JAAM 28 dances out into the world

Yay! And you can read the media release we wrote about it over here: http://jaam.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/jaam-28-dances-out-into-the-world/

Poetry events in the next crazy week

It's going to be a pretty crazy week for me, but I hope to get to at least one of these events, maybe more!

On Monday: Diana Bridge at the Poetry Society

The New Zealand Poetry Society presents Karori poet, Diana Bridge. Diana has been published widely since her first collection appeared in 1996. Her writing reflects a rich and varied life lived as partner to a New Zealand diplomat posted around the world.

The event is open to the public, and starts at 7.30pm with an open mic. There is a $5 entry fee ($3 for members).

The Thistle Inn, 3 Mulgrave St, Thorndon

On Thursday: Watusi Spring Sessions featuring Janis Freegard, Trev Hayes and Mike Tights

Spring sessions at the Watusi, 6 Edwards Street, Central Wellington (off Victoria St.) Thursday 18th November 8:30pm start, gold coin entry. There will also be an open mic (so bring your poems/songs) & live music from Reuben Wilson, Jordan Stewart & William Daymond.

On Saturday: Launch of Crumple, by Vivienne Plumb, published by me

(I'm definitely going to make it to this one)



3.30 pm, Saturday 20th November 2010
Aro Valley Community Centre
48 Aro Street
Aro Valley

More info here: http://wingedink.blogspot.com/2010/11/wellington-launch-for-crumple-by.html


On Sunday: Saradha Koirala reads at the Ballroom Cafe

Guest Poet: Saradha Koirala
Musicians: Josie & Mary Campbell
Open mic session
Sunday 21 November, 4 - 6pm
The Ballroom Café, cnr Riddiford St & Adelaide Rd, Newtown

Also on Sunday: Lynn Jenner and Klezmer Rebs

In a unique Wellington arts event, the Klezmer Rebs will perform an intimate concert at the Ruby Lounge, featuring a special set of poetry with music by Raumati author Lynn Jenner.After the Klezmer Rebs first set will be a special 20 minute artistic partnership featuring the poetry of Lynn Jenner, from her highly praised recent book Dear Sweet Harry. Lynn’s poetry introduces you to Harry Houdini, the world’s greatest ever escapologist, and Mata Hari, a woman who did not so much dance as slowly and gracefully take off her clothes. The musical accompaniment is pushy, poignant, sweet and sad and hopeful, just like Houdini and Mata Hari, and it travels around the world just as they did.

Then the Klezmer Rebs return for a final set of their lively, tuchas-shaking music. Jewish soul music at its best.

The Ruby Lounge, Bond St, Wellington, 4 pm to 7 pm.

JAAM 28 is published, and so is Crumple!

It's a busy mail-out weekend at my place, cos JAAM 28 has turned up, and so has Crumple. They are both gorgeous.

Jenny Powell on tele

I meant to blog this last week, or perhaps the week before. I lose track. It is busy. Anyway, what I meant to blog was that Jenny Powell was interviewed recently(ish) about her new collection Viet Nam: A Poem Journey, and you can watch it here: http://www.ch9.co.nz/content/local-writer-turns-disappointment-poetry.

Tuesday Poem: Catches I Have Dropped by Scott Kendrick

Catches I Have Dropped
For John Y, who understands.

Catches I Have Dropped
xxis a longer poem than
Catches I Have Taken.

For starters, well –
xxthat one on the boundary;
xxthe skull-ricochet skimming over for six...

Then there was Davis.
First senior match
xxand Davis, off balance, clips up a catch
xxto square leg – that’s me, the goggle-eyed sucker
xxwith knees set on ‘quiver’, arsehole on ‘pucker’
xxcoz it’s Davis, the legend, the regional rep.
He’s trialed for CD.
He’s only on three.
At square leg there’s me.
I didn’t have to move; it was chest high and looping,
xxa lolly-drop dolly in slow-motion,
xxdrooping
xxstraight at me,
xxstraight to me,
xxand then strangely – straight through me.
He went on to a hundred and thirty four.
I got sent to the outfield – dropped two more.

England.
August.
A field full of Poms,
xxin theory, my team-mates).
I’m plodding mid-on.
There’s nine more runs needed, we’re after two wickets.
The opener’s made eighty, been rattling the pickets
xxwhen he scoops it, quite firmly,
xxbut fairly straight-forward –
xxa gimme, a sitter,
xxa kitty in litter.
I reverse-cup; it pops
xxfrom my hands,

xxhangs,

xxand drops
xxso I grab for it, jab it
xxwith fingers of moss,
xxit spits forward – but heroically
xxI swing out an arm
xxto swat it (quite sweetly)
xxwith the flat of my palm...

Then on hands and on knees,
xxwith a gut-sucking awe,
xxI watch it skip down the outfield slope for four.

The bowler screams ‘You incompetent Kiwi prick!’
xxand he spits with great purpose. I look away quick
xxas he rages – a luminous, furious pink:
xxthe next ball goes for six. The opener buys me a drink

Yeah, I’ve dropped them all – there’s nothing, naught,
xxthat I haven’t at some crucial point not caught:
xxthe thick-edging flyers, the spooners, the grabbers,
xxthe lurch-swirling skyers, the skimmers – Oh Jesus!

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
It plunges at me, spinning, sizzling, whistling.
If, during after-match beers, you too
Could hear once again of the slow, looping sitter
You put down, and know then the laughter and bitter
Abuse of your team-mates, the merciless jibes
That sting like a quick one that bruises the thigh,
My friend, you would not mock with such high zest
Those fielders whose fingers have fumbled in shame.
For it’s wrong what they say, it’s a damned lie at best –
Cricket is not always a funny game.


Scott Kendrick is a poet, cricket fan, and father of two small boys who may follow in his cricketing passion, but I'm hoping they'll rather follow him into poetry. He has published two collections of poetry: Rhyme Before Reason (HeadworX, 2001) and Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete: Poems & Satires (Seraph Press, 2007).

'Catches I Have Dropped' is my favourite cricketing poem. I'm not much of a cricket fan, but if you've played any team ball sport you'll understand this poem. The pressure. The humiliation. I enjoy the poem's galloping rhythm and the rhyme that makes a funny poem funnier. I also enjoy the mock epic tone at the end. There's even allusions to Wilfred Owen ('Dulce et Decorum Est' - a much more serious poem) in the final stanza.

An earlier version of 'Catches I Have Dropped' was in Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete: Poems & Satires, but this version is in 'A Tingling Catch': A Century of New Zealand Cricket Poems 1864–2009, edited by Mark Pirie. This is, apparently, probably the first national anthology of cricket poems - other cricket poem anthologies have been international. And apparently there is a lot of cricket poetry out there. Cricket seems to attract more literary types than other sports, curiously. I'll leave it to others to consider why that might be.

I went along to the launch of the anthology at the Long Room at Basin Reserve. This was a big deal, I discovered from my co-attendees, who kept breathily making comments about being in the Long Room at Basin Reserve. But even I, ignorant as I am, knew it was a big deal when Don Neely, NZ cricket legend, took off his New Zealand Cricket tie and gave it to Mark.

Mark was working on the anthology for several years, and had to cut back from his original selection. He's started a blog for the anthology, and will be publishing things he had to miss out and other cricket-related literature: http://tinglingcatch.blogspot.com/

And for more Tuesday poems, visit the Tuesday Poem blog: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/

JAAM subscription drive

If you don't subscribe to JAAM, the fabulous literary journal of which I'm the proud co-managing editor, then now is a good time to do it.

The subscription rate has been the same for years: $24 for three issues (I think this is because one long long ago we actually published three a year, rather than just the one we manage now). The time has come for a little price increase - it will be $20 for two issues. Still a bargain.

BUT, if you subscribe before the end of November 2010 you can subscribe at the old price of $24 for three. More info here: http://jaam.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/subscribe-now-and-save/

BTW JAAM 28 is due back from the printer any day now, after a couple of delays some of which I take entire responsibility for, and it is awesome.

Auckland launch for Crumple, by Vivienne Plumb

You are invited to come along and help us celebrate the launch of Crumple, Vivienne Plumb's latest collection of poetry, and Seraph Press's latest publication.

6 pm, Wednesday 24 November 2010
The Women's Bookshop
105 Ponsonby Road
Ponsonby
Auckland

Crumple will be launched by Janet Charman. Copies will be available for purchase at $25. All welcome.

For more info about Crumple, visit: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/seraphpress/publications/crumple.html

If you can't make it, but still want to buy a copy, email me at seraphpress@paradise.net.nz, or visit The Women's Bookshop online: http://www.womensbookshop.co.nz/books/Crumple/047317717X.html

We're also launching Crumple in Wellington: http://wingedink.blogspot.com/2010/11/wellington-launch-for-crumple-by.html

Wellington launch for Crumple, by Vivienne Plumb

You are invited to come along and help us celebrate the launch of Crumple, Vivienne Plumb's latest collection of poetry, and Seraph Press's latest publication.

3.30 pm, Saturday 20th November 2010
Aro Valley Community Centre
48 Aro Street
Aro Valley
Wellington

Crumple will be launched by Kate Camp. Copies will be available for purchase at $25 (cash or cheque only). All welcome.

For more info about Crumple, visit: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/seraphpress/publications/crumple.html

If you can't make it, but still want to buy a copy, email me at seraphpress@paradise.net.nz, or visit The Women's Bookshop online: http://www.womensbookshop.co.nz/books/Crumple/047317717X.html

This launch is in our home patch - I proudly live in The Valley, and Vivienne used to live virtually next door to the park and community centre.

We're also launching Crumple in Auckland, where Vivienne mostly lives now: http://wingedink.blogspot.com/2010/11/auckland-launch-for-crumple-by-vivienne.html

Tuesday Poem: 'Rural Delivery' by Vivienne Plumb

Rural Delivery

You are back in that country
you claim you would love to vacate,
and I feel like the stoic, white cottage
with its vacant windows, the one I noticed
from the car.

Our telecommunication connections
are frequently bad –
sibilance and echoes, white noise –
I hear sentences that may not be true,
the sound waves crash against my ears,
a distant subaudible shore.

I am that vast red corrugated-iron
roof we saw for sale outside Whanganui,
mute and inanimate;
although an appalling longing to see your face
has forced my thoughts to pack their own bags
and even as I speak,
they are filling out a destination card
and boarding a flight to meet you.

I am that green rural delivery box
on the grassy verge of a farm near Sanson,
a lop-sided patient receptacle
waiting for notification of our next contact.


I'm posting this poem – which features in Crumple, which I am about to publish – in celebration of the fact that I've just finished the final touches. I hope.

I have so many favourite poems in this book, and this is one of them. I'm going to use an extract from it on the back cover: 'an appalling longing to see your face/has forced my thoughts to pack their own bags/and even as I speak,/they are filling out a destination card/and boarding a flight to meet you', because it highlights some of the themes of the book - rootlessness, longing, travel - and also because I found it such an arresting image. It's so concrete - describing a feeling by describing an action.

Here's the rest of my back-cover blurb, which I agonised over last weekend:

In Crumple Vivienne Plumb takes us on a series of journeys, both geographic and metaphoric.

These poems have itchy feet, wandering from Poland, to China, through Italy, Australia and home to New Zealand. But is New Zealand home, or where in New Zealand is home? We roam up and down the country, we get lost in Kiwi icons which swing between hyper-real familiarity and unsettling surrealism, we find ourselves again and again on a long-distance bus.

Our constant travelling companions are Plumb’s sharp observation, her quirky sense of humour, and her skill of skewering both the ridiculous and the miraculous in the everyday.

‘Best not to endure life / in the shallows, better to dive deep –’; Crumple is, in the end, a celebration of life and living.


Vivienne Plumb, with a New Zealand mother and Australian father, has spent much of her life crossing the Tasman.

One of literature’s all-rounders, as well as six previous collections of poetry, she has written plays, short fiction and a novel.

Plumb has held many awards and residencies, including the Hubert Church Award for a first book of fiction, the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship and a University of Iowa International Writing Programme residency.

Not one to sit still, she is currently dividing her time between Auckland and Sydney, where she is completing a doctorate in creative arts.

For more Tuesday Poems, check out the Tuesday Poem blog: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/