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Ripiro Beach

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Flash Fiction: A Machete, a Plastic Bag and Mum’s Gumboots

September 7, 2017 by Caroline Barron Author Leave a Comment

When my dear friend Lisa and I were out walking early one morning, the sun peeping over the horizon across the water over by the sugar factory, she told me a story from her childhood, about how it felt being a first generation Chinese New Zealander. Her story became this story, which was long-listed for the 2017 NZ National Flash Fiction Day competition. So, this one’s for you Lisa.  A warm congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to Flash Frontier, where this story first appeared. 

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Lisa Joe, Baylys Beach, 2017

A Machete, a Plastic Bag and Mum’s Gumboots

by Caroline Barron

For years, the click and yawn of an opening car boot filled me with dread. As kids, when we drove over the Pae-koks to Foxton in Dad’s Telstar – brand new, white, with a maroon racing stripe and burgundy velour upholstery – and Mum saw a creek flanked by pillows of green, or an autumnal field blooming with white puffs, she’d shout, ‘Pull over! Pull over!’ in her Chinese-Kiwi accent. Dad always did, relishing the gravel skid before yanking the boot latch.

We loved to help Mum who, out there, marched the roadside in her gumboots, a different Mum to the apron-wearing one tending the bamboo steamer at home. This Mum wielded a machete with super-heroine ease, lopping off bunches of watercress and tugging dusky-gilled mushrooms from dank soil, pressing them into plastic bags my sister and I held open. Back at the car she’d wrap the watercress in The Evening Post to later boil for soup. The mushrooms she’d sauté with garlic and bacon and serve on rice.

After I turned eight, I refused to help. She’d yell for Dad to pull over. I’d groan and fold my arms. It might have been okay in Guangzhou, but here Kiwis didn’t scavenge for food on the roadside.

*

Yesterday, I walked across the school field holding my daughter’s hand. She pointed at the line of shade hugging the fence.

“Mum, come!”

My high heels sucked in and out of the soggy ground. I glanced around. It will only take a minute, I thought. She crouched down, gathering her skirt beneath her knees – a family of white mushrooms dotted the grass – and lifted a spongy edge to peer beneath.

“Brown gills!” she said. “We can eat these ones.”

I reached into my handbag for the plastic bag I always carried, and held it open.

Filed Under: Blog Posts Tagged With: Caroline Barron, Chinese New Zealanders, Flash Fiction NZ, Flash Frontiers, Lisa Joe

Writers Group: Show Us Your Angsty Teenage Poetry

June 1, 2017 by Caroline Barron Author Leave a Comment

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A Dr Martens ad for Pavement mag  featuring sulky teenaged me, sometime in the early 90s.

We are all roaring with laughter—not a polite chuckle in sight. I mean tears streaming, snorting, thigh slapping, high pitched, cross your legs before you have an accident laughter. Hell, it feels good. Emma, Kirstin and Kiri started this Writers Group in Point Chevalier four years ago, Anna joined later, I joined three months ago, and Mary’s new tonight. So, perhaps that’s the joy of laughing so hard—it joins us together, affirms that we have things in common, that we like each other. I love these girls already.

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True friends don’t judge your teenage poems. They laugh.

The reason for our laughter? We’d agreed to bring along a poem from our teenage years.

Earlier that evening I’d scrambled around the attic looking for the black ring binder that contained laboriously typed pages and pages and pages of poetry written between 1994 and 1996, when I was aged 17 to 20, studying journalism at AUT. The poems abruptly stopped in March 1996 when my father died, my pen stunned into silence for years after. I’d thought for a time that the poetry in that black folder might win competitions, make me famous, or at least find me my very own Ted Hughes. [Read more…] about Writers Group: Show Us Your Angsty Teenage Poetry

Filed Under: Blog Posts Tagged With: 90s models NZ, Caroline Barron, Emma Vere Jones, Kiri LIghtfoot, Kirstin Marcon, Maysie Bestall-Cohen, Nova Models, Pavement magazine, Sylvia Plath, teenage poetry, writers group nz

Ocean Bay: A literary take on travel writing

May 25, 2017 by Caroline Barron Author 2 Comments

“Ocean Bay” appeared in the New Zealand Society of Authors magazine, NZ Author, Autumn issue, 2017. With thanks to Nadine Rubin Nathan.

The story placed second in the AA Directions Magazine Award for the Best New Travel Writer category of the Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards 2016. Judge, Steve Braunias, made me blush with his rather lovely comments: ‘Second place was “Ocean Bay.” The writer describes retracing an ancestor’s footsteps in Port Underwood, in Marlborough. It plays with past and present, and brings them together in this very unusual and also very beautiful depiction of place. Again, what a superb piece of writing.’Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4

Filed Under: Blog Posts Tagged With: Caroline Barron, Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards 2016, NZ travel writing, Ocean Bay, Steve Braunias, The Girl Who Stole Stockings

North & South: March 2017: The Heart of the Matter with Poet Selina Tusitala-Marsh

May 25, 2017 by Caroline Barron Author Leave a Comment

2017_March_North & South_Selina Tusitala Marsh

Filed Under: Blog Posts Tagged With: Caroline Barron, NZ poetry, Pasifika poet, Selina Tusitala Marsh, The Heart of the Matter

NZ Herald Weekend Magazine: 4 March 2017: Kai Iwi Lakes

March 6, 2017 by Caroline Barron Author Leave a Comment

When we drove over the hill for the first time Hazel said: “Is this Fiji?”

It’s that beautiful.

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Filed Under: Blog Posts Tagged With: Kai Iwi, Kaipara, Kaipara Taonga, Lake Taharoa, Taharoa Domain

North & South: February 2017: The Heart of the Matter, with Auckland Festival director, Carla van Zon

February 20, 2017 by Caroline Barron Author Leave a Comment

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Filed Under: Blog Posts Tagged With: Carla van Zon, North & South magazine, The Heart of the Matter

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National Flash Fiction Day Prize Winning Story: Sam’s Nana by Caroline Barron

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