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Heather
McPherson is represented in many anthologies, including the Penguin
anthology of New Zealand verse (1985) and later ones, both lesbian
and heterosexual. Her A figurehead: a face (Spiral 1982) was the
first New Zealand published collection of poems by an out lesbian. It
was followed by The third myth (Tauranga Moana Press 1986) and
Other world relations which includes "Journeys into the Bay of
Plenty" (Old Bags 1991 available from afineline@paradise.net.nz )
In 2000, two of Heather's poems published in the 70s were included in
the Big Smoke anthology (eds Leggott, Edmond, Brunton, Auckland University
Press). She writes: "I was then obscuring my identity by using initials,
having been advised I stood a better chance of being published if I wasn't
known as a woman (let alone a lesbian) poet. "What can I tell you love"
was written to a woman."
Heather founded Spiral with three other women, as a journal of women's
art and literature, in 1976. Spiral later developed into a publishing
house and published works like Saj's Amazon songs and Keri Hulme's
Booker prize-winning the bone people. She was also involved
in many women's art movement projects in Christchurch and as a co-founder
of the Women's Gallery in Wellington where she co-ordinated the Women
& violence exhibition in 1980 and was co-co-ordinator of Visual
diaries. She is featured in A women's picture book; 25 women
artists from Aotearoa New Zealand (Government Print 1988) and was
an editor of Spiral 7: a collection of lesbian art and writing from
Aotearoa New Zealand (Spiral 1992).
Further quotations from Heather's "Journeys into the Bay of Plenty"
appear in the article that accompanies this site; she also contributed
to the catalogue for Fran Marno's Read my lips exhibition.
"Living in restricted and sometimes isolated situations - emotionally
as much as geographically (as in having been the only lesbian feminist
writer in half a province) - I've found the land/scape to be vital to
my well-being. As I've learned more of our history and "seen" this country's
continued invisibilising and exclusion of tangata whenua…the more I perceive
echoes and reverberations in the invisibilising of and prejudice towards
gay and lesbian presence…Sounding the depths of racism, sexism and homophobia
is a continual and subtle learning process…what a person does with and
to land/scape, its exterior/interior meanings, may indicate spiritual
sort or long-sightedness, what is done with and to the land has parallels
with the experience of minorities."
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