Due to changing circumstances this will be my last blog for Christchurch City Libraries. I've had a whole lot of fun writing about all sorts of interesting things. In total I've written 56 blogs for the library (including this one) and three for our professional development Bibliofile site. I'm going to look back briefly at…
A distinctly dodgy District Health Officer
You know how sometimes you keep coming across someone's name, get a bit curious and poke around a bit further? Well I seemed to keep coming across a Dr Hugh Earnshaw Finch, Christchurch's District Health Officer in the 1900s and 1910s, so I decided to investigate further. I first came across him in a picture…
Further First World War stories
Although the commemorations marking the centenary of the First World War have come to an end, the war continues to be remembered and its stories continue to be told. The war is a huge, big subject which sometimes, to me, feels too massive to truly comprehend. Therefore it really is those individual or local stories…
A fire, a mysterious lady and a singed parrot
Today we know the Ilam Homestead as the University of Canterbury's staff club and for its connections to the Parker-Hulme case, but another house existed on the site and burnt down in 1910. This wooden house was built in the 1850s for the Hon. J. C. Watts Russell, a prominent early settler. It changed hands…
Vulnerability and advocacy at WORD Christchurch Festival
Once again, WORD Christchurch was fabulous. All the session I went to were thoroughly interesting and enjoyable, and reading all the fabulous write ups of other sessions caused some serious past-tense FOMO. My holds list has also got rather long... However, I've also been thinking about some of the connections between different sessions. One very…
Melting the canon – Explosive Archaeology: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018
This fantastic session included no stripey jumpers or whips or trowels - the archaeology was metaphorical, asking us to look back, elevate, uncover and dig up those who have been excluded from the literary canon. Poet Tayi Tibble, academic Erin Harrington, novelist Brannavan Gnanalingam and curator Jennifer Shields were asked by session chair Pantograph Punch…
“Everything else is just filler” Sex and Death Salon: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018
Host Victor Rodger warned that this session was going to be dirty and lowbrow. I intend to make this blog as dirty and lowbrow as the editors will let me! Featuring poets Tayi Tibble and Chris Tse, and authors Stacy Gregg and Emily Writes, this was a no holds barred, late night sessions about things…
“We’ve all been through a lot” Chessie and Chris Henry: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018
I doubt there are many literary - or related - events where you have the author, one of their subjects and an audience made up of people who have been through many of the events described, to a greater or lesser extent, in the place where one of the events took place. This was the…
No coward soul …
I am the only being whose doom No tongue would ask, no eye would mourn; I never caused a thought of gloom, A smile of joy, since I was born. Oh Emily Brontë - how wrong you are! I don't know if this poem of yours is autobiographical or not, but you really have caused many…
Surprise yourself!
If you had told me a year ago that I would be rushing home from work to do some knitting, watch Doctor Who and read children's comic books (not all at the same time) I don't think I would have believed you. However, sometimes it's really good to go back to old hobbies, re-watch something you…
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