January poetry reading (2–5)

The Time of Giants by Anne Kennedy (2/52)

I was fortunate enough to meet Anne Kennedy at the launch for Crumple in Auckland in November. We've been corresponding and she very kindly sent me a copy of The Time of Giants. This is a re-read for me. I read and enjoyed it back in 2005 when it came out. I've enjoyed it even more this time through though - as I often do when I reread things I liked the first time. You often get more of the nuance and layers and so forth.

One thing I hadn't picked up on the first time, possibly because I hadn't read it yet, was its parallels with Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson. Both are collections of linked narrative poems, aka verse novels, which modernise a character from myth. In Carson's case, a monster from Greek myth, and in Kennedy's case, a giant from Irish myth (though Moss, the protagonist, is not herself from a myth, she is a descendant of Irish giants, such as Finn MaCoul, whose story is told in the second section).

Moss and her brother Forest are giants, though their parents are normal height. This is really the story of Moss and her efforts to keep her normal-sized boyfriend Paul from realising she is so tall. I took this also as metaphorical for that feeling that I'm sure most people have - that they are some kind of freak, and are going to be found out at some point.

It's a really playful collection, with a playful story and playful and surprising use of language. I'm going to publish a piece as my Tuesday Poem soon, so you can see what I mean, if you haven't already read it.


Friend's poetry manuscript 3/52

I won't say much about this, with it being unpublished and all and still in progress (though basically ready to be unleashed on the world in my opinion). But I will say that it's great, and I'm excited about it. I'm going to be giving feedback and praise, so will read it a few more times, but I won't cheat by recording each read-through though.


100 Traditional Smiles, by Anne Kennedy 4/52

Because I'd just read The Time of Giants, and because I had recently acquired this book as part of a big bag of poetry books that a friend donated to me, I thought it was a good time to read it.

I'm not sure I should be counting this one, as it claims to be a novella, and is clearly written in prose, but it's very poetic prose, with only the loosest narrative (much looser than The Time of Giants), so I am claiming it as prose-poetry verse novel(la).

Like The Time of Giants, it's wonderfully inventive and surprising. In the more than 100 sections (I would count them, but I put the book down somewhere and now can't find it) of varying lengths, from short to really short, it jumps between a series of characters, including 'the woman' (actually I think several of them are referred to as 'the woman' and I wasn't always sure which one was meant, which I'm sure was deliberate), the Italian couple, Eileen, Irene, Leslie, the Hoboken couple (former New Zealanders living in New Jersey), the graphic designer and even, in a few places, an 'I'. They are in various parts of the world - New Jersey, as I mentioned, Auckland, Gore, New York, Nottingham. Some know each other, some don't, but there are threads, or rather wools, connecting many of them.


Northland, by Michele Leggott (5/52)

Northland is a gorgeous hand-made book from Pania Press (Jack Ross and Bronwyn Lloyd). I was keen to get my paws on a copy because it's about, or perhaps rather set in, the same areas as my book Heading North. Northland is a gorgeously produced book, and it was lovely revisiting some of these places in poetry. I think my favourite of the poems was 'listening', with the repeated line at the end of the three stanzas 'unwinding the bird in my throat'.

What I did on my holiday, or, my visit to Cape Reinga and what I found there

I recently wrote a bit about my latest Northland holiday on my work blog: http://blog.teara.govt.nz/2010/10/21/te-rerenga-wairua/. It's mainly about what an amazing place Cape Reinga – Te Rerenga Wairau – is, and how I have some pretty strong reservations about the landscaping and 'interpretation' they've done since I was up there last.

Northland has become a really special place for me. I wrote Heading North about the first trip Sean and I took up there. People have asked if I'm going to write another book about this trip. So far I haven't written any poetry about this, but I can see it being incorporated into a big epic poem/patchwork that I've been working on for a few months, alongside 'Cinema'. Actually, that's a lie. I have left 'Cinema' on the sidelines, was suddenly writing this new thing ('How to live'), while dealing with everything that was going on, and have recently abandoned both – temporarily, while I try to hurriedly finish off JAAM 28 and the thing I haven't quite finished, and think I'd better announce this weekend, before it's actually finished.

Journey poems, and revisiting past self

Last Tuesday, while having a late lunch, I was rereading Martin Edmond’s chapbook, The Big O Revisited (Soapbox Press, 2008). The ‘Big O’ of the title is both Roy Orbison and Ohakune, the town where Edmond did his early growing up.

The poems in the book are about a trip he took around New Zealand when working on his book about artist Philip Clairmont. The poems are discrete – they work individually – but together they make up a journey.

I was thinking about this, and thinking that sometime I’d like to write a series of poems about a journey. Then I thought perhaps we’d better go on a trip soon, so I could write about it. But then I thought, why don’t I write about a journey I’ve already taken. And I knew immediately exactly which trip that would be.

So, by the end of lunchtime I’d already written several sections/poems for a poem/series of poems about a road trip around Northland Sean and I did a few years ago over New Year. It was a short but intense holiday – we only stayed in one place (Paihia) for more than one night, we drove for a lot of every day, and I visited Cape Reinga for the first (and, so far, only) time. (If you've never been there, it's way cooler than suggested in the pic to the left. But this is a Wikipedia Commons pic, and I couldn't be bothered finding another one I could use to brighten the blogpost)

So, later at night last Tuesday, after an evening of not doing too much (so far as I can remember), I sat down to write some more. By 11 o’clock I’d written 17 pages in my notebook, and decided that I’d written my first draft. I think that’s the most poetry I’ve ever written in one day. (Thanks Martin Edmond!)

That’s not to say it’s any good, but I think it will be a good basis for something. I haven’t read it over yet, but I think when I rework it I’ll want to pare it back a little, draw some of it out, and add more tension and subtext.

In search of the latter, I decided to have a hunt through my journals from that time (2003/2004). I found I hadn’t actually written anything during the trip – except the date and time of when we were at Cape Reinga (1/1/2004, 7.15 am), which we held up when taking photos of each other.

I also found that immediately after the trip I’d started trying to write a poem about it, but I’d abandoned it. There were some bits I really like now, and will be able to use in my new poems (I think I’ve just accepted that it’s a sequence), but I think it must have just been too soon for me to reflect on my experiences – too soon to mythologise it perhaps.

So I read in my journals about a year on either side of the trip – which didn’t actually take that long because I wasn’t writing all that much then. But I gained some really insights into what was going on with me then, what was going on with Sean, what was going on with us, what was bothering me, and how I was feeling – things I hope to incorporate subtly into the poems.

But it was also really good to see how far I’d come, how far we’d come. I was often unhappy, I was getting sick of my job, I was finding it hard to write and when I did I was usually disappointed with what I’d written. Looking back, I was actually writing mostly things I like now, and in fact that period was the beginning of what became My Iron Spine – I wrote more of it before I took time off work (2005) than I thought.

How quickly we forget our old selves – it’s good to be reminded sometimes. I’m glad I have this record (even though it often shows me to be a bit shallow and whiny). And now that I’m about to embark on typing up and reworking what I’m tentatively calling ‘Heading North’ (perhaps it will become a chapbook!), I’m hoping the journals will help me bridge then and now, the 2003/2004 me with the 2009 me.