The New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc) Te Puni Kaituhi O Aotearoa is sad to announce the passing of Jack Lasenby. He was well-loved, generous to other writers, a champion of children’s literature and a lively character. He will be sadly missed.

Jack has been an NZSA member since 1974. He recently received a Taipūrākau Honour, awarded to our long-standing members. Many writers and others have listed some tributes to him, and we publish an extract from that piece below, of some member's recollections - first published in The Spin Off. The full link to The Spin Off article is below:

   

Dear Jack, we love you

Mandy Hager, writer, president of the New Zealand Society of Authors:
I met Jack during the very first week of my three-year teacher’s training in Wellington in 1980. I was a shy 20-year-old, thrust together with my year-group at an introductory camp in Elsdon, Porirua. He came across me engrossed in Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, stood watching me for a moment and said: “You’re not really reading that, are you”’ To my affirmative reply his eyebrow rose. “Oh, very good,” he said and walked on. Little did I know then what a huge influence he’d have on me.

It turned out Jack was my English lecturer for the next two years. The first of two pivotal moments in my dawning as a writer came when he’d read to us aloud in his marvellous voice, sharing tales from antiquity, both Māori and classical, explaining that we needed to know the origins of story and how such stories shaped our understanding of ourselves and our world. It’s a lesson that has always stayed with me and still informs my writing: the universality and importance of story to the human species.

The second pivotal moment came when he set us our first writing assignment. I wrote an anecdote from my childhood that involved a possum and heavy breathing, and the following week, when he handed it back to me, he said: “Well, you know how to tell a good story.” Those words were magic to me, reawakening the writer I’d always been, but which had gone into hibernation during my late teens. Those nine little words gave me the confidence to keep trying, keep reading the best of the literature of the day and from the past, and to trust that I could do it if I really tried. 

Later, when Jack took to full time writing himself, watching how he turned his beautifully written, hugely entertaining stories into books was also very inspiring. And when my book The Crossing won the YA category in the 2010 book awards, he wrote me a warm letter of congratulation, which touched me deeply. I never think of him without a smile on my face and a huge upswelling of gratitude in my heart. Thank you, Jack, for the many gifts you gave to us all.


Jane Arthur, formerly of Gecko Press, co-founder of The Sapling:
I met Jack when I helped publish Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull at Gecko Press. He made a big impression on me. I have never been so delighted to receive a reply to an email – he applied the lost art of letter-writing to every correspondence. Where someone else would’ve put “sounds good, ta”, he crafted perfect, paragraphed insights featuring literary quotes, classical mythology, OTT diatribes against social media, and fantastic gardening tips (terracotta pots suck the moisture from the soil, so are best avoided). I declared that someone (okay, me) absolutely must compile and publish The Collected Letters of Jack Lasenby, because they were so entertaining and enriching. Just like his stories. 

I thought he might be formal and gruff in person, but no – warm, sparkly eyed and humble. It’s so cool we got to have him and his yarns and brains at all, and so lucky we have his books to read forever. Go well, Jack. Good-oh.


Joy Cowley: 
Many people will talk about Jack’s writing. I want to pay a tribute to Jack my friend.
Bon Voyage, dear Jack. Some of us are close behind you. We suspect you won’t journey too far. Quantum theory reminds us that the Universe retains its energy. When something disappears in one place, it will reappear somewhere else. You, Jack, will always be around. If our literature becomes inflated with grandeur, you’ll be there with your verbal chainsaw, and when we indulge in depressing therapy writing, you will punctuate with a few jolly expletives.

You have always been real, Jack, and you will continue to be real.
My last time with you, was when we had poems installed on the Wellington wharf.  I was sitting on a stage next to you, while the Governor-General made his speech. In a quiet moment you said loudly, “I  can’t hear a bloody thing and I want to go to the toilet.”
Dear Jack, we love you. Continue to keep us all real.


++ These recollections first published in The Spin Off.

For further information and for media enquiries: claireh@nzauthors.org.nz 09 3794801   authors.org.nz