From the president
by Caroline Simpson
Kia ora
Last time you read ‘From the president’ I was encouraging you to come along to our events and meet your fellow editors. We had an event planned for Canterbury editors and catch-ups in Wellington, Tauranga and Auckland. Planning was under way for an Auckland event and thoughts of a branch meeting in May. A lot has changed, but not necessarily for the worse.
I am still encouraging you to come along to events and meet your fellow editors, but this time online. IPEd has been expediting Zoom accounts to make it easier for us to continue meeting. We’ll be promoting virtual catch-ups, and we have brought our branch meeting forward to 20 April. We all need to feel connected within our profession, and contact with our colleagues is vital. Keep an eye on our Facebook page and your email inbox for more details.
If you pay any attention to social media, it seems as if the whole of New Zealand is baking (so that’s where all the flour went) and binge-watching that must-see series on Netflix. Yet, for many editors, life is similar under lock-down to our usual day-to-day routine. But we all have splintered responsibilities at the moment. Like me, you are possibly dealing with children at home, elderly parents and a partner who is needing a workspace and help with the technical aspects of setting up remotely. It’s difficult to take the time to look after your own professional and personal needs.
For those of us who were planning on taking the accreditation exam this year, we need to keep the study going. The exam will happen, just not in August. Professional development is still important and we must keep looking to our future. Remember to check out the IPEd professional development page for ideas. And now that more branch meetings are going online, you can book to attend any virtual branch meetings, not just our EdANZ meetings, and hear some fascinating guest speakers.
In the meantime, please take care of yourselves and your loved ones. Stay well and stay home.
Noho ora mai rā.
New members
We are thrilled to welcome our new members:
Associate members: Louisa Gommans, Lynn Bloxham, Lilly Warren
Corporate member: Whitireia (Odessa Owens, Theresa Crewdson and Marie Hodgkinson)
A word about currency
Like you, we are keen to be paying for IPEd events in New Zealand dollars. We are working on this diligently and wanted to let you know that it will happen, just not overnight apparently. Thanks to the stringent laws to avoid money laundering, opening up a bank account in New Zealand for an overseas business (even though it is on the New Zealand Companies Office Overseas Register) involves many challenges and frustrations. We have provided a virtual forest of documents to the bank and they are taking us through the many, many, many steps required. Be assured that when we finally get that bank account open, no one is going to be happier than those of us who have been swapping endless emails to get it done. You will hear the cheering!
Past events
Auckland editors had a chance for a catch-up and a natter in mid-March. Galbraith’s Alehouse always has a table in the prime spot by the door where we can greet old friends and catch the new ones as they come in. Two of our members had driven several hours from out of town to catch up with us, which is a delightful vote of confidence in the value of connecting with your colleagues. As is always the case with these catch-ups, there was no formal program for the hour or so we were there. Our topics ranged from how our businesses and jobs were going through to editing resources and social media groups.
We meet quarterly (starting with March) on the second Saturday of the month. Any editors are welcome to come along. If you are visiting Auckland at that time, then please drop by.
Coming events
Branch meeting
On Monday 20 April at 7.30pm we will be having our first branch meeting for the year. We had planned to have this event in May, but we felt that with all the cancellations at the moment, it would be good for us to have something to look forward to sooner. We have a special guest coming along to tell us about her time in the industry – wait and see! You will also have a chance to chat to the committee and ask questions about the branch and its organisation. Please keep a watch on your inbox for the registration for this event. Feel free to share it with friends and colleagues who could be interested.
AUD$10 for members. AUD$12 for non-members. BYO cuppa or whatever and we will see you there.
Regional catch-ups
With our new Zoom account we are organising virtual catch-ups for the regions. These are online opportunities for general chat while you have a coffee – think meeting for a coffee at a café, but without the parking. You may have already seen a social media post or email about these. Catch-ups are designed as a way for our spread-out membership to meet and make connections. When we are connected, we are stronger, both individually and as a profession.
Book review: The Water Diviner
by Marja Stack
The Water Diviner by Andrew Anastasios and Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios
Anastasios, Andrew & Wilson-Anastasios, Meaghan (2014). The Water Diviner [eBook]. PanMacmillan Australia. www.kobo.com.
I have a soft spot for New Zealand and Australian historical fiction, so when The Water Diviner by Andrew Anastasios and Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios popped up as a suggestion on my e-reader not long ago, I thought I’d give it a go. I admit, I hadn’t heard of it, but I now know it is also a major motion picture. In fact, unusually, the movie came out at a similar time as the book.
With Anzac Day coming up (I’m going to pretend the world is normal just now), a book review on the topic might be appropriate.
However, The Water Diviner is not your typical book on World War I and Gallipoli, as it is set in 1919, just after the war, when both the Allies and the Turkish were recovering their dead from the battlefields for burial.
Joshua Connor, an Australian farmer and water diviner, had promised on his wife’s grave that he would go to Turkey to find their three sons to bring them home. He turns up in Constantinople, surprising the British authorities, who are controlling the city.
As an Australian in Turkey, he is the enemy. But he befriends a young boy, Orhan, who helps him negotiate the city and culture that are strange to him. Joshua also meets Orhan’s mother, Ayshe, who is living with her own trauma from the war while trying to keep the family’s hotel afloat, and he begins to learn the effect of the war on the other side.
Hoping to find his sons, Joshua defies the British authorities and travels to Gallipoli, where he makes another unlikely friendship – with a Turkish officer, Hasan.
Joshua uses his skills (or powers) as a water diviner to locate the bodies of two of his sons on what was the battlefield, but he can’t find his eldest son. Hasan gives the broken father hope that his eldest son may still be alive, so Joshua travels into Anatolia during civil unrest and risks his life to look for him, at the same time wondering why his son didn’t come home.
The book is set in the aftermath of war, but, more than this, the book tells of love: love for a spouse, love for children, love for a parent, love for a sibling, love for comrades and friends, new love and love across cultures.
It is beautifully written, with imagery that takes the reader from the outback of Australia to the chaos of Constantinople and the sorrow of Gallipoli, and evokes a sense of the waste of war – on both sides. The first few pages are especially testament to this when they test with a thud the reader’s sympathy and set the tone for the rest of the book. It shows the loss and impact, personally and to these two countries – countries, the book points out, that had no quarrel with one another.
There are no good guys or bad guys and there are no winners, but it is about the people who are left wondering what is left of their lives and where they belong.
The Water Diviner was inspired by personal accounts and official records from World War I and tells the complete story of the screenplay by Andrew Anastasios and Andrew Knight.
I really enjoyed this book for its unique perspective on the war, and I would recommend it to anyone who, like me, enjoys local (as a Kiwi, I am going to call it that in the Anzac spirit) history.
Marja Stack is the Social Media Coordinator of Editors Aotearoa New Zealand. She can be contacted at edanz.socialmedia@iped-editors.org.