Title: Sport 5

Editor: Fergus Barrowman

Publication details: 1990, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Conditions of use

Share:

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Sport 5: Spring 1990

[section]

Sport has recently received a postcard from Damien Wilkins. He reports that his apartment is 'rather nice—roomy, light & currently empty', that he has 'walked down miles of the same street to buy the essentials', and that 'there are 3 golf courses a few blocks away. I think I might like it here, but then I suppose I have to be a student too.' Damien left New Zealand on 12 August, when Sport 5was all but finalised, to take up a two-year scholarship to study writing at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. Damien was there at the beginning— Sportwas conceived in his yellow Escort one wet night in June 1988. Without his dedication, and his eye for the sentimental and slack, the magazine would never have reached a fifth issue in such health. We wish Damien the very best for his career—launched so convincingly with The Veteran Perils—and look forward to his continuing influence in the pages of Sport. We look on this not so much as losing an editor, as gaining a continent.


The third Writers and Readers Week (held in Wellington as part of the NZ International Festival of the Arts, 14-18 March) was a stimulating start to the literary year. Sportwas there throughout, from nervous early-morning beginning to relaxed Sunday afternoon harbour cruise. Looking back, there seems little point to sifting the impressions which remain—an prickly aside here, a revealing communication gap there—to construct an account; excerpts currently being broadcast on the Concert Programme are the best reminder of the entertaining variety; and roll on next time. But the highlight for many people was James Fenton, as he first talked about his extraordinary poetry, and then recited, danced and sang it. We're delighted, in this issue, to present an interview with James Fenton in which he talks about the New Recklessness, and with it the movement's flagship poem, 'Here Come the Drum Majorettes!', from the fugitive Manila Envelope.


Travel, various commentators have noticed, is one of the key themes in recent NZ writing; most obviously perhaps in fiction, which at times approaches the status of documentary; but also in the least likely texts ... in much of this issue of Sport, for instance. We have it in mind to make this tendency explicit in the next issue, and would be pleased to consider for inclusion any pieces of writing, concerned however tangentially with 'travel', which are submitted to us by, say, 30 November. Depending on the response, Sport 6, the Travel Issue will be published next April.