14 October 2013

Happy 125th birthday Katherine Mansfield

Today it is 125 years since Katherine Mansfield was born. Apparently the weather was really crap then too. Her story 'A birthday' was apparently sort of about the day she was born, and there was a 'southerly buster'. I'm not sure which direction the wind and rain is coming from today, but it's sure blowing a gale. I guess those are the dangers of spring in Wellington.

Anyway, in honour of her birthday I wrote a blog post about her on my work blog, over here: http://blog.teara.govt.nz/2013/10/14/who-the-hell-was-katherine-mansfield/. I hope you might go read it, as I'm rather pleased with it and I hope it explains a bit about why I'm such a fan of KM. (It was very hard to write - I had too much to say!) I'd also be delighted if you contributed to the debate in the comments, especially about the statue of/for her in Wellington. The reasons people give about whether they like it or not tend to be the same reasons. Everyone finds creepy and robotic, some of us just quite like that.

In my blog post I mention that KM was the first woman in all of London to wear stockings. When I wrote a poem (well, actually one of two) about her for My Iron Spine I included that fact (at least, I think it's true). You can read the poem here: http://wingedink.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/tuesday-poem-partying-with-katherine.html.