ISSUE 8 / EDITORIAL

The light at the end of the tunnel.

Memo Eight is our last print edition for 2026. It is with such relief and pride to have made it to the end of the year having stuck to our quarterly release schedule with increasingly limited budgets and volunteer capacity. It feels now more than ever that we have proved The Canterbury Memo has a place in the media and publishing ecosystem of Ōtautahi. So whether you’ve been here since day one, or this is your first time picking up a copy, thank you. 

The light at the end of the tunnel is therefore, in one sense, simply that we’ve made it through another publishing year. But it is also, hopefully, there for the rest of us. Winter was harsh, and as spring sets in, so does our opportunity to eject this government. Not that another swing of the electoral pendulum will materially change our lives overnight, or necessarily ever, but the fuckknuckles who have been in charge for the last three years must be held to account and mustn’t be granted another mandate. Whether political change comes through elections or a revolution that might never arrive, the immediate objective should be to vote out this reckless, undemocratic, band of idiots.

It might seem contradictory, then, that we have limited political coverage pertaining specifically to the election in this issue. I think that politics is best understood through something—people, places, consequences. Our readership is already, I suspect, among the more politically aware. I’m less interested in telling you who is standing where on the ballot than I am in asking what makes someone stand there in the first place.

Our profile piece on The Alliance’s Greg Byrnes captures this. It was originally supposed to be part of a wider candidate breakdown-cum-election guide, but sitting down with him changed what the piece needed to be. It became a conversation about why someone spends decades protesting wars, fighting over freshwater, getting himself into trouble with political colleagues, and eventually putting his name back on a ballot. In the end, that felt more politically meaningful than another list of policies and promises. 

That’s why this issue of The Memo welcomes a bigger focus on culture, and where politics finds itself in our everyday lives and in our third spaces. Whether that’s on your street of student flats or at the bar of your favourite local venue. It’s a real privilege to have Katie Polmear joining us as our Culture Editor, bringing lived stories of politics, art, and culture in Ōtautahi to our pages.

In other news, in November, UC is hosting its third Bookish symposium, a gathering which explores the diverse and rich histories of books and printed matter in Canterbury. It seeks to showcase the networks, conversations, and knowledge production that have shaped our region’s identity. I’m truly excited to be presenting on The Canterbury Memo and where independent student publishing and radical print fits into those wider literary networks beyond campus and beyond the city-proper. 

In that, I’ve been doing a lot of research and digging through the Macmillan Brown Library archives into previous independent and self-published periodicals from UC. While our region may not get the same recognition as others for its literary histories, student media did play a vital role in shaping Waitaha’s writing and publishing ecosystem. It’s been a fascinating exercise in understanding what was, what we’ve lost, but also what could be if we keep rallying behind independent print.

The biggest take-away I’ve walked away with, both from this last year of editing arguably our most coherent volume of issues yet, and from writing for Bookish, is that publishing is firstly an act of faith, and secondly an act of commitment—though perhaps, ultimately, an act of love. It’s deciding that an idea, an experience, a political argument, deserves to exist outside your own head. These eight issues are a record of the things I put my faith in; taken together, they show the commitment—the obsession—required by a medium largely incompatible with a media system that rewards immediacy.

When I talk about this with those close to me it always sounds like The Memo is doing great, that we’re on the verge of going big, or at least that we’ve reached some sort of critical mass. It’s obviously far more complicated than that. I don’t know what’s going to happen next year. Whether The Memo remains in the Undercroft, whether I’m still its editor, whether I’m still writing at all. It feels like a silly project to get so emotionally entangled in, but having held its hand since its inception eight issues and over two years ago (and in that time having met some of the most talented writers, activists, and artists I’ll ever meet) it feels only natural to think about its next steps, and mine. 

I do have big ideas for The Memo’s next chapter, I really do. But I’m not going to sit here and describe the multimedia empire I’m planning… what if you steal my ideas? No, but really, I’m wary of making grand declarations about a future I can’t yet promise. For two years, I’ve been re-learning the same lesson in increasingly elaborate ways: that help, when it comes, is generous and often extraordinary—but generosity is not the same thing as carrying something indefinitely, particularly when the person holding the reins is ostensibly prepared to be buried clutching them. 

Sometimes the best thing you can do for something you love is to let go, even just a little bit.

With that, have a sound rest of your year. Don’t forget to vote (please). And even if we’re not still here come 2027, keep reading, keep writing, keep resisting. 

Ngā mihi nui, and thank you for sticking around. 

Joseph Davidson-Labout

Founding Editor, The Canterbury Memo

www.memozine.nz / editor.thememo@gmail.com