JAAM 27 reviewed

I've just published a post over on the JAAM site about two reviews of JAAM 27, both beautifully positive. You can read my post here: http://jaam.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/jaam-27-reviewed/, or you can go straight to the reviews, because both are online.

The first was by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle, in A Fine Line, the Poetry Society magazine: http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/aboutjaam27.

The second, which just came out last week, is by Julia Cooper and is on/in The Lumière Reader: http://lumiere.net.nz/index.php/jaam-27-wanderings/.

Ithaca reviewed in Lumiere Review

Haven't had much time for blogging lately, but wanted to tell you about another great review of Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima by Vana Manasiadis, and published by moi.

Julia Cooper has reviewed it in The Lumiere Reader. You can read the whole thing here: http://lumiere.net.nz/index.php/ithaca-island-bay-leaves/, but here are some highlights:

Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: a mythistorima ... is a beautiful atlas of real and fabled locales—mapped, charted, and photographed by a distinct poetic voice.

With poems like “Hectic Hector” and “King of Mycenae,” she fills the quotidian spaces of family and community with mythic abundance. In this abundance, a cross-cultural poetic voice emerges confidently and provocatively, inaugurating a text very much aware of its humour and the boldness of its manipulations.

Indeed, there is a sense of lightness throughout Manasiadis’s work, invoked no doubt by the gusty winds and cyclones of the poems, but also in the poet’s seamless and manifold transitions between cultures and lexicons.

This collection is a masterful debut, speaking with grace and candour to ancestry, migration, community, and love—well worth getting for that long, perpetual trip ahead of you.

Ithaca reviewed

It's been a gorgeously sunny day today. And it's been a fine Saturday for Ithaca Island Bay Leaves by Vana Manasiadis too - not just one review, but two!

It's only thanks to Ms Art and My Life that I know about the review in the Otago Daily Times. Poetry-reviewing stalwart Hamesh Wyatt seems to like Ithaca, but doesn't seem to be entirely up his alley. He's impressed (or intimidated?) with its intelligence, but doesn't seem to have found the thread that carries through it and instead finds it a bit random. Nevertheless, he says 'This is clever stuff that takes the reader in unexpected directions', 'Manasiadis knows how to craft a poem', and wonders 'where she will take us next.' You can read it yourself here: http://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/94309/review-special-poetry?page=0%2C1

I'm smiling a particularly proud publisher smile about the review in the New Zealand Herald by Paula Green - a poet who I have a lot of respect for. And none of the books I've published have been reviewed in the Herald before! And, best of all, she really likes it.

She says that it is 'a treat', and that the bringing together of Greek mythology and everyday Wellington 'feels authentic rather than literary trickery'. She continues: 'I lingered on each page to absorb the deliciously fresh lines and the nimble sound effects, then I gravitated to the chorus of voices.' And concludes: 'This elegantly produced book, with a stunning Marian Maguire print on the cover, is a little gem.' Yay!

Postscript, the Herald review is now online.

Two new reviews of My Iron Spine

I’ve had two more (favourable) reviews of My Iron Spine recently.

The first was a brief review by the lovely Siobhan Harvey in Poetry NZ 39. She says it ‘underpins its author’s feminist concerns with a forceful poeticism’ and I am ‘at her best when lyrically reinventing the voices, lives and difficulties of the famous and infamous.’ She mentions ‘Handicrafts with Minnie Dean’, ‘Kate Sheppard and I go for a ride’ and ‘Partying with Katherine Mansfield’ as ‘just a few examples of Rickerby’s success throughout My Iron Spine in breathing new and cadent life into a faux-mythical cast.’

The second review was on the blog of Jennifer Sullivan, a US poet I’ve gotten to know on the net, due to our common interest in poet Anne Carson. So you can read the whole thing over there. But to make myself feel happy I’m going to quote my fav bits. She says that My Iron Spine is: ‘poignant, witty, tender, fun, and moving’, and says about the first section, ‘Flashes of déjà vu’: A charming voice waltzes through the narrative, saying things like, ‘I was playing hungry / hungry hippos / when my grandmother died’ or ‘I wonder / if the Kingdom of Heaven / is like the Titanic– / not enough lifeboats.’ Then she goes on to say lovely things about the other two sections, and even says that sometimes the book is akin to the work of our common idol, Anne Carson. High praise indeed.

Review of My Iron Spine in NZ Books

Been pretty busy lately - it's been birthday season at our house, among other things, and we spent the first bit of last week over in Martinborough (we stayed here, at the Grape and Olive - I recommend it). I haven't been posting much lately, and have quite a back log of things to blog about, so will probably do a burst of short posts.

This post is actually supposed to be about the review of My Iron Spine in NZ Books. I learned about the review on Thursday, when I found a photocopy of it in my pigeon hole at work, for which I have our lovely librarian to thank – thanks Fran!

To be honest, I wasn't expecting a review from NZ Books, they don't review a lot of poetry – at least not from the smaller presses – so I'm delighted to have been reviewed at all – even though I'm not that excited about the review itself.

Emma Neale reviews My Iron Spine along with Museum of Lost Days by Raewyn Alexander, Beauty of the Badlands by Cliff Fell, and Get Some by Sonja Yelich. To be honest, I'm not sure she likes any of our books that much. She decides at the beginning to talk about us all as lyric poets, which I don't think she means to be a kind of patronising insult: 'lyric poetry persists as an attractive poetic form, despite the intellectually energising innovations of the avant-garde'. I guess one tends not to categorise oneself that much, but I've never thought of myself as a lyric poet. Perhaps I am. Who knows. I always thought of lyric poems as short poems about oneself, and it's true that I do write those sometimes. But most of this book in particular is long poems about other people.

Nevertheless, she does like some of my poems, particularly 'Eleven Fragments of God', which she says has a cleansing honesty; and 'Sylvia Fights off the Boys':

The emphatic repetition of the phrase "and the truth of it is" obliquely comments on the slipperiness of identity and an artist's masks, and meaning is approached in a more subtle, sidewinding manner...

Have to admit, I was a bit miffed that she said 'there isn't much obvious sensuous orality' in my language - not that I'm entirely sure what she means. It might not do it for her, but there are some phrases in these poems that I delight in reading out loud. Some of my favs are:

• Winter moves from grey / to black and back to grey / She sleeps all day, gets up for dinner / watches telly, weeps and sleeps again
• 'Lace me up tight Marie / tightly tighter’ / My sturdy backbone/my iron spine
• she wrapped me, laced me /in numbers, equations /like a whale-bone corset / to keep my back / straight, my spine aligned /and threaded through my mind / little lines of logic / a program for equilibrium
• then a turn — a return / to her desk in her room / her almost whole world / Her room, an embrace / an encasement /her blanket, her box /her shelter at the top of the stairs /Rafters and panels / a corset, a comfort.

(Hmm, I see now that there is a very obvious similarity in theme to those bits I like..., but they sound beautiful out loud, promise.)

Anyway, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, I'm pretty happy when people pay attention to my work at all, and I've very much appreciated all the good feedback from people about this book who get what I'm trying to do, and respond to that.

JAAM 26 reviewed in Poetry Society magazine

JAAM 26 has received a very favourable review by Keith Nunes in the latest issue of the Poetry Society magazine A fine line (March 2009).

A begins by saying 'New Zealand is bubbling over with great writers and storytellers – just look at JAAM 26.' And continues, 'The annual publication by the JAAM (Just Another Art Movement) Collective is a triumph for editor Tim Jones and the team. The 164-page journal is an entertaining mix of poetry and prose that challenges and moves the reader.'

He says that he isn't a big fan of speculative writing, of which there is some in JAAM 26, but 'the stories I read in JAAM 26 won me over.' He particularly mentions Tracie McBride's story 'Last Chance to See'.

Among the more traditional prose peices he highlights 'When an Older Brother Dies' by LE Scott, 'Banshee' by Darian Smith, 'Voodoo' by Renee Liang and 'A Body of Land' by Michele Powles. And he gives Michael Botur a 'special mention' for his 'imaginative and amusing' story 'Historic Breakfasts'.

Of the poets, he praises Laurice Gilbert's poems ‘Divided World’ and ‘Island Bay’. 'Both soar and toy with you and leave images lingering.' He continues:

The highlights come thick and fast with a number of poets impressing, including Janis Freegard with ‘he has your eyes’; Dean Ballinger's ‘Antananarivo’; Helen Heath with two poems; Barbara Strang's ‘Fatigues’; Sue Reidy's ‘Bottomless Love’ and Miriam Barr's ‘3 Phases in a Journey (Towards Self)’.

He concludes with the very positive: 'All in all this is a wonderful journal and one which provides the reader with hours of thoughtprovoking and entertaining reading. Well done.'

My Iron Spine reviewed in Bravado

There was a reasonably positive review of My Iron Spine in the latest issue of Bravado (thanks to Harvey for letting me know).

The reviewer, Tim Upperton, says he read it in one sitting. He says the 'poems aren't so much discrete inventions as they are an unfolding of an idea', and 'carefully crafted'.

He was most engaged by the first section - the 'autobiographical' poems. Particularly, it would seem, because he finds the book a bit too thematic in the later sections. I guess thematic isn't for everyone.

He picked out 'Gardening with Ursula Bethell' as a 'fine poem', and I was pleased he recognised it as a 'reading of Bethell's own gardening poems in From a Garden in the Antipodes' - though it isn't just about that - it's also about migrants, and making yourself a home in new places. Oh, and my own inabilities as a gardener.

ODT reviews JAAM (and Landfall and others)

The Otago Daily Times has published a review by Gavin McLean of JAAM 26 on their website - it was originally published on 7 Feb. You can read it here (it's the second bit): http://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/42595/recent-belles-lettres.

He seems to mostly like it, though would like wider inside margins (they're the same as most people's, but just for you, I'll make them wider next time - we listen to reader feedback).

Review of JAAM 26 in Southern Ocean Review

There's a review of JAAM 26, edited by Tim Jones, in the latest issue of Southern Ocean Review.

Reviewer Trevor Reeves is very positive about the work selected: 'Tim Jones knows his stuff and chose well. Beginning middle and end, all well crafted and with surprises.' And he has nice things to say about JAAM in general: 'Definitely one of the more prestigious literary magazines around these days.' As co-managing editor (with Clare Needham), that's very gratifying.

Unfortunately latest issue, the fiftieth, is the last ever of Southern Ocean Review. It will be sad to see it go.

Review of My Iron Spine in Takahe

I was delighted to discover this morning, when I finally sorted through a bunch of mail for JAAM, which had been forwarded on by Mark Pirie (my publisher and former managing editor of JAAM - when we first started JAAM, we used his dad's place for the address, then we shifted to Mark's address, then we got a PO Box. Mark's dad has moved, but years later JAAM mail is still going to his old address), and I discovered a copy of Takahe 65, containing a review of My Iron Spine!

The review, by Patricia Prime, takes My Iron Spine along with Tributary by Rae Varcoe and The Museum of Lost Days by Raewyn Alexander, and looks at them as all transforming 'personal observations into universal truth'.

About the first (autobiographical) section of my book, she says '[t]his is not the indulgence of a self-obsessed woman ruminating on mundane moments heightened by its references to the cold war, God and art, to which we can all relate, rather it is the exultation in presenting these very movments in the tight metre which illuminatates both the language and the experience'.

And of all three books she gushes:

These are poems which will make you gasp - with wonder, delighted, laughter and amazement. Their power to do all this resides in more than their subject matter. Every word, line, verse and stanza in these three collections has been weighted against the highest measure of truth and lucidity. Their work is distinguised by its virtuosity, control of language and feeling. The poems are imbued with a combination of intelligence and compassion.

Can't complain about that!

Also in Takahe 65 are poems by such writers as Emma Neale, John O'Connor, Mark Pirie and Helen Lendorf, stories by Owen Marshall and others, and essays including one on the artwork of Seraphine Pick. I also discovered that my dear friend Vana came second in the Takahe Poetry Competition (judged by Michael Harlow), and that the lovely Siobhan Harvey is taking over from James Norcliffe as poetry editor for Takahe. I guess this means that editing JAAM 25 hasn't put Siobhan off editing literary journals, which will be to our literary benefit I'm sure!

In other news, it is my last day of proper holiday - though I do have the weekend to go. To confirm my holiday-ness, I'm still in my dressing gown. I have been up for ages though, reading.

It has continued to be much more of a reading holiday than a writing one, though I have gotten back to writing in my journal in the last few days. I have been (and still am) in a mood where I want to stuff other people's words into my brain.

Since my last post, I've finished the fabulous book of interviews with David Lynch, Lynch on Lynch. I find his way of working so inspiring. He's very intuitive and refuses to explain his movies, believing logical explanation ruins the magic.

I've started and finished a biography of French writer Colette - about whom I knew very little - she's always been a little confused in my head with George Sand, though I knew she was more recent. Katherine Mansfield mentions Colette in her letters or journals (or possibly both) - she had a dream about her one time. I had thought of Colette as a generation earlier, and though she was born a little before KM, they were both in Paris during the First World War, and had at least one 'friend' in common - Francis Carco, with whom KM had an affair. And Colette went on living long after KM, dying in 1954 at the age of 81.

I'd been meaning to read some of Michael Chabon's books for a while, after hearing that he's really good (though I suppose you'd expect a Pulitzer-winner to be good). So when we were looking for some more holiday reading (as if we need anymore books!) at Archway second-hand bookshop in Pukerua Bay, I picked up a nice looking copy of Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I was irritated to find, when I got home and popped it into the appropriate place of our overstuffed fiction shelves (yes, I alphabeticise my fiction by author - I used to be a pretend-librarian, and it helps me find things and I think it looks impressive) that I already had a copy. 'Time to actually read it', I thought. And, because it is a teeny book, it didn't take very long. This was Chabon's first book, written when he was 23. I admit to making jealous and bitter remarks about this while reading it, because it's very good.

I'm now reading at least three things: The Story of Film, which I started ages ago and have just got back into this morning, and The Story of a New Zealand River by Jane Mander and The Story of a New Zealand Writer about Jane Mander. I can't quite decide whether to read her most famous novel first, or read about her first, so I've been reading a little bit of each. I think I might carry on faster with the novel though - the biography probably has spoilers.

My Iron Spine's first review

My Iron Spine has received its first review, over here at Southern Ocean Review. It's an oddish review, but a review nevertheless.

And good on Southern Ocean Review for reviewing so much NZ poetry - I think it's getting harder and harder for poetry books to get a review, especially since the Fairfax papers (Dominion Post, Christchurch Press and so forth) started carrying that silly glossy mag thing instead of having their own proper review pages.

I think blogs are helping to fill the gap a bit though, and I've had some very appreciated coverage: an interview on Tim Jones's blog and this piece on Harvey Molloy's blog. And thank goodness for Arts on Sunday on National Radio! - my interview with Lynn Freeman should be here on the net for a bit longer.

Also, just noticed that My Iron Spine is now listed on New Zealand Books Abroad and Timeout bookstore's websites. Yay!

Review of Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete, by Scott Kendrick

The latest issue of the Poetry Society’s magazine, A Fine Line, contains a positive review of Seraph Press’s latest publication: Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete: Poems & Satires, by Scott Kendrick.

Bernard Gadd (who unfortunately passed away last month), says:

[…] Kendrick displays a deft competence with rhyme and rhythm. He’s a useful writer for the times, his satires and barbs often being aimed at the nonsense that’s in our minds courtesy of corporate-dominated media. Readers may find themselves even reeling back in horror or shock at some of the things to be found here. And that’s as it should be … there’s plenty in our world to be horrified about.