Bøger udgivet af Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop

Michael O'Leary's Selected Poems takes the reader through many and varied encounters with the world, both inner and outer. He writes of love and war, good and evil and several other states of mind and being that are always being altered by the ideas and people he encounters as he travels through life. There is a great variety of styles of poetry in this book, including two long and winding poems, one about Wellington City, the other about Hitler's architect, Albert Speer. Such are the wide and varied themes in O'Leary's explorations of the human psyche.

This collection of poems by New Zealand poet Michael O'Leary takes the reader through the several suburbs and areas that make up the poet's hometown. O'Leary looks at Central. North, South, East and West Auckland with affection and an eye for the unusual. There is also a long sequence called Auckland Revisited, and all these works are currently being made into songs to be released on a CD later in 2015.

Michael O'Leary's Dreamlander Express trilogy. It tells the story of factory worker Patrick Mika Fitzgerald, who after several years of working at the same job and looking after his ailing mother, is freed from these ties by death and redundancy. He embarks on an existential train journey in pursuit of a woman he has dreamed of meeting. When reality and dreams colide his world is turned into a previously unknown state of moral real dilema.

Straight is the first in Michael O'Leary's trilogy, Dreamlander Express. It is the story of Paul Calvert who returns to his hometown, Auckland, after being away in 'dreamland' for several years. He discovers that all the things he knew about the family he grew up in are false. Questions arise: was his real father a high-ranking SS officer and was his conception and birth a Nazi racial experiment to test whether the Maori people of New Zealand are the Ayrian Maoris as suggested by 19th Century eugenic philosophers.

Out of It concerns a game of cricket played between New Zealand and an 'Out of It' Eleven which includes several of the main character, PSM's heroes and villains from his bohemian past. He is in danger of losing his wife and family, his house and respectable job, because of one lapse back into his past. O'Leary's novel is seen as a cult novel in the annals of New Zealand literature as it explores affectionately through satire and insight the 1960s generation who were forced to face a reality of the 'straight' world that they had rejected, when the mortgage has to be paid and the kids need to be clothed and fed.

Magic Alec's Revenge is the third novel in Michael O'Leary's trilogy Dreamlander Express. It concerns the main character, Magic Alex, who was part of The Beatles' entourage in the late 1960s. Exposed as a charlatan rather than the electronic 'wizard' he claimed to be, he is now, 50 years later, in a lunatic hospital, claiming that he invented all the things that control our everyday lives, the internet, cell phones, i-phones etc, and his revenge is our imprisonment by dependence on all his inventions. The novel also contrasts the All You Need Is Hate world of the 1930s Nazis to the All You Need Is Love philosophy of the 1960s and asks what is it we all need in the 21st Century if we are to remain human?

The Irish Annals of New Zealand is essentially a Joycean tour-de-force through New Zealand's history from the Irish rather than the usual English point of view. However, as well as historical facts the novel incorporates many other linguistic and language conceits and concepts. The story begins with the main character falling from a train, having opened the wrong door because he is drunk. He lies dying alone in the falling snow of the central North Island. During the course of the novel he is visited by several of his ancestors, Irish and Maori, who tell him about his life. He also turns into other life forms.

Neither Here Nor There is an intriguing story about two bohemian down and outs who are caught in an existential dilemma: They don't know which city they live in, Auckland or Dunedin. This Beckettian tale takes the reader on a dream/reality tour of the vortex into which two minds have been swept. With humour and compassion Michael O'Leary explores the inner workings of the crisis of modern people who find they have no place in the society they were born into. The book also include O'Leary's iconic poem 'Rubesahl' plus the introduction to his auto-biography, 'Die Bibel'.

A unique interview with John Lennon which was recorded when The Beatles were in New Zealand in 1964. It was recorded by Psychology Professor Dr Tony Taylor who was at the time doing a study into Beatlemania. It gives a remarkable insight into Lennon's thoughts regarding fame, music and life generally at a time when the group was still new to all the world-wide adulation they were receiving. I have included an attachment of both the covers and the text for you to enjoy and to quote from if you think it will help the posting for your blog. I think this is something of a coup for a New Zealand publisher as it must be one of the last unpublished interviews with John Lennon and it has been an honour to work with Dr Taylor on the project. You will note that my poem 'The Flipside of the Ballad of John and Yoko' appears at the end of the book as an antidote to the effects of fame.

Wednesday's Women This study explores the reasons why so few women writers in Aotearoa New Zealand were seen as prominent figures in the literary scene from the end of World War Two up to the time when the feminist movement gained momentum, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Using feminist methodology, I examine whether women writers were deliberately under-represented and their work trivialised by the male writers, critics and publishers of the time. What were the factors accounting for this under-representation? I also discuss to what extent there were successes and achievements, either literary or commercial, for the women writers of the time despite their real and/or perceived exclusion from the canon. Literary writers by definition create public documents, including manuscripts, working papers, and letters. The existence of such records means that perhaps more so than for many groups, we have evidence regarding attitudes, intentions, motives and responses to situations of the individual women writers of this period with which to answer these questions. The Georgians vs Modernists debate is examined. The starting date of 1945 for this thesis is significant for it was in that year that Allen Curnow's anthology A Book of New Zealand Verse was published. One of the striking things about the collection is that only two of the sixteen poets represented are women: Ursula Bethell and Robin Hyde. He did invite and encourage Eileen Duggan to contribute but she declined. Curnow's book went into a second edition in 1951 with twenty three poets, three of whom were women, Ruth Dallas being the third. In 1953 a book titled POEMS: Anthology of New Zealand Women Writers was published. This could be seen as an attempt to make up for Curnow's omissions. As evidence, I look to women writers of the time to see what restrictions on writing and publishing existed. In 1957 the literary magazine numbers published a letter by Willow Macky in which she criticises the critics of the New Zealand literary scene for their unfavourable reviews of the latest book by the poet Ruth Gilbert, The Sunlit Hour. Macky's letter was both a plea to her male colleagues and an indictment against them for their treatment of their female counterparts. She states: 'Most women, if they wish for success, will try to conform, monkey-like, to the masculine pattern; others, by remaining true to their feminine insight, risk opposition and failure in male-dominated fields' (Macky, 1957: 26). Was this the case and if so why? The 1970 cut-off date for this thesis coincides approximately with the development of the feminist movement in New Zealand. However, according to lesbian-feminist poet Heather McPherson, prejudice continued. McPherson had poems published in Landfall and had approached Leo Bensemann, then Caxton Press and Landfall editor, with a collection of poems. She mentioned to him that she had become a feminist. His reply was that Rita Cook (Rita Angus) had become a feminist 'but it didn't do her any good either' (McPherson, 2007: 116). These two examples illustrate some of the difficulties and antipathies that existed between the male and female literary figures, like Curnow and Macky, of the period which inform this thesis.To answer the questions posed above, I explore the social and historical context for women in this period, including the impact of the Second World War, and cover the careers of women poets and novelists, including some detailed case studies. I also examine the particular issues facing Maori and lesbian writers. I conclude that a supportive and encouraging environment was rarely available for women writers from 1945 to 1970, that most struggled to be published and appreciated, and that only later, if at all, were many of these important writers properly recognised.