentially cheesy scenarios in the book and takes the piss out of them. But the fact is, they’ve become real. And he’s responsible.

Our parents generation were virtually born shouldering responsibility. But for hippies like Nigel it has had to be learnt, sometimes painfully. And Responsibility, he said, is ‘an exploration of delusion.’

What else… oh yeah, they laid to rest the story of Tarzan Presley’s litigious birth: turns out the UK publishers’ legal eagles said it would be absolutely fine, go ahead, publish. And lil’ old VUP thought, well, they’re the heavyweights, they must know. So they did. Big mistake. In order to avoid a fiscally very punishing legal row, VUP has had to promise not to reprint the book. Better get a copy now if you can – Nigel estimates there are about 50-100 left. Worth a fortune one day…

Next up was Anne French with a reading from her latest book of poetry, Wild. What sticks in my mind, because I forgot to take notes, were two poems about a close couple splitting up and the chaos that ensues, not least with friends who feel, as Anne did, that the world is diminished. Luckily I have it handy – great lines:

she rushed towards them, wifehood
and motherhood, those radiant evil

twins whose claims you must juggle
and placate.

When the wife-and-mother leaves, she leaves a hank of her hair. In the next poem, the husband finds it, and

Its mustiness recalled all the cupboards
of all the house they have ever lived in
in several countries
and it inside them all along, wrapped and waiting
for this moment.

Spooky stuff. Fantastic.

I’m going to have to leave it there I’m afraid… else I won’t be posting for another day. Tomorrow I’ll be covering the deceptively mild Stephanie Johnson, who completely wowed the chicks in the audience, said the f-word, and I fear put a few male pensioners sorely in need of a cup of tea and a lie-down after her ‘Serious Menstruation’ poems. The second one, incidentally, has never been published. I have it right here and it’s goin’ up tomorrow, courtesy of Stephanie, thank you very much.