Vale, Lynne Ciochetto, beloved Spiral stalwart & dear mate!
Somehow, I met Lynne through the Kidsarus 2 collective — which morphed into the Wellington Spiral — when our group was developing children’s picture books like Patricia Grace’s The Kuia & the Spider, back in the 70s. I remember her enthusiasm, her ‘Babe!’ and her ‘Treasure!’ greetings. Her ‘So What’s The Plan?’ Her hard work. Her reliability. Her kindness. Her generosity. Her laughter. None of those things ever changed.
Lynne was also part of the very early Christchurch Spiral collectives,, and in the late 1970s she introduced me to Spiral founder Heather McPherson (1942–2017). Heather lived in Browning Street Sydenham then; and made us macaroni cheese and weed salad.
Lynne became part of The House of the Talking Cat and the bone people collectives in Wellington, leading Anna Keir and me through the design and pasteup: together we physically cut-and-pasted it all and not long ago Lynne wrote about it for Spiral’s Keri Hulme: Our Kuru Pounamu (2023), describing her mixed feelings about this very challenging project. (When recently I saw Spiral’s marked-up the bone people copy, now in the McMillan Brown Library at Canterbury University, it was very moving to see all the familiar handwritings in the margins, including Lynne’s).
Keri herself wrote about Lynne, when expressing her thanks to all who’d helped with the bone people’s production: ‘A special individual thanks to Lynne Ciochetto. She’s obviously helped a helluva lot. When do I get to say a personal thank you, make a personal koha to these loving people, these deep people?’ But alas, Lynne and Keri never met because when we finally launched the book, almost exactly 40 years ago, Lynne was off in Basel, studying design.
For many years, Lynne was working hard as an academic — her last book was What Are US, World Bank, IMF and China doing in SubSaharan Africa? — indulging her love of travel; and caring for her mother; and I was off doing other stuff too. We didn’t see each other.
I don’t remember where and when we met up again. But, somehow, in 2018, to complement the This Joyous, Chaotic Place: He Waiata Tangi-ā-Tahu exhibition at Mokopōpaki about Heather and her peers, a Spiral collective — Lynne, poet Janet Charman, and I — published Heather’s This Joyous, Chaotic Place: Garden Poems, with a cover illustration by Heather’s old friend Joanna Margaret Paul (1945–2003). It was a great combo.
This time, Lynne learned InDesign and consulted with her long-time collaborator Hamish Thompson. In the photograph above, she’s taking refreshment after we delivered the proofs to the printers. (I had a cuppa and some lemon slice.)
Then, in 2021, she advised on the cover of Spiral’s first eBook, Women’s Film Festivals & #womeninfilm Databases and in 2022 on the cover of i do not cede, a collection of Heather’s erotic poems, selected and introduced by Emer Lyons.
And, as LMC, also in 2022, Lynne sponsored the proofreading for Keri Hulme: Our Kuru Pounamu.
‘LMC’ had already quietly sponsored other Spiral projects, like #directedbywomen, between 2018 and 2020, where her generosity meant that we could work with Script to Screen to bring Wanuri Kahiu to Aotearoa with her feature film Rafiki, banned in Kenya, for screenings in an Auckland cinema, at Parliament and Te Auaha in Wellington and at Māoriland in Ōtaki. We could also celebrate a selection of groundbreaking women-directed webseries.
And as is so often the way with long and nourishing Spiral relationships, Lynne and I had nice times together outside of Spiral stuff, since Covid especially. Shared lunches, exchanges of crime novels and seeds for our gardens, shared stories and laughter: I loved hearing about her writing and watercolours and her trips to Venice and Paris and Vietnam. And I’d fall over her at odd times, once when we were both in a slow Dunedin airport queue. (‘Like a lift home, M?’) and once after I’d spent a difficult night at the police station. (Even that early in the morning, and busy, she was exactly who I needed, listening carefully, responding thoughtfully. making me laugh.)
Lynne was a shining presence at a Spiral dinner at Everybody Eats late last year.
Cushla Parekowhai, who met Lynne for the first time that evening, writes:
“I remember she sat at the end of the table closest to the pass where the chef in charge was sending out orders and calmly running the brigade. Lynne was wearing a striking red and struggled slightly to stand up as she embraced me warmly.
I did my best to encourage her to save her strength and made a joke about why was it that fabulously good women and true like us who did the work and declined the glory were ‘always in the kitchen at parties’?’
She laughed and I knew she got it.
With or without tea-towel…”
The last time I saw Lynne she popped in with her beloved sister Susan. I’ll miss her, lots. And remember her good heart and good humour, always. Thank you, Lynne. What a star you were.
