Ahead of the centennial this week of the birth of Janet Frame, her childhood hometown laid out the welcome mat to those wanting to celebrate Otago’s most well-known literary daughter.
On Saturday the Janet Frame House Trust opened the author’s former family home at 56 Eden St to give visitors a glimpse at the formative place where Frame the writer began to unfurl — amidst a bustling home for a family of seven.
It was one of four events timed around Frame’s August 28 birthday.
The others were a special screening of the film of Frame’s biography An Angel At My Table, a special assembly at Frame’s alma mata, Waitaki Girls’ High School, and an open-to-the-public New Zealand writers panel.
Janet Frame House trustee, Wellington writer Kate Camp, said there was no question about how significant Frame remained as a New Zealand writer of international repute.
"I know from working for the New Zealand Book Council, she is by far the most well-known New Zealand writer," Camp said.
This was easy to forget because the huge international interest in Frame still burgeons, 20 years after her death, with her legacy perhaps more esteemed than ever.
"She is big globally and held in very high regard," Camp said.
After viewing An Angel At My Table again and revisiting Frame’s childhood home, the experience had proved evocative, Camp said.
Particularly being in the bedroom where Frame shared the one bed with her three sisters.
The room, replicated over 20 years ago, is as it was in the 1930s.
The bed and the Waitaki Girls’ uniform hanging in the wardrobe underscored the family tragedy which very much formed Frame’s writing after the sudden death of two of her siblings, Camp said.
"Now that I know the house so well, the film brought it to life. You can really picture the four girls, how close they were.
"There’s a scene in the film where they are all lying side by side. Any sisters are close, but to lose two of the four is so tragic. I feel like having the bed here, you can really visualise."
Fittingly, Frame’s alma mata held a special assembly on Friday morning with invited old girls and student readings of her work.
"That was great ... I think the school is really embracing her legacy."
And despite the contrasting epoch across the generations, the impetus for a young person to write remained, Camp said.
"When I looked out at the assembly, I knew there will be girls writing poems, if not on TikTok, then in their notebooks."
During the open day, long-standing trustee Karen Ross said the importance of the home to Oamaru as a visitor point was only beginning to be appreciated. The trust will develop a new visitor centre on the site in 2025.
Through their own research they now knew 51% of people who visited Janet Frame House came solely to Oamaru because of Frame, Ross said.
"It changed our focus a bit. Even though locally, it’s catching up now, its international visitors that come now."
