Listen carefully, I will say this only once...

Yesterday I participated in a fundraising event for Christchurch. As poet Renee Laing said at the Mt Roskill library last night, when disaster struck in Christchurch New Zealanders said "I want to help, what can I do?" And the truth was the best thing to do was what you are good at. So when author James George said lets do public readings of our written work in Auckland libraries, I signed up in a flash. On Friday March 25th I joined a group of authors (Ken Grace, Mihera Paterson, Bronwyn Elsmore, Nicky Pelligreno and Brennan Rigby) at the Public Library at Massey out West at 1pm and a different group (Maggie Tarver, Robina Adamson and Renee Laing) at Mt Roskill Library at 6pm and we each shared an 8 to 10 minute reading with the good folk who turned up to hear us and donate money to a good cause. I hope the audience enjoyed what we had to offer. They seemed to. I certainly enjoyed reading aloud. I read short stories from the two Pick 'n' Mix anthologies put out by Scholastic NZ. I very much enjoyed the listening too. I remember listening to stories on the radio played during school. This is where I first developed a serious crush on Greek Mythology. Careful listening, something you have to do with a live reading because there is no pause and rewind facility (no do-overs as it were) is a great skill. I listened attentively to the other readers yesterday because if you missed any seeds sown earlier in a story the twist or climax at the end could lose its potency. I read somewhere recently that we have diminished the facility of our brains by using calculators and other technological devices that save us the effort of figuring things out in our heads. Many cultures had an oral tradition that is slipping away. Many of us lose the listening skills we developed at school. Poets, as Renee Laing reminded us last night have a well organised schedule of regular readings and slams. Writers of prose have nothing like this. We should. It would be good for writers to share their work; good for listeners to enjoy some good stories, practice some good listening skills and enjoy a sense of community around a creative endeavour. We could all benefit.