Video poetry, part 2: New Zealand Poets on Video

It isn't that I actually need another project - I always have lots on the go - too much probably. But late last year I got interested in making little films. I guess I'd kind of been interested in it for a while, but I was spurred particularly by two things. The first was the poems I've been writing that are inspired by films and film-making, and the second was reading a biography of Kubrick (the frustrating one that ends before he's died, because he hadn't died yet when it was published).

I started wondering what it would be like to look at things through a viewfinder, to frame the world in a narrower way. I started to think about the parallels between metaphor in poetry and the metaphor in film.

Then I started thinking about how it would be cool to video poets reading their poems as a kind of resource and as an archive for the future. A few years ago Jan Kemp and Jack Ross organised the mammoth Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive project - basically all the poets in New Zealand were recorded for this. I don't plan to embark on something so big, but I'd like to video poets around about the place reading some of their work, and perhaps do some interviews with them too.

I'm also interested in what I (and some other people) call video poems, which are kind of like music videos for poems. My first video, 'Calling you home', which I blogged about recently, is one of those.

I'll make these available on the net, and I thought it would be cool to pull together what else is out there that other people have done. So, to this end, I've set up a YouTube group for videos of NZ poets and/or poems: http://www.youtube.com/group/NZPoetsonvideo - please join and contribute if you're doing this sort of thing.

I've also started a directory of NZ poets on video on the net: http://nzpoetsonvideo.wordpress.com/. This is very much in progress - in fact not really started, but I think it will be a good resource. I've found a few more relevant videos on YouTube, and some on the NZ Electronic Poetry Centre website that I haven't added yet, but if you know of any, or you've made some, either add them to the YouTube group or email the links to nzpoetsonvideoATyahoo.co.nz.

Cool things part 1: Me anthologised

Am very excited. I have poems in not one, but two anthologies coming out this year.

The first of these is Our Own Kind: 100 New Zealand Poems about Animals, edited by Siobhan Harvey, and published by Random House/Godwit. My poem ‘In wolf’s clothing’, was selected for inclusion. Based on the section titles, I suspect mine will probably be in ‘Creepy – crawly’. Our Own Kind is being published late April, and launched early May.

The other anthology is Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, edited by Mark Pirie and Tim Jones, published by Interactive Publications. My poem 'Tabloid Headlines', previously only seen in the inside front cover of JAAM 2, is included. Interactive Publications has an online shop thingy, so if you're interested it can be purchased from the orders page: http://ipoz.biz/Store/orders.htm.

As the title suggests, the editors have trawled through pretty much all New Zealand poetry, and found enough science fiction poetry to fill an anthology. Tim Jones has blogged about this process over at his blog: http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/2009/02/voyagers-new-zealand-science-fiction.html.

The only anthology I’ve had work in before now was The NeXt Wave, edited by Mark Pirie, back in 1998, which was a very special anthology to be included in. It was an anthology of up-and-coming writers, mainly generation X– hence the big X in the title – almost all of whom have gone on to be significant in NZ’s literary scene. I’d kind of forgotten about The NeXt Wave, but looking at it again now, it’s a pretty cool anthology!

April Poetry Society Meeting with guest reader Clare Kirwan

From the national coordinator:

This month's Guest Poet is Clare Kirwan, a performance poet from Liverpool. Clare is on her first World Tour, which she has named Dead Good Down Under, a reference to her membership of Liverpool's Dead Good Poets' Society. She is a comedian as well as a poet, and this looks to be a great evening.

"Welcome to a world where silence speaks many languages, bones grow in gardens, and the birdsong is only in your head. A world where all things are made of glass but breakages need not be paid for, where moments are crystallized: the lollipop man murdered, the iron statue running for it, and your mum planning world domination."

Clare is doing other gigs while she's in the country. Last month she did Poetry Live in Auckland, and later this month she appears in Thames. She spent Easter in Christchurch, so she's not far away, and has promised me she won't lose her voice to a bungy jump.

See you on Monday 20th April, 7.30pm (for open mic) at the Thistle Inn, 3 Mulgrave St.

Putting the X into my holiday

I always feel a bit pressured during holidays. Time is so precious to me, and I always feel the need to do something really useful with my time off. So I often don’t feel very relaxed, and sometimes I get a bit down. There’s the pull between relaxing, hanging out with people and having a nice time; and doing some ‘work’ – there’s always have lots of writing-related work to do, in between my own writing, blogging and other internet stuff, JAAM, Seraph Press stuff and other projects I get up to.

I realised this morning though, that what a good holiday is, and in fact a good day in general, is a day that is distinguishable from other days, a day that you remember as: ‘The day I did X’, X being something significant or new or out of the ordinary. X doesn’t need to be an enormous thing; just something different.

So today I decided I needed to do something different. We didn’t do anything of world-shattering significance, we just decided to go for a walk and explore some paths around our neighbourhood that we’ve never been down (or, mostly, up) before.

So off we set, down our hill. Our first stop, of course, was for coffee. Being caffeinated can only help with X. Then we headed up the steps to St Johns Hill, then through Te Aro School, then down a secret magical path to the end of the gully at the bottom of Devon Street, which is overgrown and always seems damp, but wasn’t today because it’s been so sunny (and windy) lately.

Our last adventure was to attempt to get to our place via the mythical ‘other end of the path’, which required sneaking through a gate, and through some bushes that haven’t been cut back in a while. I knew we were going to make it all the way through when I caught a glimpse of our house from an angle that I’d never seen it from before. I guess that’s the thing about going to new places – you often see things that are familiar from new angles – metaphorically and literally. And your eyes are so much more open, you take so much more in.

Later in the afternoon, the other new thing I did was interview Sean on video about the film script he’s working on. We’ve decided we’re going to do this every now and then to have a record of its progress, and how he was thinking about it at different points. And maybe one day we’ll be able to use some of it as a special feature on the DVD! (I filmed him sitting in front of our bookcases and the Wonder Woman figurine pictured above, which Jenny gave me after I published Locating the Madonna, was behind his head for the whole interview.)

So, today was the day that X was exploring new paths, and videoing Sean talking about his movie for the first time.

I hope tomorrow X will be something too. Every day should have an X.

Video poetry, part 1

Last weekend I made my first ever movie, and you can now watch it on YouTube: http://tr.im/iAQ3. (It’s very short – 2 mins, 6 secs)

For both days of last weekend I was on an Introduction to Film and Video Production course. I thought we’d muck around, learn how to use video cameras, get taught some theory, get shown the editing software. We turn up at 9 am on Saturday, there’s only three of us in the class, and the tutor (a young up-and-comer) tells us the best way to learn is to do, and that we’re going to make a film each by 4 pm Sunday, so time to start brainstorming.

I decided to make a movie based on one of my poems, ‘Calling you Home’, which was in my first book, Abstract Internal Furniture. (I also helped out with my classmate/colleague’s short documentary, ‘B&B Lady’, which was fun, but another story.)


First I recorded myself reading the poem – just on the video camera – I later kept the sound but abandoned the video track. Then in the evening, after the course finished, I took the camera away and filmed the images.

Thinking about what images to use was a really interesting process. I wanted to use images that went with the poem, but weren’t too literal. I guess in the same way a poem is metaphorical, I wanted the film to be metaphorical. The poem is about a flat I used to live in, but it’s also about my relationship with Sean, which began while I was in this flat.

So my first on-location shoot was at that flat, where, fortunately, my friend Brian still lives (and probably always will). I shot so many different angles of the outside of that house, and I didn’t really know how I was going to use them. I also shot some things inside, and some stuff that I knew exactly which bit of the poem they were for.

Then, later that night, back at home, I shot some other footage – if you watch the movie – it’s the stuff with the teacup and my souvenir teaspoons. I’m especially proud of that sequence – it’s kind of like stop motion (except I actually kept the camera running the whole time, so the raw footage has my hands moving things around).

So, I had my footage, but wasn’t too sure how I was going to use it. Some of it seemed a bit dull by itself, but then I had a brainwave – I’d layer it. Most of the way through there is a main image, with a ghostly image behind. I’m very happy with how this turned out – especially the bit with a duvet being pulled forward over a shot that zooms/pulls towards the window of the house. The two movements seem to me to work together really nicely.

I used a piece of instrumental music by a friend of mine who often goes by the name of Lucan as a soundtrack, which fortuitously fitted. He gave it to us as a wedding present, and the poem was read (by Anne Marie) at our wedding, which all ties together nicely.

It was all a bit of a rush at the end, so I didn’t have the chance to fix a few odd things. But, as a first film goes, I’m really happy with it.

More other places to send stuff

Blackmail Press 25

Bill Nelson and Sarah Jane Barnett are guest editors of Blackmail Press 25: The Rebel Issue, and they’re looking for work that resists tradition, breaks the rules, and broaches subversive topics, politics, authority or the experience of rebellion. They aim to ‘give New Zealand writers the opportunity to showcase interesting and original work about being different, unique or just plain disobedient.’

The deadline for submissions is Friday 15 May 2009. Contributors may submit up to three works as MS Word compatible attachments to rebelissue@gmail.com.

Landfall 218

Submissions are being sought for ‘Islands’, guest edited by David Eggleton.

New Zealand Aotearoa is located on the map as one point of the Polynesian triangle - part of an oceanic scatter of islands. It is a nation characterised by dual settlement - Polynesian, then European - which more recently has welcomed a global diversity of new migrants and settlers.

'Islands’ will suggest something of this variety, this heritage, as a celebration of binary oppositions and harmonic dualities, of the bicultural and the multicultural, of the pro and the con, of tensions and resolutions.

While submissions are being actively sought from contributors of Maori and Pacific Island heritage, 'Islands' also implies communities, villages, self-contained entities, and even margins moving into the mainstream, the world currents of culture. Consequently the issue flings the net wide and keeps the definition broad.

This issue will also publish the winner/s of the Landfall Essay Competition 2009.

The deadline for submissions (fiction, poetry, personal essays and other non-fiction) is 10 June 2009.

Submissions to: Landfall, Otago University Press, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Email correspondence (no submissions, please) to: landfall@otago.ac.nz

Poetry publishing 101

If you're interested in poetry publishing in New Zealand, I recommend a recent post by Jack Ross: Poetry Publishing Degree Zero.

It isn't all doom and gloom, just don't expect poetry to make you rich. Or even famous...

Hail! issue one, or, other places to send stuff

If you frequent downtown Wellington, you might come across this colourful wee zine. It’s published by a friend of mine who goes by the name of Fluke. I met him when he very kindly let me organise the launch for Scott Kendrick’s Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete in the middle of his photography exhibition at Thistle Hall.

Fluke, being an enterprising chap, decided he wanted to start a zine, and so got a bunch of his friends to write things for it. This issue, being the first, was the Virgin Issue, and inside is an eclectic bunch of pieces, by an eclectic bunch of people, including a poem (prose poem really), by me. There’s also recipes for virgin (ie non-alcoholic) cocktails, photography, essays-ish things, and other bits of writing.

Fluke is inviting submissions for the second issue, which has the theme of DIY (as in, do it yourself).

He says: 'If you would like to contribute to the next issue of Hail!, simply apply the theme to a story, poem, photo, illustration, cartoon, review, recipe or anything else, and email to me on fluke.info@gmail.com.'

I’m already working on my masterpiece. The deadline is the end of this month (31 April 2009).

JAAM 27 closed, 28 on the (still fairly distant) horizon

Submissions for JAAM 27 (2009) have now closed. We’ve had heaps and heaps of submissions, and guest editor Ingrid Horrocks will be very busy reading through them all!

I hope you all submitted work, because it’s ages until submissions open for the next issue. But planning for JAAM 28 is already underway. It’s going to be special and exciting – or at least we think so, but more about that in due course.

In the meantime, I'll be slowly working on developing the JAAM website.

Snails coming to a screen near me

I blogged earlier about my friend Ed's movie, The Last Great Snail Chase. Well now it's coming to Wellington.

It's being shown at The Film Archive tomorrow and Saturday at 7 pm. And, according to the Film Archive website, if you dress as a snail, you can see it for free!

The movie was independently produced - the result of a mammoth effort by Ed and a whole team of others. As I said before: It's very imaginative, very odd, and full of cool things. It's set in the present day, around a group of friends. The sky is cracking apart, turtles are swimming in the sky, and a colossal tidal wave threatens to destroy the planet. Despite that, everything is going on much as it always does. The tag line is: 'In a world where whales walk the streets, you still gotta go to work'.

For more, you could read an interview with Ed in/on Lumiere.

Reprint of My Iron Spine arrives

Ooh, how exciting! I came home today to find a box full of My Iron Spines. We've done a small reprint, cos I didn't have any left to sell, and I plan to keep selling (and giving away) this book for years to come, cos I'm quite fond of it.

So if you want one, now is the time. I sell them direct for $20. (Email me at the address in my profile thingie.) You can also get them through your local bookshop for an extra $5, though you'd probably have to ask unless your local bookshop is Unity Books Wellington, or some other lovely independent bookseller type. (The ISBN is 978-0-473-13596-6 – that's the kind of thing booksellers like to know.) Also you can buy it through some online booksellers - New Zealand Books Abroad, Timeout bookstore and The Women's Bookshop.

Perhaps like many poetry books, it has been selling much better via me than via the bookshops. Is that the experience for other (non-famous) poets?

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.'

Enamel – issue one

Welcome to the world Enamel!

Enamel is New Zealand's newest literary magazine, edited and published by poet Emma Barnes.

Enamel is the most attractive first issues of a literary magazine that I've ever come across. Not only does it have a full-colour, matt-laminated cover, but it also has colour images on the inside.

This first issue features work by some familiar names, including Johanna Aitchison, Tim Jones, Miriam Barr, Jennifer Compton, Helen Heath, and yours truly (with 'Nothinghead', which is one of my 'movie' poems).

I enjoyed the work of the above-mentioned people, but another particular highlight was 'Inside' by Lori Leigh, a US poet and playwright I'd never heard of.

If you'd like to get your paws on a copy of this attractive journal, it' s stocked by Unity Auckland, and will probably be stocked by Unity Wellington. Or you can buy a copy on Trade Me - Emma is trying out this selling books over Trade Me business (I blogged about this a while ago) and I'll be interested to see how it goes.

Or, you can email email enamel dot editor at gmail dot com, and buy a hard copy for $15 or a pdf for 'a donation of your specification'.

Enamel is going to be published annually at this stage. Submissions for issue two don't close until the end of September, but you can read the submissions guidelines on Enamel's blog.

Wellington Sonnet Competition reading

From the Poetry Society:

Hi all. Please remember we have an extra meeting this month, to host the Wellington Writers' Walk Trust's Sonnet evening. Prizewinners in last year's contest will read their winning sonnets (the top prize was won by Michelle Amas, with a truly wonderful sonnet), and some of the Highly Commended entries will have an airing as well. A satisfying number of NZPS members were in the honours list.

There will be an open mic for anyone who entered the competition, as well as any other members of the audience who have a sonnet to share.

The venue is our regular meeting place, The Thistle Inn, at 3 Mulgrave St, Wellington (near the Railway Station), and the meeting will start at 7.30pm.

Also, if you're that way inclined, you might be interested to know that Poetry Society now Twitters: http://twitter.com/NZPS

Day at home/JAAM website

I've just had a fabulous day off. It was gorgeously sunny, and I managed to get a few of the things I wanted to do done - or at least started. I could have done with many more hours though.

One of the things I did today was to start building and new website for JAAM magazine using Wordpress. It's by no means finished, I have heaps of things to add (including lots of links) and I'm still fiddling with the design. But you can have a look at what I have so far at http://jaam.wordpress.com/.

I really felt it was time that JAAM had its own proper website, because having its pages on the HeadworX site was confusing people, and I couldn't update it easily.

JAAM 26 is a finalist in Sir Julius Vogel Awards

I'm delighted that JAAM 26 is a finalist in the Collected Works section of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards for science fiction and fantasy works.

JAAM 26 was guest edited by Tim Jones, and contained a number of speculative and interstitial stories and poems – hence its eligibility for the award. Hopefully this will be good publicity for JAAM.

All congratulations are to go to Tim himself, who assembled such a fine issue of JAAM, and who knew about the awards in the first place. Tim also deserves congratulations because his own book of short stories, Transported, is up against JAAM in the same category, along with The Invisible Road, by Elizabeth Knox.

JAAM has a couple of other connections to these awards too. Helen Lowe had poems and a story in JAAM 26, and they are part of the body of work for which she has been selected as a finalist in the Best New Talent category. Also published in JAAM was 'Banshee' by Darian Smith, which is a finalist in the Best Short Story category.

Members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy and Fantasy Association of New Zealand will vote at Conscription, the 30th New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention, in Auckland on Queen's Birthday Weekend.

Tim Jones has some more about this on his blog: http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/2009/03/sffanz-press-release-finalists-for-2009.html

How Eliot makes me a braver poet

Lately I’ve been making my way through T S Eliot’s Collected Poems re-reading my old fav The Waste Land and the wonderful but less-familiar ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. And I’ve been discovering some new treasures that I hadn’t read before (like ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’), and some I’d forgotten I’d read, but recognised again (such as ‘Hysteria’). There are some that I can take or leave, but, by and large, I’m loving them.

My reading of Eliot has been strangely patchy. Even though I’d get excited about what I have read, it never seemed to compel me to devour it all – until now.

The reason I jumped back into Eliot was because of Twitter. (See, it can have some usefulness – or so I’m telling myself.) I was looking for short lines of poetry for my #Poetry tweets. (For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, tweets are kind of like mini blog posts – each can only be a maximum of 140 characters, including spaces.)

I’ve found this an interesting exercise so far – looking for two to three gorgeous lines of poetry that works well out of context, in isolation from the rest of its poem. Strong and interesting images seem to work well, or some kind of interesting or wise statement. It makes me really think about the meaning(s) of those two to three lines, which helps me appreciate the poem all the more.

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ is full of such lines, and ‘The Waste Land’ – to my surprise – less so. I think because ‘The Waste Land’ gains its power in longer portions, in repetition and in context.

Of ‘The Waste Land’ I twittered:

“April is the cruellest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire”

And of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’:

“And time yet for a hundred indecisions,/and for a hundred visions and revisions/Before the taking of a toast and tea”

“And indeed there will be time/To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?'/ Time to turn back and descend the stair”

“I grow old ... I grow old .../I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

Reading Eliot again, particularly ‘The Waste Land’, has reminded me of how opaque his writing is, how he puts together a bunch of things that don’t make obvious sense together. It just isn’t that accessible. But who cares?! It’s wonderful!

The first time I read ‘The Waste Land’ I was sitting on my bed in my room at home. I was in my second year at university, and studying it for my course on modern poetry. I read it out loud, and was totally entranced by how it sounded, how it felt. I didn’t have a clue what it meant. Even now, after a thoroughly researched essay and many re-readings, I have only dim ideas what it’s about. But it doesn’t matter – I love it and have gotten a lot out of it.

Re-discovering it has been making me think about my own poetry. I write quite differently to Eliot. My poems – especially the ones in My Iron Spine – tend to be quite narrative. And while I like to think that I’ve put layers of meaning into them, I think they’re pretty accessible really.

But each time I’ve finished a collection of poetry – ok, so that’s only twice so far – I’ve wanted to shift into a different direction. I don’t want to keep writing exactly the same kind of poem until it becomes a parody of my own style. And I have been moving away from the narrative poems of My Iron Spine, but I’m a little nervous.

I’m drawn towards more imagistic, less straightforward style, and yet I’m afraid I could end up writing poems that no one will like because they can’t understand them.

But Eliot has reminded me that opaque and bad are not the same thing, and that poetry can be meaningful without obvious meaning.

I think I’ll be thinking and writing more about this…

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.

Stuff I've been up to lately

I've been up to heaps of things lately - possibly too much - and there are heaps more things I ought to be doing. Quite a few of them are poetry-related.

Saw Kate Camp at the Poetry Society
She read mostly new poems, which was nice. I particularly enjoyed her reading of a poem twice. She read it first without telling us anything about it, and while it wasn't a poem that made obvious sense, you could make your own interpretations of its images. A bit later, she read it again, but this time first told us what it was about, the story that had inspired it. It was like a whole other poem. It was clearer in meaning, but less universal. It was quite a fascinating exercise.

Saw Richard Langston at the Poetry Society
Richard Langston combines being a journalist for TV3 with being a poet. He's an engaging reader, and he also mainly read new stuff. I was inspired by his quoting of the end of what I thought was an uncharacteristic Philip Larkin poem: 'The Mower' the hunt it down, and Twitter it: 'we should be careful//Of each other, we should be kind/While there is still time.'

Went to the open mike night at Aunt Daisy's Boathouse Cafe
This was a fun, informal evening, where anyone could get up and read a few poems. Excellently hosted by Mike Eager. I read some poems, listened to some other poems, hung out with some people I already knew, met some people I didn't know before. I'll be back. It's on the last Wednesday of every month, so this month it's next Wednesday, 25th May, from 7 pm. It's at 28 Bay Road, Titahi Bay - it's right next to the beach.

Helping out with the publication of Viet Nam by Jenny Powell
I've been just helping make some final changes to the design file for this new book of poetry by Jenny Powell (formerly Jenny Powell-Chalmers), which is going to be published by HeadworX soon. So I've been lucky enough to have a sneak preview of this collection, which is an imaginative journey to Viet Nam. A Vietnamese teacher came and stayed with Jenny in Dunedin, and she, in turn, wanted to go and visit him in Viet Nam. She was unable to, and so could only travel there in her mind. It's so vivid and specific in it's details and responses, that it's hard to believe she was never there.

Re-reading the manuscript of Ithaca Island Bay Leaves by Vana Manasiadis, which I'm excited I'm (as in Seraph Press) going to publish
This is a gorgeous collection, about Greece, and New Zealand, and her mother, her grandmother and, more subtly, about herself. It also has several playful peices that are reworkings/updatings of classic Greek myths. I'm sure I'll have much more to write about this as the project moves ahead.

That'll do for now. I'm planning to write a post about the book my new imprint Alley Cat Chapbooks published - which means me and the author (my friend Karen) handmade 25 copies of it. It will have photos, and perhaps instructions for hand binding little books.

Things to do: #3 See Nikki Patin in her Phat Grrl Revolution Tour

Chicago-based Def Jam poet and member of the American National Slam Team Nikki Patin is heading to New Zealand on her Phat Grrrl Revolution Tour. Her Wellington event is at Happy (underground, cnr Vivian and Tory streets) on Saturday (21 March) at 8 pm.

I was planning to go to this, because the reason she came over to NZ is because of the lovely Miriam Barr, whose Literatti group did a show with her. But after reading Miriam's write-up of Nikki's solo show, I'm definitely going. If this is your sort of thing, you should too.

Postscript: Oh, and I was totally blown away by Nikki Patin's impressions of her time in Auckland so far: http://theliteratti.blogspot.com/2009/03/nikkis-impressions-just-remember.html

UPDATE: From the Word Collective:

Word Collective is hosting a Def Jam poet, Nikki Patin, who is doing one show only in Wgtn on Sat March 21st after touring the motu.
Check her out on Youtube

The Wgtn Word Collective will be represented by two performers; Glenn Ashworth, with his hybrid word glide thru Pakeha and Maori kaupapa, and Ciara Mulholland, checking out of Godzone with a swansong appearance.

Tickets are $10 unwaged, $15 waged and the show starts at 8pm.