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Dunedin has been impacted by its writers, but how have the writers been impacted by Dunedin? Nina Harrap examines the lives of Janet Frame, James K. Baxter and Charles Brasch, the city’s instrumental place in their writing, and the legacy they’ve left behind.

It wasn’t until halfway through my fresher year that I heard of Robbie Burns. I’d seen the statue in the Octagon but never bothered to find out who it was. In fact, I didn’t even think of Dunedin as having great literary history until I heard about our bid to be the UNESCO city of literature. The thing is, a whole heap of famous authors and poets lived in Dunedin, and a fair few of them went to the University, same as us. As students, we know that famous writers lived here but we don’t think about the fact that they actually lived here, in flats. Janet Frame lived on St David Street; Hone Tuwhare lived on Dundas Street; and Bernadette Hall lived on Leith Street, although their houses have been demolished now. They hated how cold it was, and worried about the power bills, and fought with their flatmates, and went to lectures, and procrastinated on their assignments. And wrote amazing literature as well, I guess; but that’s harder to relate to.

When I was in Year 11, my English teacher decided that my class would study a poet named Janet Frame. I’d never heard of her until then, but her poetry was decent (as far as poetry goes) and I found learning about her life rather fascinating. Frame was born in Dunedin in 1924 and died here in 2004, and suffered from mental health problems all her life. She studied teaching at the University in the ‘40s, and taught for a little while at Arthur Street School, but after a suicide attempt she was admitted to the psychiatric ward of the Dunedin Hospital and then transferred to the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, 30 kilometres north of the city. She lived there on and off for the next eight years, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was scheduled to undergo a lobotomy when her first book,
The Lagoon and Other Stories, won one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the country, the Hubert Church Memorial Award. Her lobotomy, which was scheduled for only a couple of weeks later, was thankfully cancelled. Frame went on to publish more than 20 books and countless essays, short stories, articles and poems over the course of her life, and she was made Burns Fellow at the University in 1965. She died here, of leukaemia, in 2004.

Dunedin pops up in a whole heap of Janet Frame’s work – the poem of her’s I studied in high school was called The Kea Speaks from the Dunedin Botanical Gardens. As the title suggests, it was about a kea that lived in the aviary in the Gardens (if you haven’t been to visit the aviary, you should). She also wrote a poem called Dunedin Morning, which starts with “The Leith is always a loud grumbler after a feed of high-country rain” – something we’re all aware of, especially in light of the storm at the beginning of the recent Uni break.

Frame lived in various houses around Dunedin throughout her lifetime. The one where she stayed the longest was 61 Evans Street, in Opoho; she even wrote a poem about it called At Evans Street. More relevantly, while she was the Burns Fellow she flatted at 116 St David Street, the big house between Arana and St Margaret’s. I wondered if the current residents knew that, so one rainy Thursday afternoon I went and knocked on their door to find out. A suitably awkward interview followed – there’s no possible way to interrogate someone about their flat without it being rather uncomfortable.

“Do you know much about the
history of the flat?”
“No, not at all.”
“Have you ever heard
of Janet Frame?”
“… no?”

Once I explained, however, the response was rather gratifying: “Oh, really? Awesome! What was the name again? I’ll go look it up.”

Another relatively well-known Dunedin poet was James K. Baxter. Unlike Janet Frame, when I mentioned the name to my flatmates I got “who’s that? I feel like I’ve heard that name before,” rather than just blank stares. Baxter was a contemporary of Frame’s, born in Dunedin in 1926. He began studying at Otago in 1944, at the age of 17; that year, he published his first poetry collection, Beyond the Palisade. He dropped out after a year because he became an alcoholic. Classic. However, he later moved to Wellington, where he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, qualified as a teacher, got married, and became an Anglican (he later turned Catholic and his wife left him because of it). He was made Burns Fellow in 1966, the year after Janet Frame. In 1968 he claimed to have had a dream, telling him to “Go to Jerusalem.” This he did – the small Maori settlement of Jerusalem on the Whanganui River. He later changed his name to Hemi (Maori for James) and moved to Jerusalem permanently, living in near poverty and working with the poor in nearby cities. In 1972, just four years after his dream, his sparse existence had taken such a serious toll on his health that he was forced to move away from Jerusalem. He died in Auckland later that year, aged 46, and was buried at Jerusalem in a funeral that incorporated traditional Maori and Catholic aspects.

Unlike Frame’s work, Baxter’s poetry is a bit more relatable to students. Despite most of his poetry about Dunedin being written nearly 70 years ago, you could totally picture the scenes he describes. One of his poems, In The Lecture Room, has the following gem:

The blonde girl in the second bench
Biting her pencil, sighed –
Thought “If I lowered my frock an inch
I would look well in that shade.”

The young man at the back, half-turning
To see her profile, smiled …

And in Walking Down Castle Street he writes, “Where were you on Monday? Drunk in the bowling green. Where were you on Wednesday? Smooching in the town belt. Where were you on Friday? Nobody knows. What would your parents say? What will the examiners say? No application. No team spirit. No sense of decency at all … ” He also describes the colour of the clock tower as being “grey as a hangover conscience.” Some things don’t change over time.

I spent many hours trying to find out where James K. Baxter lived while he was in Dunedin, but after a while I was forced to give up. All of his mail was addressed to the English department. A knowledgeable librarian at the Dunedin Public Library said that he spent most of his time in Otago living either at his parents’ house in Brighton or couch-surfing with friends around Dunedin. A true Scarfie if ever there was one.

Easier to track down is Charles Brasch. He was a bit older than the other two, born here in 1909, and was something of a mentor to Janet Frame. He was also a close personal friend of James K. Baxter – the Hocken Library houses hundreds of letters exchanged between them. As a teenager he attended Waitaki Boys’ High School and he passed up an Otago education to study at St John’s College, Oxford. During the ‘30s he travelled through Asia, Europe and the Americas, and lived in England during World War II. He loved the scholarly magazines of Europe, and held the ambition of starting his own literary publication for at least 15 years.

He moved back to Dunedin in 1946, and lectured English at the University from 1951 onwards. The establishment of the Burns Fellowship, which both Janet Frame and James K. Baxter benefitted from, is widely attributed to him. Brasch flatted at 31 Royal Terrace for nearly 20 years with Rodney Kennedy, a well-known Dunedin artist and drama producer. He later moved down the road to 36A Heriot Row. Janet Frame admired Brasch so much that part of her most well known work, An Angel At My Table, describes her first meeting with him, and the walk to his house:

I walked up the hill towards Royal Terrace. I was far too early. I loitered, looking down over the harbour and peninsula, picking out the landmarks of University, the Museum, half-glimpsed through trees, the Normal School, and scarcely visible at the foot of Union Street, the Training College.

Anyone who’s ever walked along a street on the western hills has done the exact same thing, although probably not on their way to meet a famous author. And even though An Angel At My Table was published nearly 30 years ago, we all still pick out the same North Dunedin landmarks.

Brasch lived in his cottage at 36A Heriot Row for over 20 years; he died there of cancer in 1973, aged 62. He left a huge collection of books, paintings and personal papers to the Hocken Library – the same personal papers I read when I was stalking James K. Baxter. He also bequeathed a collection of 7,500 books to the University. If you’ve ever wondered why the Central Library has a “Charles Brasch room” on the first floor, that’s the reason.

Upon Brasch’s return to Dunedin in 1946 he decided to make his dream of founding “a substantial literary journal” a reality. His publication, Landfall, was the first of its kind in New Zealand and is now approaching its 70th anniversary. Through Landfall, Brasch had a significant effect on the way the arts developed in New Zealand. Under his editorship, Landfall acted not only as a literary journal but also as a forum for current social commentary.

Landfall was originally published quarterly, although issues now come out biannually. Charles Brasch was the editor for 20 years; it’s now managed by poet and writer David Eggleton. I caught up with him to find out a bit about the historic publication. Part Polynesian, with short black hair and hazel eyes, Eggleton is one of the country’s foremost modern poets. Like Janet Frame and James K. Baxter, he too has been the Burns Fellow.

Landfall recently published its 226th issue. As well as showcasing excellent New Zealand fiction and poetry, it also includes a range of biographical and critical essays, cultural commentary, and reviews of books, art, film, drama and dance. The journal also offers a biennial grant, the Kathleen Grattan Award, for a long poem or collection of poems by any New Zealand or Pacific permanent resident or citizen. The award includes $10,000 and a year’s subscription to Landfall.

When the journal started it was a totally new idea in New Zealand. Eggleton says it was “a kind of vehicle for new authors and modernism.” Nowadays, its purpose is “to keep the standard high and to represent mainland Otago … but also to be a national magazine.” Eggleton is still upholding Brasch’s vision in the magazine though – “we’ve got exactly the same principles, values and interests … the nationalism that Charles Brasch protected in the ‘30s and ‘40s is what we relate to still … it’s about NZ writing, the best of NZ writing. And it’s about the climate – political, cultural, economic, all the different kinds of atmospheres in our society.”

Dunedin has been home to so many famous literary figures in the past – not just Janet Frame, James K. Baxter and Charles Brasch, but also O. E. Middleton, Ruth Dallas, Bernadette Hall, Hone Tuwhare and countless others. But is the Otago region still producing a good amount of literature, or is the standard starting to slip? Publications like Landfall would be the first to know, but Eggleton says the historic magazine is “still very vital, very much alive, very much part of the conversation about what’s happening in New Zealand culture at the moment.” As for the amount of content submitted, he says, “we’re overwhelmed with submissions, actually. We can’t possibly incorporate them all.”

To most of us regular Scarfies, Dunedin isn’t really famous for its literature; it’s more famous for its killer parties and couch burning. Luckily for the sake of our worldly education, Dunedin is working on changing its reputation. As reported in Issue six of Critic, Mayor Dave Cull has recently sent a bid to UNESCO to become the official New Zealand City of Literature; the position would put us on a par with Dublin, Edinburgh, Iowa City, Krakow, Melbourne, Norwich and Reykjavik. Vice-Chancellor Harlene Hayne said that a successful bid would be “great marketing” for the University, “but it will be more than marketing because it has teeth.” Luckily for Dunedinites, six existing Cities of Literature have publically backed our UNESCO bid so far. When Critic interviewed 2012 Burns Fellow Emma Neale about the bid, she noted that, “when you start to total up how many different ways Dunedin celebrates, supports and embraces a literary culture, a pretty festive feeling breaks out even before the bid is assessed.”

In keeping with our attempt to take out the national title of most literate city, the annual Dunedin Writers and Readers festival starts this Tuesday and finishes up on Saturday. The festival incorporates a number of interesting events, with perhaps the most highly anticipated being a conversation with NZ author Eleanor Catton, winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize for her novel The Luminaries. Other famous New Zealand authors in attendance include Tusiata Avia, Kate de Goldi and Landfall editor David Eggleton himself.

Dunedin is an interesting city. Founded on the gold rush and kept alive by the University, nowadays it’s mostly known for being beautiful, but also freezing cold and full of drunken students. Dunedin’s literary past isn’t something that occurred to most of us when we chose to study at Otago; but now that we’re here, we can at least appreciate the role our city has had in the national literary scene. The upcoming festival and the UNESCO bid will celebrate the exceptional authors that Dunedin has and is producing. Janet Frame, James K. Baxter and Charles Brasch would be proud.