I. K. Paterson

I’m pretty hopeless at keeping my own website updated. I was prompted to look at it just now when answering a questionnaire from the publisher of my most recently accepted poem, the last question being: where can people find your work?

What has happened in the last 2 years?

1. Immi the Vegan was published as a web series. Yay! All that work paid off.
2. Immi the Vegan was turned into a movie. How? (you might ask) Simple. We just edited the episodes together into one big file, and whallah! A movie.

3. The movie won “Best Life Style Feature” and “Audience Award” at the Adelaide Vegan Film Festival, and “Best Feature” at the Franklin Film Festival.

4. Immi the Vegan was picked up by Amazon Prime. You watch the movie here.

5. I started a PhD in Creative Writing (to be specific, writing a novel while also researching “non-human agencies in comic apocalypse narratives within climate fiction”, and then after 18 months I decided not to continue. Cool story, eh?

6. I’ve had four poems published — in the Kiwi Diary, Poetry NZ, and Mayhem Journal.

7. I very recently bought a house with my partner Steve, out in West Auckland. No longer can I ponder life while peering out at a grimy inner-city street full of construction and drunks. It’s all trees and families and crickets now.

In 2017 I had the craaaaazy idea of creating a musical comedy vegan web series, which I… decided to name after myself (what was I thinking?!)

Three years later, and I’m please and relieved to say it’s finally been launched. Thank you to every crowd-funding sponsor and supporter, and to every cast and crew member who made it possible.

And here’s the trailer!

To watch the full series, either click into my videos section, or visit the YouTube site!

If you happen to be traveling on a train heading west tomorrow between 4:30-5:30pm, you might just see me performing some poems as part of the Going West Writers Festival!

I can’t find anything about this online, but I have a nice letter from Auckland Transport, allowing me free passage during that time – so it must be legit!

Come along to Poetry Live at the Thirsty Dog this Tuesday evening and let me talk at you for half an hour!

There will be an open mic set to begin, followed by the guest musician John Goudge, followed by me (the guest poet for the night), and ending with another open mic set.

Poetry Live has been running for over thirty years, and happens each Tuesday night.

This Friday I’m going to be transformed into one of these guitar-plucking, hat-wearing man-clones, as I perform in one of the guitar trios that make up the Guitargh Nonet event.

At the Audio Foundation, under the Parisian Tie Factory on Poynton Terrace (right beside Myers Park), this Friday the 21st, 8pm. Koha entry. Come along!

This year is New Zealand’s 40th National Science Fiction and Fantasy Con – GEYSERCON– held in Rotorua this Queen’s Birthday weekend.

I’ll be milling about, a pile of books in hand (no doubt), attending the panels and workshops, and also starting off the Poetry Slam event at 4pm with some of my latest speculative fiction poetry.

One of my poems is also published in the con book, which you receive when you arrive!

In March I attended a writers festival in Ohakune – a little town at the foot of the majestic Mt Ruapehu. On the final night I stood up nervously in front of a room full of respected NZ writers and read Middlemarch, a poem told in the perspective of a woman who is unhappy with her marriage. It was the first time I’d read one of my poems to pretty much anyone other than my six old son, who is nearly always nice about it (though actually, everyone at the festival was nice about it too). I then returned to my cold and tiny backpackers room to find an email from Landfall, informing me that the very poem I had read was to be published in their next edition. I was absolutely thrilled!

This fruit is called a Cape Gooseberry, or a Ground Berry. I think they’re awesome.

It’s taken me a shamefully long time to announce this properly. In fact, it’s winter now, and this was an autumn edition. I think this is because the poem was written about my own failing marriage – now recently failed – but hey, really that’s no reason not celebrate a publication. I’ve begun reading the other poems and stories contained within, and am proud that Middlemarch is tucked in among them. The full list of contributors can be found here.