Aotearoa’s longest-running literary journal, Landfall, is publishing its 250th issue on Thursday, 16 October. It’s a bumper edition with 288 pages and a new name – Landfall Tauraka – gifted by Te Irika o Wharawhara Te Raki at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. To reflect on the journal's past, present, and future, current editor Lynley Edmeades spoke to three previous editors: Emma Neale who edited the journal from 2017-2021, Chris Price from 1993-2000 and David Eggleton from 2010–2017. Here's what they talked about:

Lynley Edmeades: On the eve of Landfall Tauraka’s 250th issue, I’d like to invite you to reflect on your time as editor of the journal. In my short time in this role, I’ve come to view it as a kind of custodian role. Looking back at your own editorship, what was your view of your role and to what kind of responsibility (if any) did you feel toward the literary lineage of the journal? Did the ghost of Charles Brasch haunt you? 

Emma Neale: I saw the role as one of lifting talent into the light, whether these were the gifts of established or new writers and visual artists. I also tried to open the gates wide to voices and visions from a diverse range of experience, all while holding on to my own sense of high literary quality, and always hoping to engage and compel readers.  I tried to find a balance of genders and cultural backgrounds in whose art and writing was being published, and in who was  reviewing and being reviewed. I largely relied on the unsolicited submissions but there were times when an issue would feel as if it was lacking a certain energy or even gravity, so I’d approach an established writer, like Patricia Grace, for example, to try to fill that gap.

Acting as the editor for Landfall Review Online (LRO) was probably the most challenging aspect, as sometimes excellent and important titles, for example, weren’t covered, because potential reviewers felt they didn’t have the mana, or they got cold feet, or they ghosted me: received the book and then never delivered a review. This happened far more often than I’d anticipated, but of course, particularly with expensive, photographic titles, there were only so many free review copies I felt able to ask for from publishers. Then the tide of new titles would wash in, and the review, or reviews, I wanted never materialised. I often felt the responsibility of this weigh very heavily, precisely because of that sense of owing something to the historical and literary record. Yet I felt the phantom of Charles Brasch far less pressingly than I felt the intelligence of many of my peers and my immediate predecessor, David Eggleton, as a standard I wanted to hold myself to. 

Chris Price: My own sense of being a custodian was perhaps founded in the journal’s historical moment: the Caxton Press had decided to cease publication, the members of then QEII Arts Council’s Literature Fund (among them Terry Sturm and Elizabeth Caffin) felt that Landfall should not be allowed to go under, and the journal was looking for a home.  It seemed to me I’d ended up as Landfall editor more by accident than by design—I had relatively recently become the reviews editor, just one of the four-person committee that was then the editorial model, and I may have been the only person with enough spare capacity—or foolish enough—to agree to take it on as a whole! I was interested in the best new writing, but unsure of my judgement, and with a sense of history I felt I ought to read Brasch’s editorials before I began. I was at once intimidated by their high seriousness, broad social perspectives and depth and breadth of reference; Brasch made me feel like a profoundly unserious person. Utterly ill-equipped to step into those shoes,  I quickly decided against writing editorials for fear of producing something dutiful and dull, and the ghost of Brasch gradually receded, allowing me to focus on working through the possibilities of the present.

I subsequently read English writers such as Horizon editor Cyril Connolly who went through World War II and its aftermath as Brasch did, and have begun to better understand that tone and where it came from. (Like every job in the book world I’ve fallen into, I now feel better equipped to do it  than when I actually did it.) 

David Eggleton: Back in the day, people such as the biographer Michael King and the poet James K. Baxter had fun at Charles Brasch’s expense, mocking him as a kind of overly-cultured, teacup-holding maiden aunt figure, prim to the point of absurdity. As Landfall’s founder, Brasch actually invited Baxter to take over from him as Landfall editor in the mid-1960s, an offer Baxter vehemently rejected, disliking the responsibility and the respectability it implied. Baxter referred to Brasch in a poem as ‘Aunt Charlie’, and in correspondence as ‘a pouched bandicoot’, as well as applying other even less polite epithets. But Charles Brasch was undoubtedly a power for good, a philanthropist and benefactor, able to use his wealth to make a difference. Evangelising on behalf of high culture, his motto for Landfall was one many New Zealanders held dear then: ‘decently and in order’.

The establishment in 1947 of Landfall as a literary quarterly, partly modelled on Cyril Connolly's British magazine Horizon (‘publishing the best creative and critical writing’), was about notions of nationhood and identity. It still is about those things now, but in a more nuanced way, as the fundamentalist nationalism of the 1950s and 1960s shifted to the secular neo-nationalism of the 1980s and 1990s; while post-millennium, we are all eclectic post-nationalists—nomadically at home everywhere and nowhere, thanks to the internet and identity politics. And yet we haven't quite given up on the 1947 Landfall prime-mover credo of 'common' sense and ‘quirky’ sensibility; on the paradox of isolation and abundance; on the dynamic emotion that goes with making Allen Curnow's ‘landfall’, in this ‘far-pitched, perilous, hostile place’ as Ron Mason described it, in this ‘cranky little coda at the bottom of the world’ to quote Ngaio Marsh, in this ‘aaah baaah, aaah baaah ... of shearing pens’ to channel Katherine Mansfield: this belief in a New Zealand literary culture.

I got involved with Landfall as editor at the invitation of Otago University Press publisher Wendy Harrex around 2010. Wendy very much needs to be credited with bringing Landfall into the OUP fold and back to its spiritual home of Ōtepoti Dunedin. Before my arrival, there had been five years of a series of guest editors—these included Bill Direen and Jack Ross—and before that there was Justin Paton and his design team, who revamped the look of Landfall and laid out the cohesive formula—enhancing Brasch's original vision—which Landfall still uses today: essentially establishing key separate sections that serve to knit the publication together as a series of revelatory episodes.

LE: You’ve each made your own individual mark on the journal’s legacy (and please tell me if I’m missing anything here): Chris, you introduced the now esteemed Landfall Essay Prize David, you began the Landfall Young Writers’ Essay Prize  (formerly the Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition), and began LRO; and Emma, you took the essay tradition to the level of anthology with the ongoing Strong Words, now into its 4th issue. What was the driving force behind these initiatives and, if you had your time again, would you do anything differently? 

EN: There were a couple of other changes I saw through: I also managed to open submissions to those in te reo, if they were accompanied by an English translation: this was in response to a direct request from the author and reviewer Vaughan Rapatahana. I totally agreed that it seemed high time that Landfall offered this avenue as a mark of Aotearoa’s particular cultural landscape. Because of my own excited curiosity about the process for visual artists, I often asked artists for a personal statement, and would publish that to accompany the art portfolios, rather than always writing my own critical response to their work. Not all artists felt comfortable writing a statement, but I felt really delighted to offer their own words to readers when they did.

Occasionally at LRO, I also published reviews that weren’t only of books, but, in one instance, of the WORD Christchurch Literary Festival, and a collection of responses to an exhibition of sorts: the Stations of the Cross by Joanna Margaret Paul, which were on display at St Mary, Star of the Sea, Port Chalmers. In each case, clever writers came to me with proposals and I felt they were interesting enough for me to loosen the boundaries of what generally went up at LRO. 

I wanted to introduce an audio component to LRO, and ask selected writers to record themselves reading their work from issues of Landfall, but was told that the press didn’t have enough money to expand the online aspect this way. I’m still really disappointed about that; it was the one real innovation I could have claimed. I felt it would tie in beautifully with the oral aspects of  storytelling in so many cultures, and would also keep readers and writers linked to the musical origins of poetry. But it was a no-go.

As for the driving force behind Strong Words: that grew out of my sense that many of the essays submitted to the essay competition in 2018 were deserving of a wider readership. When I told the then-publisher, Rachel Scott, how much I struggled to choose a short list, she suggested maybe there was a book in that. When the press’s publishing committee approved, we were off! 

CP: When I arrived at Landfall most of the essays submitted came from academics.  No shade on academia—I’m part of it now myself!—but the competition was a way to signal that Landfall was also interested in what we now call creative nonfiction, an umbrella term that covers a multitude of genres and subgenres. As Lee Gutkind, the person often (though inaccurately) credited with coining the term, has written, ‘It liberated all writers, journalists especially, releasing them from longstanding rules and boundaries that had been so restrictive and inhibiting.  For novelists, poets and essayists, “creative” encouraged experimentation and offered new avenues of expression.’* I’m not sure whether I’d heard the term back then, but wanted to encourage writers of all kinds to work in that territory in whatever way that interested them.

The number of creative nonfiction applications for the MA programme at the International Institute of Modern Letters has risen noticeably over the last 15 or so years that I’ve been convening a workshop there, and the essay is now well-established in the local literary landscape: I’d like to think the Landfall Tauraka Essay Prize (as it’s now called) and its younger sibling have played a part in that.

 *What is Creative Nonfiction? by Lee Gutkind

DE: I remember that Rachel Scott, who took over as Otago University Press (OUP) publisher from Wendy Harrex around 2013, was as determined as Wendy had been to keep Landfall's banner flying high. Rachel, for whom Charles Brasch had been a family household visitor when she was a child, discussed and initiated a variety of Landfall-connected occurrences, ranging from promotional reading events and panel discussions, to launching the Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Prize—now the Landfall Tauraka Young Writers’ Essay Prize—to scanning and creating an online archive of back issues of Landfall, so that the contents of roughly half of the back issues, up to about 1986 are readily accessible to all on the OUP website, a tremendous free resource.

LRO, launched in late 2010, was essentially Wendy Harrex’s idea, although figuring out protocols and format was a group project that took a while to finalise; and then suddenly a lot more book reviews were required. So I leapt into that breach and found a number of thematic threads to explore through various review books as chief book reviewer for a time. My other mission objective was the same as it ever was for Landfall editors: to encourage a high standard of critiques, and to have a flying wedge of reviewers on call—a first fifteen skilful enough to tackle whatever came traipsing out onto the publishing paddock, and hopefully end up as advocates rather than adversaries. 

LE: What do you make of the state of New Zealand literary journals today, and Landfall’s place in this ecosystem? What place do you think literary journals (and Landfall in particular) have in the future of NZ literature and arts?

EN: Landfall is still essential avenue for new and established writers to find an audience; the long form critical essays and reviews that Landfall and LRO enable are welcome antidotes to the ‘flash mob’ effect of a lot of other online and other media commentary; I think Landfall is important for showcasing both innovation and tradition, so also for honouring established writers and artists at the peak of their form. I think one advantage Landfall does still seem to have over various other titles is that it offers remuneration. This acknowledgement of the arts as a profession is also crucial role-modelling for other publications, I think. Several other publications can only offer writers the glory of seeing their work and name ‘up in type’. It’s fantastic that there is a range of publications out there, but no payment is symptomatic of a dire funding landscape and a gross undervaluation, in the culture at large, really, of the work that goes into all aspects not only of creation, but also into the collating of the journal itself. Landfall needs to sustain high editorial standards and continue to strive to pay artists decently.

CP: Thumbs up to payment for writers, and I’m glad Landfall continues to hold that line.  I’m also glad that the internet has democratised and diversified the publishing landscape here, serving a wider range of cultures, tastes, and writers, as well as enabling readers both here and elsewhere to discover writers from Aotearoa whose work doesn’t travel so easily in print.  Journals are important to the development and confidence of new writers — but the ease with which a website can be built means that the  editors of online journals don’t have to think about subscriptions in the same life or death way the editors of print journals must, and as a consequence they are often more ephemeral. Worldwide, the democratising effect also means that the sheer volume of journals threatens to consign a lot of writing to oblivion more rapidly than before, the good along with the bad. 

I remain an analogue reader by preference, and somehow the writing I encounter in online journals doesn’t always stick in my consciousness as securely as print, so for me it’s still good to have at least one print journal  that transcends the narrative arc of an individual editor’s (or collective’s) energy, a place to publish that the writing community here can count on, with new management changing things up at intervals, and other journals with a variety of agendas bubbling along beside it.

DE: Many literary magazines—Mate, Argot, Islands, Sport, JAAM—have come and gone, but the mythology, and the actual quality-print presence, of Landfall endures, with its catch-all approach: always hailing new voices, and welcoming the return of the established, and commemorating eminences; always providing fresh responses and interpretations of the present cultural moment; and in doing this, always serving to map cultural shifts and provide a record of literary endeavour. Landfall began when all of New Zealand literature could pretty much be fitted into a shoebox or at least glass case, as it was in the Auckland University Library in the 1960s, as CK Stead tells us in one or other memoir, describing those halcyon days when contributors stood amongst the cinders sipping Sargeson's home-made Lemora and waiting for Brasch's nod of approval. 

What I value about Landfall is its dedication to professionalism, and its alert and constant fine-tuning, continuously remaking itself so it can continue to step out confidently, arm-in-arm with the zeitgeist. To my mind, Landfall remains the genesis, meridian and spark of literary magazine culture in this country. It is a taonga; it is the maunga, whenua and awa of the people, because it's the mountain peak most New Zealand writers want to climb, at least once; and because its terrain has mana; and because we seek to launch our kayaks into its currents as part of a larger flotilla. Does a mountain remember? Can a forest think? Is a river alive? Landfall—or Landfall Country—over the course of its existence has offered answers to these environmental or atmospherical questions in all kinds of ways.

So, yes, I'm an evangelist in the Brasch terracotta mould, but a little magazine is only as good as its contributors make it, and what Landfall specialises in is its community—or community hall—approach. It's cultural production by the many, without much monetary reward. In the words of the Surrealists' admonition: 'Poetry should be made by all. Not one.' Landfall, then, is a working bee, exemplifying work-in-progress and made from materials to hand.    

Editing of course is the art of judicious balancing, of orchestrating each issue to harmonious—or occasionally dissonant—effect, where everything serendipitously connects with an ideal readership and provides illumination. But window-dressing also counts, and by the time I had arrived at Landfall as editor, the smartphone had entrenched itself ubiquitously, and so had the short-attention-span economy. Books are now a boutique business, and even more so the all-purpose national literary magazine, which must indeed box clever to remain essential reading and part of a cultural conversation becoming ever more fragmented. In an era whose tech-driven mantra is not just constant change but constant accelerated change, new literature world-wide struggles for relevance—and, arguably, for authenticity. However, in insular Aotearoa New Zealand, I think, we are constructing a powerful regional literature and Landfall Tauraka has a central role to play in this, provided it is navigated percipiently.

LE: I hate that I have to ask this question, but it’s really the thing that is on everyone’s mind: how do you think literary journals should be dealing with the import of AI in our field? 

EN: My answer to this is probably a bit naive, as I haven’t read widely and deeply into philosophical arguments over this. At this stage, my wariness, especially around copyright and plagiarism issues, is to say journals should offer resistance, defiance and refusal in terms of creative submissions that bend to or use AI, be they visual or verbal. I’m also concerned about the flattening and homogenising effect of AI influenced or sourced work; and to be honest, I don’t understand the impulse to call on AI this way. The joy in and growth from creativity comes from the act of doing. AI to me seems to be about skipping the genuinely pleasurable and transformative parts of writing and exploring. If I get someone else to go for a walk for me, my health and the mind-body connection don’t benefit. Isn’t it the much the same with asking a tool to write or draw for you? The experience isn’t lodged deep within your own mind, it doesn’t nourish your own intellectual development, or embed itself as memory. It all seems pretty hollow and pointless to me. 

On the other hand, in terms of the journal’s role, I think it should encourage active and alert intellectual discussion of the issue in critical essays. That’s the only barge-pole I’d want to touch it with.

CP: I’m with Emma on this: the fun of being a writer is in doing it, not outsourcing it.  The rest is ‘content’. My favourite statement on the subject comes  – ironically perhaps—from social media (alas I cannot remember who posted this, so cannot attribute it): “Why should I be bothered to read something no one could be bothered to write?”  I’ll be glad when there’s a tool like a more advanced TurnItIn that can reliably detect AI use in a piece of writing, but I’m not sure that will be available any time soon—if ever. Until then, journals can only ask writers to disclose the use of AI in submissions.  

I don’t doubt that some applications of AI may benefit humankind enormously, and I am interested in it as just another vehicle that experimental writers may use to create innovative work, provided there is a human at the steering wheel. I have been involved in computer-based  experiments of this kind myself—in fact I commissioned and published an early experiment in collaborative poetry-making involving Bill Manhire, Jenny Bornholdt, Dinah Hawken, and Gregory O’Brien that made use of something called Group Systems Software in Landfall 197 (1999). It makes sense that writers are using AIto ask questions about the limits, distortions and affordances of digital life. But the potentially catastrophic consequences of the current uncritical rush to adopt AI, whether for the artist, wider society and  the planet itself are so disturbing  that personally, I’m inclined to steer clear for now, because I don’t want to be complicit: better to forego literary experiments for the sake of preserving a liveable planet. Let’s keep AI for the tasks that will serve more urgent human needs, and not devote the vast quantities of water and energy it swallows to producing gigatons of fake news, art-by-numbers, and videos of cats in space.

As early as  2003, the cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees was giving human civilisation as we know it  a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the 21st century: pandemics, climate change, the uncontrolled use of technology and the shorter term consequences of individual bad actors were among his reasons for pessimism. For a long time now I have thought of his prediction at least once a week, and right now the odds seem to be getting shorter every day.

 DE: As for AI, it's here and we have to get used to it, using a variety of strategic responses. Writers are already using AI as an assist and New Zealand poets are on record as employing apps to help them create poems, and so on. For me it's about effect: voice and tone and fraudulence and intention—does its use add anything useful, or does it detract? Can one be fooled by the arrival of an AI chatbot giving off no sense of imposter syndrome? Philosophical questions but also aesthetic conundrums. Editors at this point have to go on keeping up with the sly or subtle use of big data sets mostly by using their intuition and good advice.           

A couple of years ago someone submitted a review to me as Landfall Reviews Editor, out of the blue, claiming it as their own. But it was so excruciatingly-worded, in a kind of Americanese-inflected junk idiom, it verged on gibberish. This reviewer, seeking commissions, had previously sent links to a few online reviews they had written that read well; however, rereading them I deduced that editors of those publications had substantially rewritten them, as review editors are sometimes called on to do. The review submitted was so full of chatbot hallucinations, that I screwed it up and threw it in the skeuomorphic wastepaper bin and wrote the review myself. That reviewer ghosted away, their reputation for me at least terminally damaged. Will the use of AI usher in 'a new Saturnian age of lead' where dullness never deviates into sense, to paraphrase Alexander Pope? It's already here, let's see how it plays out. Could my replies have been written by a chatbot? I'm not sure.

Landfall Tauraka 250 is available online or at local bookshops from Thursday.