http://janetframe.org.nz
Official Web Site of the Janet Frame Literary Trust
Latest news: CK Stead apology
"C K Stead, author of South-West of Eden, and its publisher, Auckland University Press, regret quoting from the work of Janet Frame without permission and apologise to the Janet Frame Literary Trust for doing so."
~ NZ Listener, 3 July 2010
CK Stead apologises
for using Janet Frame's work without permission
A review by Frame trustee D. Harold
C K Stead has included an unpublished poem by Janet Frame, and other works by her, all without permission, in his recent memoir. Stead also selectively quotes from a Frame letter so that the meaning of the letter is seriously misrepresented.
Stead has apologised for using Frame’s work without permission after her estate took legal proceedings to seek an injunction against him and his publisher, Auckland University Press. He also has agreed to exclude the unpublished poem from any future edition, and either restore a missing part of a sentence to the extract from the letter, or else exclude the letter entirely.
These are the main facts of the matter, but underlying them are the issues of motives and effects. Why does Stead use Frame’s work in this way, and how does his use of her work enhance his memoir?
Stead uses two of Frame’s poems as a basis on which to make judgments about her, but he then denies the poems are unequivocally hers.
A memoir by its nature is emotional writing, an author having their say about their life and times, but nevertheless the reader expects honesty.
Stead in his portrait of Frame, which is a major aspect of the last section of the memoir, uses all his rhetorical skills to create an atmosphere that will support his summing up of Frame as someone “who rejected the whole human order”, and whose work was “structureless, directionless”, which “offered not hope but a black hole”.
The two Frame poems that Stead uses in order to carry out his ‘analysis’ of Frame are exceedingly minor works – one poem Frame chose never to publish and the other she withdrew from publication. Where is the academic rigour in this use by Stead of trivial Frame works to represent what he claims are her failings as a person and a writer? Surely if he wanted to give a genuine estimation of Frame, he would have used work that truly represented her?
But of course this is a memoir and not a critical work, so therefore ‘fair dealing’ for the purposes of criticism or review is not Stead’s intention. He wants to characterise Frame as childlike, nervous, and strange (“there was something intangible”), and interweave these observations with his demeaning comments on the two poems.
Santie Cross
The unpublished Frame poem that Stead has published without permission is derived (though garbled in the process of turning it into a 'verse') from the stream of consciousness prose poetry on the first page of Frame’s novel, Owls Do Cry. Frame, egged on by Frank Sargeson, recast this passage into a ‘hoax’ poem that she sent under the pseudonym ‘Santie Cross’ to a London literary magazine, which turned it down. Frame then chose never to publish the poem. After her death her estate refused permission for the display of a manuscript of the poem in an exhibition curated by Jenny Bornholdt and Greg O’Brien, at the Turnbull Library in Wellington. Frame and her estate have always considered this ‘poem’ a curiosity piece, unpublishable unless explained within the context of its genesis.
The poem is solely by Frame. She describes the story behind it in her autobiography (chapter 23 of the second volume, An Angel at My Table), as does Michael King in his biography of Frame (chapter 8). In neither book, tellingly, did Frame allow the poem to be published, either whole or in part.
Not only does Stead deny that his publication of this poem is an infringement of Janet Frame’s copyright, he has the effrontery to deny that the poem is Frame’s. On page 316 of his memoir, Stead claims that it was Sargeson who composed the poem by extracting lines from the opening pages (“shown to him” by Frame) of Owls Do Cry and typing them as a poem. The law firm representing Auckland University Press later reiterated this claim in a letter to the Frame estate’s lawyer, Rick Shera, on 21 May 2010.
Stead found a copy of this poem at the Hocken Library in Dunedin pinned to a letter Sargeson wrote to Charles Brasch. There is also a manuscript copy in Frame’s own papers, and there is a third typed copy (signed "Janet") in the Sargeson papers at the Turnbull Library.
In reproducing the poem, Stead has introduced an error. He has added the word 'the' to the line “it said to plant”, which he renders as “it said to the plant” thereby changing the word 'plant' from a verb to a noun and therefore serving to reinforce his allegation that the poem has “no structure, no shape”. Stead goes on to make the amazing leap from his dismissive judgment of the poem to the intellectually untenable conclusion that this off-the-cuff ‘hoax’ of a poem is a fair representation of Frame’s poetry, that like this poem her work as a whole has “no structure, no shape”:
“It had no structure, no shape, but it was full of striking imagery and flashes of brilliance. That is what I thought; and I suppose, it is almost true to say, that is what I would go on thinking about the work of Janet Frame.” [page 315 of Stead’s memoir]
But wait! We have already heard Stead’s claim that this poem is not the work of Janet Frame. Therefore, how can it represent her?
Our Town
To develop his thesis in regard to both Frame and her work, Stead then goes on to quote, without permission, from a Frame poem called “Our Town”. This poem is composed of lines from poems by other poets, and is the result of a literary game similar to one played at Sargeson’s house. The poem was accidentally included in Frame’s only collection published in her lifetime, The Pocket Mirror (1967), and in 1992 she withdrew it from subsequent editions because in itself the poem infringed the copyright of other authors. As of 2010 the poem "Our Town" that Stead claims to subject to 'fair dealing' "for the purposes of criticism or review" has been thus withdrawn from circulation and removed from Frame's canon by her own hand, for nearly 20 years.
“Our Town” is solely by Frame. Stead acknowledges this in his 2002 book Kin of Place on page 275:
“she
has taken [the first lines of poems]
from what would have been, at a date prior to 1967, a modern anthology. The
lines are managed, nudged, manoeuvred towards a recognizable Janet Frame
statement about ‘our town’,”
But now in 2010, Stead amazingly claims that he, his wife and Sargeson had a hand in composing the poem. Again we see Stead’s attempt to blur ownership. And again we see the curious double-think, the contradiction, that if this is not unequivocally a Frame work then how can it represent Frame?
Stead cobbles together ten lines from “Our Town” and inserts them into his evolving pattern of innuendo, which climaxes with his observation that Frame was someone:
“who rejected the whole human order, and whose work, structureless, directionless, brilliant, with flashes of genius, offered not hope but a black hole.” [page 318 of Stead’s memoir]
Saying that Janet Frame “rejected the whole human order” is absurd, an insult to her memory, her family, her friends, to all who knew her and loved her, an insult to truth. Frame’s work is not “structureless, directionless”, as the countless scholarly studies of her work affirm, not to mention her growing international readership. The only black hole is that of envy and revenge, the black hole of being the last man standing, attempting the last word:
“when you’re writing about such a long time ago there is in a way the advantage that so many people are dead and can’t quarrel with your view” [Stead speaking to Chris Laidlaw on his “Sunday Morning” programme on Radio New Zealand National on Sunday May 16, 2010]
The Letter
Just a few pages from the end of his memoir, Stead performs his last act of turning Frame’s own work against her. Stead, by his use of selective quotes from a letter Frame wrote to him creates the impression that she confirmed his claim that her story “The Triumph of Poetry” was “targeted” at him.
Stead selectively quotes from the letter, leaving out vital parts so that he represents Frame as saying the opposite of what she is really saying.
This is the final sentence from Stead’s extraction from the letter:
But I want you and Kay to understand that I’ve never felt any malice towards you.
Stead actually ends his extraction midway through a sentence (and in the process changes a comma into a full-stop). He leaves out Frame’s categorical statement that the story is not about Stead and his wife. This is what Frame wrote:
But
I want you and Kay to understand that I’ve never felt any malice towards you,
that the poet of the story is a certain elderly Scotsman who is now living in
Dunedin, dividing his time between his garden and Shakespeare.
Not only does Stead use Frame’s work without permission, but, Janet Frame’s estate contends, also infringes Frame’s moral right (that continues for twenty years after death) not to have a statement falsely attributed to her.
~~~
In the second to last paragraph of his memoir, Stead inserts an adjective lifted from the unpublished Frame poem that he has published, echoing Frame’s “pepperpot breast of thrush” with his phrase, “pepperpot lighthouse”. His intention is perhaps to create the subliminal impression, “it is almost true to say”, of how a ‘real’ poet uses language.
According to Stead, Sargeson “revered the great poets, and would like best of all to have been a poet himself. (The same was true of Janet Frame).”
Yes, Mr Stead, Janet Frame would have liked best of all to have been a poet herself. She revered the great poets, and is one.
Janet Frame’s estate initiated legal proceedings against Karl Stead and his publisher, who have agreed to apologise for using Frame’s work without permission. They have also agreed to exclude the unpublished poem from any further edition. Also, if Stead wishes to continue quoting from the letter, he has agreed to include the omitted clause.
There is more that could be said on Stead’s machinations in regard to Frame in this memoir.
D. Harold
Trustee
Janet Frame Literary
Trust
25 June 2010
The Janet Frame Literary Trust is a charitable trust that was founded by Janet Frame in 1999. When she died in 2004 she bequeathed her copyright to the Trust and directed that the ongoing royalties and other income from her literary estate be used to give financial grants to New Zealand writers of poetry and imaginative fiction.
Janet Frame Literary Award recipients are
selected by an Advisory Panel. Applications are not invited.
The Janet Frame Literary Trust is registered as
a Charitable Organisation by the New Zealand Charities Commission, and has been
approved as a donee organisation.
Janet Frame's complete works are currently in
print in New Zealand from Random House New Zealand. They are available at all
good NZ bookstores and at NZ online booksellers.
Janet Frame is published in the English language
by Virago Press, Bloodaxe Books and Bloomsbury Books in the UK, by Counterpoint
Press and George Braziller in the USA, and by Random House Australia and
Wilkins Farago in Australia.
Key Responsibilities
The Janet Frame Literary Trust owns Janet Frame's copyright, oversees publishing and permissions, and administers the Janet Frame Literary Awards. All major decisions concerning Janet Frame's rights and legacy are made by the Board of Trustees. The Trustees of the Janet Frame Literary Trust are represented on a day to day basis by the literary executor appointed by Janet Frame herself, her niece and close friend Pamela Gordon. (The administrator who looks after a major literary estate is often referred to as a 'literary executor' - also known as a 'keeper of the flame'. This role also involves a more personal aspect of caring for the late author's reputation and where necessary correcting misinformation.)
Rights Enquiries
Janet Frame's literary estate is
represented by an international literary agency, The Wylie Agency
email: London
email: New York
Please contact the literary agency for enquiries about:
Film and theatre adaptation
Public or radio performance
The right to set Janet Frame's work to music
Inclusion of Janet Frame quotes in any art work
Foreign translation rights
Reproducing any of Janet Frame's written work
Please note that the Janet Frame Estate also maintains strict control over the copyright of unpublished manuscripts and letters by Janet Frame. Any attempt to publish previously unpublished material without permission, will be met with legal action.
Contact Information for Janet Frame's Estate
E-mail link
Click here to send an email
Postal address
Janet Frame Literary Trust
Janet Frame Estate Web page
http://janetframe.org.nz
Literary Executor's Blog
http://slightlyframous.blogspot.com/
Janet Frame - Selected Quotations
&
They think I'm going to be a
schoolteacher but I'm going to be a poet.
(Childhood diary entry, quoted in To The Is-Land)
&
I like to see life with its teeth out.
(Letter to John Money, 6 May 1947)
&
I have discovered that my freedom is
within me, and nothing can destroy it.
(Letter to John Money, 3 October 1948, on being committed to Seacliff Hospital)
& Life is hell but at least there are prizes.
(From the short story 'Prizes' in The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches)
&
The general opinion in New Zealand then
was that natural teeth were best removed anyway, it was a kind of colonial
squandering, like the needless uprooting of forests.
(An Angel at My Table)
&
"For your own good" is a persuasive argument that will
eventually make a man agree to his own destruction.
(Faces in the Water)
&
There is no past, present or future.
Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.
(Faces in the Water)
&
The Southern Cross cuts through my heart
instead of through the sky.
(Towards Another Summer, written 1963, published 2007)
&
A writer must stand on the rock of her self and her judgment or be swept away
by the tide or sink in the quaking earth: there must be an inviolate place
where the choices and decisions, however imperfect, are the writer’s own, where
the decision must be as individual and solitary as birth or death. (The Envoy from Mirror City)
& Dying is an adventure, and I've always
enjoyed adventures.
(Janet Frame to palliative care doctor, quoted in Sunday Star-Times interview with Anthony Hubbard, December 2003)
Caution
We do not recommend the Wikipedia article on
Janet Frame. It has a non-neutral bias. It gives unwarranted prominence to
fringe theories and it quotes unreliable sources. (Please note that Wikipedia
does contain an important and oft overlooked disclaimer to the effect that no
information on the do-it-yourself amateur encyclopedia can be guaranteed to be
reliable.)
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This page last revised: 28 June 2010
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