A hundred years after Katherine Mansfield died at the age of 34, six writers and performers share their personal connections to the New Zealand writer's life and legacy.
Katherine Mansfield. Photo: Ann Ronan Picture Library / Photo12 via AFP
Photo: supplied
2023 marks the centenary year of Katherine Mansfield’s too-soon demise from pulmonary tuberculosis.
In New Zealand and across the world, Mansfield is still cherished for her role in shaping modernism and her experimental, genre-defying body of work.
Some literary critics have called her the best short-story stylist of all time.
Stephanie Johnson says:
“Somehow it was planted in my head, as well as the heads of many of my generation, that Katherine Mansfield was an icon up there with Edmund Hillary and Kiri Te Kanawa. A hairstyle later popularised by Mary Quant had already been rocked by KM. The punk desire to die at 30 had already been achieved by KM who almost managed it at 35. The ubiquitous idea that in order to achieve anything you had to leave dull, restrictive New Zealand and never come back was pioneered by KM in 1908. “
Phrases entered our lexicon by osmosis: ‘I seen the little lamp!’ from The Doll’s House being the most well-known, closely followed by ‘Risk, risk anything. Care no more for the opinions of others for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth!’
Photo: Victoria University of Wellington
“In the 1980s, like many others, I was further drawn towards Katherine Mansfield the woman, through Cathy Downes’s brilliant play The Case of Katherine Mansfield which she performed over a thousand times in six different countries. I suspect others, much later in 2011, were drawn to her by Fiona Samuel’s timeless and evocative film Bliss.”
“By the time I started to write seriously (and miraculously to be performed or published), I still felt no real connection with Katherine Mansfield. She had left. I had stayed. She had a father who funded her departure and life thereafter. I had a father who loved me, but didn’t love the things that I did, and expected me to make my own way in the world.”
“It was in Menton [on a Katherine Mansfield fellowship] that I read, cover to cover, her collected stories. It wasn’t until then that I felt closer to her, less envious of her opportunities, and more admiring of her writing.”
About the speakers
Miranda Harcourt
Miranda Harcourt Photo: Supplied
Producer, director and acting coach Miranda Harcourt works with leading actors and directors across the world. Her clients have won or been nominated for Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Emmys and Oliviers. She has twice won best actress at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards and in 2023 was appointed DNZM for services to theatre, film and the community. Miranda is the co-director of Transmission, a play about New Zealand’s Covid response.
Substack: mirandaharcourt@substack.com
Stephanie Johnson
Stephanie Johnson Photo: supplied
Stephanie Johnson was a co-founder of the Auckland Writers Festival in 1998. She has published across multiple genres, from collections of poetry to plays, short stories and novels and is a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction and an MNZM for services to literature. Her novel Everything Changes won the 2021 New Zealand Society of Authors Heritage Prize for Fiction and her most recent is Kind.
Karl Stead
C K Stead Photo: AUP
C. K. Stead is a distinguished, award-winning novelist, literary critic, poet, essayist and Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Auckland. He was the New Zealand Poet Laureate from 2015–2017, has won the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction and is a Member of the Order of New Zealand. His most recent book is the poetry collection Say I Do This and among his many works is the novel Mansfield, spanning three years of the life of Katherine Mansfield.
Charlotte Yates
Charlotte Yates on stage. Photo: Brady Dyer
Charlotte Yates is a New Zealand singer/songwriter and recording artist. She has released seven of her own solo material to date, in addition to 15 collaborative projects. The single Red Letter from her 1991 debut album Queen Charlotte Sounds was an APRA Silver Scroll finalist. In 2020, Charlotte curated and produced Mansfield, an album featuring 12 artists who have set Katherine Mansfield’s poetry to music.
Paula Morris
Photo: Paula Morris
Paula Morris MNZM (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Manuhiri) is an award-winning fiction writer, essayist, and editor. The director of the Masters of Creative Writing programme at the University of Auckland, she is the founder of both the Academy of NZ Literature and Wharerangi, the Māori Literature Hub, and the editor of the Aotearoa NZ Review of Books. She writes about Korean drama at the site KoreaSeen.
Redmer Yska
Photo: Supplied
Writer and historian Redmer Yska has written across a range of subjects including post-war teenagers, Dutch New Zealanders, Wellington and a history of NZ Truth. His biography of Katherine Mansfield's Wellington childhood, A Strange Beautiful Excitement, was longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards, and his latest is Katherine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to Station.
This session is broadcast thanks to the generous help of the Auckland Writers Festival held in May 2023
Photo: Auckland Writers Festival
