Launch hoopla!

I’m at the end of a writing retreat weekend in Foxton (it has been lovely!) and so it feels a long time ago, but a few weeks ago, on 13 March, I launched Cinema in fine company, and I have been wanting to write about it ever since.

Some of our lovely crowd

It was also the launch of the other books in Mākaro Press’s Hoopla poetry series – Bird Murder, Stefanie Lash’s debut collection, and Heart Absolutely I Can, by Michael Harlow. And it was also a chance to celebrate Mākaro Press’s first year in existence.

I was a bit spacey, as I generally am at such things – and I felt like I only got to spend about 30 seconds with each person and it all passed by in a whirl. But it was a lovely and buzzy and celebratory party, with Mary as a very excellent ringmistress.

Blondini’s, which is the café space at The Embassy theatre, was a perfect venue, especially for me – seeing as my book is all about films. I saw many of the movies I wrote about in the poems at that very cinema, including some that I read (the first two parts of ‘Nine Movies’), and I also wrote some of that poem – the beginning I think, at a table over by the side window in Blondini’s.

Me reading something or other from my book

It was quite a long launch, even though we all tried to be brief, because each poet had our own launcher – Kate Camp for Stefanie, Pat White for Michael and Anna Jackson for me – and we each read a little bit from our books, but it was lovely for us each to have our own little space in our collective celebration. As I said in my speech (which was really just a long list of thank yous), I asked Anna to launch my book because she had been one of the people who read my manuscript and gave me really helpful feedback on it, and also she’d really liked it, which had been so encouraging. I was really blown away by her speech and would probably have cried it I hadn’t been so spacey. She was kind enough to say that I could reproduce here what she wrote to say, though without hearing and seeing her actually say it in her own animated way, it can’t possibly be quite as good!

This looks like a small book but it is actually very big – like the tardis. I don’t just mean in importance, or in the range of ideas, images and subjects that it contains – I mean, in a different format, you could see more immediately that this wonderfully pocketable book actually has a great many poems in it, many of them very substantial poems that run over several pages.

One of my absolute favourite poems is the modestly titled 'Two or three things I know about them' – a wonderful multi-faceted portrayal of the relationship between two film directors, Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, told over several pages in brief scenes and snapshots, accounts and quotations, dreams and reflections. The poem offers a study in contrasts – 'Jean-Luc: A film is a girl and a gun'; 'Francois: Art for beauty, art for others, art that consoles': – and a series of comparisons and coincidences, responses and anticipations.

Helen has a brilliant way of making a life snap into focus with a single starting detail, real or imaginary. I think of her portrayal in My Iron Spine of Katherine Mansfield and D H Lawrence taking it in turns sliding down an ironing board at a party. I have been an avid reader of Helen’s poetry since I first encountered her fictional character Theodora in Helen’s first collection Abstract Internal Furniture – but this new book is something else again.

Bringing together the fascination with film and the fascination with character that you find in all Helen’s work, this collection offers a dazzling poetic response to the work of avant-garde film-maker Yayoi Kusama; it imagines the lives of friends as directed by different film directors; it contains reflections both comic and profound about the impressions films can make and how they can shape the imagination of the self. It is exciting to be launching such a smart, fast-paced, deeply thoughtful, often funny, always sharply focused collection.

Tuesday poems, Bird Murder, and an invitation

This week I got to be the editor of the Tuesday Poem blog, and I cheated by sharing three poems rather than one. All are from Bird Murder, the debut collection by Stefanie Lash. I couldn't decide, plus I wanted to show a bit of the breadth of the book. You can read them here: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.co.nz/2014/03/from-bird-murder-by-stefanie-lash.html.

Bird Murder is part of Mākaro Press's Hoopla poetry series, which also includes my book Cinema, which long-time readers will have been hearing about for years (I can barely believe it's finally finished!) and Heart Absolute I Can by Michael Harlow. All three books are going to be launched next Thursday, 13 March, 5.30, at Blondini's (the cafe at the Embassy Theatre). It's also a celebration of Mākaro Press's first year in business. I hope you can come along!

Cinema and the Hoopla poetry series

Dear everyone, I'd like to you meet my new book - well, the cover anyway.

Isn't it cool! And that image, which was taken by artist and designer Helen Reynolds, looks so cool and abstract, even though it actually isn't.

Cinema has been a long time in the making - the earliest poem in the book I wrote, um, ages ago, before My Iron Spine, but it wasn't meant for that book. (But it's found a home here.) I started deliberately writing poems connected to films in 2006, many of which haven't made it into the book. I don't think I realised quite how many I had written! But we've cut it back to the poems that I think are the right ones to be in this book.

This is the blurb my publisher, Mary McCallum, has written about my book:

The poems in Helen Rickerby's Cinema look at the personal through the lens of a camera and the world of cinema through the unfiltered eye. Meet the boy who learns to kiss from action movies, the girl made up of symbols and the director with the aesthetic of a sniper on the roof.

It has been wonderful to work with Mary McCallum and also Paul of Mākaro Press on this book. It's one of a series of set of three, the first batch in their Hoopla poetry series. I'm the middle poet, Stefanie Lash is the new poet (this is her debut book!) and Michael Harlow is the established poet. Here are all the covers side by side.

I'm lucky enough to have had an early read of Bird Murder by Stefanie Lash, and can assure you it's fabulous. It's by turns magical and lovely and grim and funny, and is so imaginative. It's like nothing I've read before. This is its official blurb:

An albino huia, a stranger in the attic and a pink-haired woman ... Bird murder by Stefanie Lash is a gothic murder mystery narrating the demise of a ruined banker set in the not-quite-fictional town of Tusk.

And while I haven't read Michael Harlow's collection of love poems, Heart Absolutely I Can, it's sure to be great too:

Five fresh poems and a number from past collections form this book on the hoopla of love – a theme long a part of the poet’s fascination with the mysteries of human nature and his job in finding the language and music to express it. Michael Harlow calls on ‘the music of the heart to sing us alive’

Our three books are going to be launched together in March (invitations soon!), but before then, Mākaro Press is running a PledgeMe campaign to help fund the printing costs (alas, poetry is not the money spinner we would like).

The rewards are excellent, if I do say so myself, from copies of the books (think of it as a pre-sale, and if you're out of town it includes postage too!), to an extra special high tea with us poets and we'll even read to you (that's kind of a bargain because you get ALL the books, and high tea, and fun and poetry). In between there's a copy of an extra-special limited edition hand-made book featuring a poem from each poet (not one from the books), which I will personally be making, a bespoke poem from Stefanie or myself and a mentoring session with Mary. There was also a cross-stitched line of poetry from Stefanie, but that's gone already.

Anyway, if you'd like to support it, or just have a look, you'll find it here: https://www.pledgeme.co.nz/projects/1816.