Lindsay Rabbit at Poetry Society/JAAM 26 progress report/Congrats to Tim Jones

I prefer my posts to be tightly written, focused explorations, nay elucidations, of a single topic (surely you’ve noticed), but today I’m gong to cheat and do three-in-one.

Lindsay Rabbitt at Poetry Society

The May meeting of the Poetry Society is this Monday, 19 May, at 7.30pm, in The Greta Fernie Room, Leuven Belgian Beer Cafe, cnr Featherston and Johnston Sts, Wellington (New Zealand, for my international readers).

Lindsay Rabbitt is the guest poet. According to his website, he is ‘a New Zealand writer and multi-media artist based on the Kapiti Coast. He has published poems, essays and short stories. His latest book is These Lives I Have Buried, which was published as part of the Montana essay series, edited by Lloyd Jones and published by his Four Winds Press.’

While researching him on the net, I found this kind of random interesting tidbit in an interview with Bill Manhire: ‘Nowadays, whenever I meet Lindsay Rabbit, another poet who lives in Wellington, I have an immediate rapport with him, because we both grew up in pubs in the bottom of the South Island. There are things we know about that no one else in Wellington does.’

JAAM 26 progress report

Tim Jones, guest editor of JAAM 26, has posted on his blog a wee report about where he’s up to with compiling the next issue.

Basically, he’s read through heaps and heaps of submissions, has found some treasures, and now has to make some tough decisions. He’ll be getting back to submitters soon, and then we’ll start getting it ready for publication.

Sounds like it will be (another) great issue, and I’m looking forward to it.

Congrats to Tim Jones

While we’re on the subject of Tim Jones, congratulations are in order. Tim’s soon-to-be released second short story collection Transported has been long-listed for the 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

This award, organised by the Munster Literature Centre, Ireland, goes to the author of the book judged to be the best collection of stories published in English for the first time anywhere in the world in the past year. Tim is one of four New Zealanders to be long list, along with Sue Orr, Elizabeth Smither and Witi Ihimaera. Congrats to all. Read more about it here.

My Iron Spine cover/New Zealand writing

Hello again. I feel like it's ages since I've posted, and it has been over a week. I hope you didn't think I'd given up. I'd like to say I've been doing lots of terribly useful and important things in the meantime, but I haven't been doing much writing of any kind. Or much reading for that matter.

One thing I have been doing is working on cover concepts for My Iron Spine. I'm down to two concepts - one a rather cool but possibly too dark photograph, the other involving a little painting of a torso in a corset, seen from the back - constriction/containment etc (painted by moi, on Tuesday night, and I think it's turned out pretty well). I'm going to tinker further with them, and then see what my publisher thinks. I'd better hurry up, because the distributor needs a cover soon. I've been showing various options to people, and mostly they don't agree. There did seem to be a general preference for the two I'm favouring though. When I have something sorted, I'll post it here.

What I was actually planning to write about, though I got slightly sidetracked, was about a post over here on Undulating Ungulate, where Billy asks for advice on what New Zealand literature he might like. It helps of course if you know Billy, but I'd be interested to know what some of your favourite New Zealand writers/books are.

I suggested Billy should read Maurice Gee, especially Plumb; Lloyd Jones, especially Biografi; and Tim Corballis. For Billy, I should have also mentioned Julian Novitz and the stories of Tim Jones.

For myself, I am also a big fan of Katherine Mansfield - I think my fav story is 'Daughters of the Late Colonel', though I'm also very keen on 'At the Bay'. (My first, and I thought rather successful, short screenplay was an adaptation of 'At the Bay' - though at 30 pages, it's probably too long to get made. Sean and I also wrote a screen adaptation of 'Daughters of the Late Colonel', which I think needed some more work, but such a beautifully surreal and hilarious story would be great on screen if you could get it right.) I think it's kind of a pity that we often study her at school, when I'm not sure we're really ready for her.

There's also lots of New Zealand poetry I like. Some of my favs include the writers I've published: Vivienne Plumb, Anna Jackson, Jenny Powell-Chalmers, Scott Kendrick. Also Harry Ricketts, South by Chris Orsman. Also influential: Fleur Adcock, Mark Pirie, James K Baxter, Ursula Bethell, many more.

Now that I've started thinking about it, I'm sure there's lots more I'd add. But I'm really keen to know some of your favs - expand my horizons.

Howltearoa news from the Word Collective

This from the Word Collective about Howltearoa. I intend to actually make it this month, all going well.

Kia ora koutou!!

Howltearoa continues this year, with our second open mic nght on Monday the 5th of May at 7:30pm, at the Southern Cross.

The first Howl of the year, held in April, was really successful with a good turnout, heaps of people keen to contribute to the open mic session and a great set from our special guest and long-time Howltearoa contributor Andy Coombes.

Howltearoa this Monday is an opportunity for anyone wishing to contribute, be it with their own poetry or something by a favourite poet or writer. There will be no special guest this month, so there will be plenty of time for all who turn up wanting to perform.

Howltearoa will continue to be held on the first Monday of each month for the rest of this year. Poetry begins at 7:30pm. Come along and experience and contribute to the best of local poetry and spoken word in Wellington.

Enchantress of numbers

A few days ago, while I was at work, the phone rang. Which isn’t that odd, because people do call me at work from time to time – though mainly Sean and my mum. But when I picked it up, it wasn’t a voice I knew, so I presumed it was someone put through to me accidentally.

But no, it turns out she was after me. She wanted to talk to me about my poetry – well one poem in particular, which she is going to use for her speech and drama exam. As I understand it, this means that she’ll perform it and be asked questions about it.

I am terribly chuffed. I’m always delighted whenever anyone is interested in my work because, let’s face it, not that many people are very interested in poetry.

The poem is ‘Enchantress of numbers’, which is about Ada Lovelace, who was Byron’s daughter and a bit of a mathematician – enchantress of numbers is what computer pioneer Charles Babbage called her. It’s one of the biographical poems that’s going to be in My Iron Spine. It was published in Poetry NZ 32, but I’ve tinkered with it a teeny bit since it was first published. The most up-to-date version is below, and after the poem is a little bit of biographical info.


Enchantress of Numbers
Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace


One

On the table
is a dancing girl
made of silver, spun by gears
and cogs she pirouettes
she arabesques
and when she begins to slow
I wind the key again
let her go

My father the poet, my mother
the parallelogram
two lines
that should never have crossed
Passion and
reason, frenzy and logic
It’s no wonder
it ended as it did


Two

She said she was protecting me
from his blood, my blood
and the poison that was waiting there

Sitting at my desk
my books open
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

And so you see
it was my mother
who first programmed me

But maybe the software
doesn’t work
I think, in the dark summerhouse
with my tutor
Maybe a line of code
is incorrect
as I feel the lick
of his eyelashes
against my shoulder

He is dismissed
I walk five miles
to find him
but he has already gone


Three

A present from my mother
and today not even
my birthday
I am twenty years of age
I am safely married
I am waiting
for my own first child
I am no longer an accident
waiting to happen

She sends me
something dangerous, something
explosive
Behind my composure
I faint as I tear
the corner of the paper
rip away
the shield, the protection
and there he is
glowing
within the gilt frame
turban knotted around
his noble head
I see in him
my own eyes, my mouth
the cleft of my chin

and I can see
why she kept this
kept him
from me


Four

I never met him, my father
but I grew
in his shadow, in his light
What he was with words
I would be
with numbers
An alchemist, an enchantress
I promised myself

I first saw the dancing girl
in Babbage’s studio
A toy, a fancy
My eyes lighted
on a plainer set of
cogs and wheels
engraved with numbers
The Difference Engine
The other ladies scattered
their tinkling laughter but I
asked, ‘How does it work?’

He told me
and I understood


Five

The Analytical Engine
was harder, because
it didn’t exist
except in our minds
But I can explain it
share it
It will change
everything

I am a prophetess, a seer

In me
the twin streams meet
His blood, not drained
but flowing with her reason
I have watched for it
waited, afraid
of the madness, the badness
the danger, but now
I think I may be
the answer to the equation

Numbers dance
to the beat of the iamb
trochee, spondee
numbers make music
poetry
if you listen
with the right ear

And so you see
I am his daughter
after all



Ada Byron (1815–1852)
Daughter of the poet Byron and his wife Annabella Milbanke. Her mother left Byron when Ada was one month old, believing him mad and immoral. He was never allowed to see Ada again. Fond of mathematics herself, Annabella had Ada trained in maths in the hope it would discipline her away from any poetic or deviant nature she may have inherited from her father. Ada is best known for her notes to her translation of a scientific paper explaining Charles Babbage’s design for the Analytical Engine, a precursor to the computer. She has been called the first computer programmer because one of the notes contains what is generally considered to be the first (albeit theoretical) computer program.

Jennifer Compton at the Poetry Society

I was really pleased that the April meeting of the Poetry Society (last Monday) was really well attended.

I suspect that people were drawn by a guest reader from overseas, but although Jennifer Compton has been living in Australia for many years, she’s actually a local. She grew up in Rongotai, Wellington – somewhere near the airport if one of her poems was anything to go by.

Jennifer is in Wellington as the Randall Cottage writing fellow, which she applied for because she felt it was time to ‘come home’ for a while.

We were treated to a reading of some of her ‘New Zealand’ poems, which Aussies apparently don’t appreciate as much. A highlight for me was ‘Waikikamukau’ (pronounced why kick a moo cow), about that legendary, archetypal small New Zealand town, which, she said, in her poem is based on Shannon.

Another highlight was a very recent poem, recounting a memory from her childhood. A hard thing to write about, but a very fine poem.

Next month’s guest is going to be Lindsay Rabbitt, who is a writer and multi-media artist based on the Kapiti Coast. He has published poems, essays and short stories. His latest book is These Lives I Have Buried, which was published as part of the Montana essay series, edited by Lloyd Jones and published by his Four Winds Press.

New Zealand accents

This isn't strictly related to writing (except that I wrote it), but late last week in my day-job blog I wrote a post about New Zealand accents that I was quite pleased with.

If you do have a look, or even if you don't, make sure to check out the video I mention at the end: ‘New Zealand accent explained‘, by Miss Verstaendnis, a New Zealander living in Germany (presuming you have broadband or your workplace allows you to visit YouTube). It's hilarious and educational. If you're not familiar with the NZ accent - we mostly sound more like she does when she's talking normally rather than when she's demonstrating a NZ accent. This will also help New Zealanders explain why we don't sound like Australians.

Karen, it might make you homesick.

Putting together a poetry collection

The other day, over at The Peripatic Poetess's blog, I posted a comment about how I put my next poetry collection, My Iron Spine, together. She's about to put together a poetry manuscript, and was looking for some advice.

In case anyone else is interested, I thought I'd reuse what I wrote there:

I’m sure there are lots of ways you could successfully put your collection together. But this is how I put together My Iron Spine, which is going to be published later this year.

Of course, I started with the poems. While I was still writing them, I started noticing recurring themes and ideas, and I wrote new poems building on those. I also noticed that they fell into three types: autobiographical, biographical, and poems that were a fantastical combination of both – where I hung out with various women from history (for example ‘Swimming with Virginia Woolf’). At that stage, I wrote some more poems to fill out the last section.

Then the ordering! The first section was easier, in that I was trying to create a (fairly) chronological narrative through the section – beginning with me as a child, ending with me as an adult (more or less). But I also wanted it – and each of the other sections – to have an emotional narrative.

For each section, I kind of pictured in my head a graph, plotting the emotional rise and fall. The first, autobiographical, section begins up high with innocence, heads downwards with experience and disillusionment, but then heads upwards again with a growing sense of identity and hope.

The second section, comprising biographical poems, has a similar emotional structure. The line of the graph doesn’t start so high this time, but it also heads downwards, but fights its way back up with hopefulness.

The third section begins low, but heads up, getting lighter and, again with hope for the future.

A friend told me recently that Sylvia Plath had a similar kind of structure in mind for Ariel (links to an article about the 'restored edition'), in which, after mining the emotional depths, would end on a more hopeful note. When Ariel was published after her death, Ted Hughes changed the order and some of the poems, leaving us with a very different book.

The way I got the poems into order in each of their sections, was to print them all out and kind of shuffle them. I’d start with one, and then pick up another poem, putting it either in front or behind, depending on what felt right, and what fitted with the emotional trajectory I wanted. I did a fair amount of tinkering later, but eventually got something that seemed kind of right.

Then, when I was ready, I gave copies of the manuscript to five friends whose opinions I trusted, who I knew would be sympathetic to what I was aiming for, and who would give me constructive and insightful feedback. I am very lucky to have such creatures. I also gave them a list of questions, including one about the order. They suggested a few switches, for various reasons (eg, a better poem to start the collection with, this poem goes really well next to this one), most of which I followed.

Jennifer Compton at Poetry Society

The monthly Poetry Society meeting is on next Monday, 21 April, at 7.00pm. It's in the Greta Fernie Room, Leuven Belgian Beer Cafe, cnr Featherston and Johnston Streets.

There'll be the usual friendly open mic, followed by a guest poet.

This month's guest poet is Jennifer Compton, a poet and playwright who sometimes writes prose. She was born in Wellington in 1949 but has spent many years living in Wingello, a small town in Australia. She spent six months in residence at the Whiting Library Studio in Rome in 2006. During this time she was a guest at the Sarajevo Poetry Festival. Her next book of poetry is called Barefoot.

Jennifer is the current resident of Wellington's Randell Cottage.

Writing again

I’m delighted to announce that, after a pretty dry couple of years (following return to full-time work), I’ve managed to get myself back on a poetry-writing roll.

I’m quite a slow poet at the best of times, but the last couple of years I’d only really been tinkering with the poems that are going to be in My Iron Spine (which will be published later this year) and I had written very little new poetry, and nothing that I particularly liked. But now, it’s as if I’ve remembered how to write again, after having somehow forgotten. It’s very exciting.

Rather than actually remembering how to write, I think I’ve been remembering some habits and circumstances that help me write. During the (almost) year I took off from paid employment, I’d spend my mornings at home working on my attempts at a screenplay and a novel; and in the afternoons I’d wander round (especially if it was sunny), read poetry books and write poetry – usually in cafes. I wrote a lot of poetry that year – virtually all of My Iron Spine.

So the first thing I’ve been doing is stopping off at cafe once or twice a week on my way home, and writing. I’ve found that being somewhere things are going on, but where you don’t have to pay any attention to them, helps make a magical space in my head for poetry. Writing at home is a nice idea, but there are usually too many distractions there: dishes, cooking, emailing, chatting partners or so forth. I always think it will be lovely to write out in my courtyard garden, but when I do I spend at least half my time staring at the weeds and thinking about how I ought to pull them out (though not actually doing it, you understand).

The second thing I’ve remembered from working on My Iron Spine is that typing up poems – and then printing them out and scribbling on them – is an essential part of my writing process. I write my poems initially in my notebook, which I carry around with me almost always (I’ve had a long succession of these, and now know that they must have lined leaves, wiro binding and something pretty on the cover). But I need to transfer the poems out of the book and into the computer – usually tinkering with phrasing and line breaks as I go. Not only does it make it easier to edit, but it also makes it real. Making the poem concrete like that makes it easier to judge. It came as a shock to me when I realised a couple of months ago that I hadn’t typed poems up for over a year.

The third thing that’s got me back on the poetry roll is having a project. I think I work best when I have projects – when my artistic endeavours aren’t just all by themselves but are part of a greater whole. My Iron Spine really got rolling when I figured out that the book was going to be biographical and autobiographical, with the central theme of the ‘iron spine’. My current project is writing poems that take films as a starting point. They’re not usually re-tellings of the film’s story, though a few have been; they’re usually sort of musings on what the film sparks in my imagination. I often work with strong images or symbols from the movie, or what it seems to mean. My first attempts weren’t so great (though hopefully some can be saved with careful crafting, now that I’ve typed them up), but I’m really happy with some of the later ones.
The final thing I’m doing to keep me inspired to write is actually a new thing, which is writing short weekly reports about my writing and then sending them to a friend. She, in turn, is reporting on her writing to me. We haven’t been doing it for very long, but I’m finding it an added motivation – I want to be able to say I’ve done something each week. Also, it will mean that I can look back over them and be pleased with how much I’ve done.

JAAM news

Submissions for JAAM 26 closed last week. Editor Tim Jones has started the mammoth task of reading through everything and replying to submitters. Thanks to everyone who submitted their work.

We plan to publish around August/September. If you’d like to subscribe, check out the information on our Myspace page or Facebook group, or email jaammagazine@yahoo.co.nz.

The Myspace page and Facebook group (thanks Clare!) have been working out really well as a way of letting people know what JAAM is up to. We’re getting a lot of hits on the Myspace page in particular.

If you’re on either of those media, JAAM would be delighted if you would befriend it or join its group.

Farewell Ruth Dallas, 1919-2008

When I heard last week that poet Ruth Dallas had died last week, dairy cows jumped into my head. I wasn't sure what that was all about until I remembered her poem 'Milking before Dawn': 'In the drifting rain the cows in the yard are as black/And wet and shiny as rocks in an ebbing tide'.

Online, there's an obituary of Ruth Dallas from the Southland Times, an article on the TV3 website, and posts from Beattie's Book Blog and Tim Jones's Books in the Trees.

Best New Zealand Poems 2007

The best New Zealand poems of 2007, as selected by Paula Green, have been published on the Best New Zealand Poems website. There’s lots of interesting things to read, and I particularly enjoy the author’s notes, even though I feel kind of naughty reading them – like I shouldn’t need to know, (and infact oughtn’t even want to know) what the author thinks about a poem.

I was delighted when someone let me know that while my poem ‘Passion’ didn’t quite make it in, Paula Green liked it enough to mention it in her introduction as one of the ones she would have liked to also include. She said the same about Scott Kendrick’s ‘Gotter Getter Better’, which in my life as a publisher I published in Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete: Poems & Satires – very gratifying.

I was also delighted that three poems published in JAAM made it into the final cut of Best New Zealand Poems 2007: Robert Sullivan’s ‘After the UN Rapporteur Supported Maori Customary Rights’ from JAAM 24, and Richard Reeve’s ‘Autumn’ and Alison Wong’s ‘Reflection on a proposal of marriage’ from JAAM 25. Congratulations to those poets, and indeed all the poets included.

In her introduction, Paula Green mentions JAAM as one of the ‘stalwarts’. Again, I’m delighted (just to completely overuse the word). Everyone involved with JAAM, past and present, take a bow.

Howltearoa returns

From the Word Collective:

Hello my dear Howlers

It is true, Howltearoa is back for another year, starting this Monday the 7th of April!

Howltearoa
7:30pm
Monday 7th of April
The Southern Cross Bar
Abel Smith Street
open mic and special guest Andy Coombes

In keeping with our tradition, we will have an open mic session as well as a guest: Mr Andy Coombes. A poet of numerous talents and vices, Andy will keep you all well entertained with poetry that features sardonic wit, savage attacks on any misdimeanors by our elected representatives and narratives that may or may not have actually taken place in our fair city of Wellington.

Howltearoa will be on the first monday of each month this year, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

We look forward to seeing you there.

'Passion': my Emily Bronte poem

In the post below, about The Glass Essay, I mentioned that it inspired me to write my poem ‘Passion’, which is (also) about Emily Bronte. It had been sloshing around in my head for a while, unformed, but after (or possibly even during) reading The Glass Essay, it emerged, mostly fully formed.

Anyway, here is ‘Passion’; hope you enjoy it.

Passion

A curmudgeonly male critic once said
that Emily Bronte was
clearly a lesbian

‘It’s irrefutable,’ he said
because her words were
so passionate

therefore she was a woman
of strong sexual desire
She never married, never had a boyfriend

and so
obviously
was gay

*

I imagine Emily
with a series of lovers
taking off each other’s
empire lines in
discreet hollows
on the chilly moors
Emily wearing scarlet, but oh
not any more

I imagine the love letters
the fights, things
may have been thrown because
when one has such passion...

*

Emily lived with her sisters
for her thirty-one years
‘She never
made a friend,’ said Charlotte

What to do
with all that passion

Passion was in JAAM 25, and will be in my upcoming collection My Iron Spine. I also just discovered that it wasn't too far off getting in Best New Zealand Poems 2007, which I'm very happy about. More about that later.

The Glass Essay by Anne Carson

In a recent comment about verse novels I mentioned The Glass Essay by Anne Carson.

For the last few years, since I first read it, this has been probably my favourite poem. At least I think of it as a (long) poem. Possibly it’s verse novel, or maybe an epic poem. Not too epic though – it’s about 45 pages long – long for a poem, but short for an epic. It’s presented as a series of poems, or sections rather, as they wouldn’t really work on their own.

The Glass Essay is narrative, but not that much actually happens in terms of plot. A woman – the narrator – goes to stay with her aging mother. She walks on the moors, they take a trip to see her father who has advanced Alzhiemers. The narrator is recovering from a break up, and she’s reading a lot of her favourite author: Emily Bronte.

Some of the reasons why I love The Glass Essay so much are: the way the narrator’s story interviews so gorgeously with the life and work of Emily Bronte; the beautiful, spare language; the control the occasional wry trip of humour; the fact that it’s sometimes poetry-as-literary-criticism.

I also love it because I find it really inspiring. She writes differently to how I do, but this poem inspired me to write ‘Passion’, about Emily Bronte, which was published in JAAM 25.

I’m going to try to write a piece about The Glass Essay for A Fine Line, the Poetry Society magazine (wish me luck), so I won’t go into it at length now. But to give you a taster, here’s an extract (below). But wonderously, I’ve just discovered you can read the whole thing online at the Poetry Foundation.

THREE

Three silent women at the kitchen table.
My mother’s kitchen is dark and small but out the window
there is the moor, paralyzed with ice.
It extends as far as the eye can see

over flat miles to a solid unlit white sky.
Mother and I are chewing lettuce carefully.
The kitchen wall clock emits a ragged low buzz that jumps

once a minute over the twelve.
I have Emily p. 216 propped open on the sugarbowl
but am covertly watching my mother.

A thousand questions hit my eyes from the inside.
My mother is studying her lettuce.
I turn to p. 217.

'In my flight through the kitchen I knocked over Hareton
who was hanging a litter of puppies
from a chairback in the doorway. . . '

It is as if we have all been lowered into an atmosphere of glass.
Now and then a remark trails through the glass.
Taxes on the back lot. Not a good melon,

too early for melons.

[. . .]

Out the window I can see dead leaves ticking over the flatland
and dregs of snow scarred by pine filth.
At the middle of the moor

where the ground goes down into a depression,
the ice has begun to unclench.
Black open water comes

curdling up like anger. My mother speaks suddenly.
That psychotherapy’s not doing you much good is it?
You aren’t getting over him.

My mother has a way of summing things up.
She never liked Law much
but she liked the idea of me having a man and getting on with life.

Well he’s a taker and you’re a giver I hope it works out,
was all she said after she met him.
Give and take were just words to me

at the time. I had not been in love before.
It was like a wheel rolling downhill.
But early this morning while mother slept

and I was downstairs reading the part in Wuthering Heights
where Heathcliff clings at the lattice in the storm sobbing
Come in! Come in! to the ghost of his heart’s darling,

I fell on my knees on the rug and sobbed too.
She knows how to hang puppies,
that Emily.

Paul Muldoon/UK literary scene seminar

A couple of weeks ago it was Writers and Readers Week in Wellington, part of the International Arts Festival.

As usual, I failed to go to very much, but I did see a session with Irish poet Paul Muldoon, who now lives in New Jersey. (I also really wanted to see novelist Ian McEwen, but his session had sold out.) He read quite a lot of his work, which I don’t know very well but ought to read more of. I most enjoyed a couple of earlier poems he read, both about his childhood and also about ‘The Troubles’.

The other Writers and Readers Week thing I did was go to a seminar organised by Creative NZ, about the UK literary scene for NZ writers. It was taken by Gary McKeone, who was the head of literature at the UK Arts Council until 2006. He’s now the chair of the Poetry Translation Centre the Poetry Archive and Poetry London.

He talked for a while about how government funding for literature works in the UK, and then we writers asked him a bunch of questions.

There were two main things that I took from his talk. The first is that the average print runs in the UK are not very different those here in New Zealand – about 3000 for a novel and 500-1000 for a collection of poetry. I’d always assumed that because there were more people there’d be more readers, but I guess there are more writers too.

The second thing, was that he encouraged us to submit to UK literary magazines. I’ve never really known where to start, how to find the literary magazines to submit to. He gave me some suggestions (Poetry Review, Poetry London and Dream Catcher) and directed me to The Poetry Library, where there is this listing of UK poetry journals.

Look out English lit mags, as soon as I get myself together, I’ll start submitting.

Review of JAAM 25

There's a review of JAAM 25 by Amy Brown in The Lumiere Reader.

It's a pretty positive review, picking out the connections between some of the peices and mentioning some favourites, such as Sarah Jane Barnett's poem 'Grandmother' and Craig Cliff's short story 'Christo Redentor'.

I found myself childishly irritated with her criticism of JAAM's paper stock and comment that it isn't the glossiest of literary mags - given that 25 is probably the prettiest yet. But we aren't aiming for glossy (especially given my penchant for matt laminate over gloss), we're aiming for accessible quality.

But she goes on to say: 'It is, however, a consistently well-edited forum for the work of both established New Zealand writers and promising newcomers.'

The Lumiere Reader is a pretty cool site, which I need to spend some more time having a look through. There's lots of reviews and they now include some fiction and poetry.

Poetry Society: Tim Jones and Jennifer Compton

Last Monday was another good Poetry Society meeting. Everyone who was there during the open reading read at least one poem, including Alan who arrived a little later and without a poem. Lauris presented him with a random poem she'd printed off the net and he read it so fluently and beautifully, with such modulation, that I told him afterwards it was as if he'd practised for hours. But no, he said, he'd never seen the poem before in his life.

Tim Jones (guest editor JAAM 26, for which submissions are closing at the end of this month)was the guest reader. He read work from his latest book All Black's Kitchen Gardens, which came out last year, and his first book Boat People from 2002.

I was pleased he read my favourite poem of his, 'Going Back' (from All Black's Kitchen Gardens), about a journey home after the death of his mother.

My mother is the gap in the windbreak
the fallen macrocarpa
the flooded river and the flooded plain.

Next month, Jennifer Compton will be the guest reader. She's a New Zealand poet and playwright, but has lived in Australia for many years. She's going to be the next Randall Cottage fellow. I've come across Jennifer's work quite often through JAAM, but it will be great to see her read in person.

The meeting is going to be at a new venue: in the Greta Fernie Room of Leuven, cnr Featherston and Johnston streets. The date and time are: Monday 21 April, 7.00pm.

JAAM 26 editor Tim Jones reads at Poetry Society

For you Wellingtonians, come along to the Poetry Society on Monday 17 March (this Monday), where to hear Tim Jones will be guest reader.

The reading is from 7 pm at the Paramount foyer, Courtenay Place. There'll also be an open reading beforehand.

Tim is a poet, novelist, short story writer and blogger. His second collection, All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens, was published by HeadworX last year.

Recent poetry reading part II: The Monkey’s Mask by Dorothy Porter

This post is a little belated – I mostly wrote it a few weeks ago before going on holiday, but it didn’t quite make it out of the notebook and into the blog.

So anyway, not too long ago I read The Monkey’s Mask by Dorothy Porter (who I often confuse with Dorothy Parker, about whom I’ve recently read a very interesting and kind of depressing biography).

The Monkey’s Mask is, as they say in Australia, a ‘verse novel’. In 2001 I was a guest at the Subverse poetry festival in Brisbane, and I got the impression that a verse novel had become an essential stage in the development of a poet: after one-to-two poetry collections it’s time for your verse novel. All the poets seemed to have written one, be writing one, or intending to write one.

The blurb on the cover says:

You will encounter things that you never expected to find in a poem – a missing person enquiry, a tough streetwise P.I. named Jill Fitzpatrick, cars that go out of control on mountain roads, murder, deception and an unforgettable femme fatale. You will find yourself reading the crime thriller of the year.

Sound tacky? To be honest, it kinda is. The fast pace pulled me through the 256 page book pretty swiftly, but at the end I felt kind of cheated. The story seemed clichéd and predictable, and I don’t even read crime fiction. I picked the killer pretty early on, because he was the nicest guy in the whole book. I hoped that, because she's a poet and poets are pretty smart, she was leading me down a path and she’d surprise me at the end. But no.

I’m really interested in narrative poetry – the beautiful, spare but rich way that poems can tell stories. Over the last few years my poetry has tended towards the narrative. My next collection, My Iron Spine (which will be published later this year – watch this space), is mainly narrative poetry: biographical and autobiographical. I’ve even been considering joining the Aussies and writing my long-talked-about (by me that is) novel Cartography as a 'verse novel'.

The thing about poetry that makes it poetry, for me anyway, is the intensity of language. But, while being written as poetry (a series of shortish poems- 1–2 pages each) gave the narrative of The Monkey’s Mask a nice stripped-backness, I found the poetry pretty bland. I recall noticing some nice images on my way through, but flicking through it now, I can’t find them, so you’ll have to just believe me.

I think Dorothy Porter is a really good poet– I’ve read some of her other work and really liked it, so I had high hopes for The Monkey’s Mask. But I guess my main feeling after reading it was that if someone had submitted it to me for publication, I would have said that it’s a really cool idea, and definitely worth pursuing, but that the poetry could do with some more work and the cliche's 'reconsidered'.

But what would I know! – it won the Age Book of the Year for Poetry, the National Book Council Award for Poetry and the Braille Book of the Year. (It’s also been adapted for stage and radio and film.)

Has anyone else read it? What did you think? Anyone else read any verse novels?