Project announcement: ‘Watching for Smoke’ by Helen Heath

Busy busy busy. Along with the projects I’ve already written about – JAAM (which I’ve been typesetting), video poems, Ithaca Island Bay Leaves, my own poetry – I’ve also been working putting together a new Seraph Press publication. It's going to be a limited-edition hand-bound poetry chapbook by Helen Heath, called Watching for Smoke.

Helen is a poet and all-round crafty person from Paekakariki. Over the last few years I've been getting to know her and her poetry a bit better, not least through her blog Show your Workings, and I've done a few readings with her and other people. I've been finding her work more and more compelling, and earlier this year I had a chat with her about it being time for her to get a chapbook of her work out into the world. She's taken up the challenge.

I was given a lot of latitude with this. I had an idea of what I wanted this book to be, and she's let me build it with her poems. I knew I wanted the anchor to be her poem 'Spilt', which was in the latest issue of JAAM (26). I love this poem. It does so much. It's so physical, almost uncomfortably so (well, probably it is actually uncomfortable for some). And it's so personal, and yet really universal, like many of my favourite poems are. And it's both domestic and mythic. 'Spilt' has become both the anchor and the jumping-off point for the collection.

To me, the chapbook is tied together by all the different roles we have, especially in our families, such as mother, wife, lover, daughter, sister, and the tensions within and between them. It represents only an aspect of the work Helen is doing, but it's one of the aspects I really enjoy. I'm liking how the poems circle back and around in time, with connections to each other. You'll know what I'm talking about when you read it.

My schedule is to have this all done by the time Helen reads at Stand Up Poetry in Palmerston North - so a couple of months. It's already typeset, and we've both got some ideas for the cover design. It's going to be hand-bound, and may have knitting needles incorporated into some how! I'm going to try to make some demo versions in the next few days, see if what I'm imagining in my head is actually feasible. Such fun!

Winged Ink - catalogued and archived

Ok, so this might get a bit meta - especially if you're reading the archived version - but I was excited to discover last week that the National Library has catalogued my blog, and also that they're archiving it as part of the National Digital Heritage Archive.

Actually, they're trying to archive all of the NZ internet domain, and other NZ-based websites, but because Winged Ink is hosted on Blogger, I didn't expect them to find it. That they did is either down to impressive detective work, or otherwise perhaps because I might know someone involved - I did used to work at the National Library after all, in my former life as a fake librarian.

Anyway, the thought that people of the future might read my blog to find out stuff about poetry or publishing or whatever (actually, for those of you who understand MARC: 650 _0 |a New Zealand poetry |y 21st century |v Blogs.) , made me feel slightly anxious, and made me feel that I ought be writing things worth archiving. Probably my blog update binge over the weekend was due to this pressure. Anyway, it's an excuse...

Blackmail Press 24 published

Blackmail Press 24 online literary mag is now online, and worth checking out. I'm delighted that a couple of my poems are included.

When guest editor Miriam Barr (also editor of Side Stream poetry zine) called for submissions for Blackmail Press 24, she asked for poems that explored the idea(s) of secrets:

Keeping and sharing secrets seem to be universal parts of the human condition – something we learn very early on as children and carry throughout our lives. The idea that some things should remain private and unsaid is intriguing, throwing up many lines of contemplation.

The theme had wide scope. Everyone has had secrets, held information, shared information, kept information. As Miriam says (very poetically) in her editorial:

Some of the secrets I have kept have defined me, or the periods they were kept in. They have bonded and they have broken. They have held me apart and they have held me together. They have been used and also used against me. They have kept me safe and they have caught up with me.

My poems are not about my own secrets - perhaps I'm not brave enough for that. 'The Wall' and 'Lady Chatterley loves' are about other people's secrets - fictional characters in these cases - and about state secret-gathering in one case, and keeping ones self a secret in the other.

I haven't yet had a chance to explore the contents thoroughly yet, but I'm looking forward to it. There are lots of names I know among the contributors, including Raewyn Alexander,Iain Britton, Janet Charman, Jennifer Compton, Robin Fry, Jessica Le Bas, Helen Lowe, Michael Morrissey, Mark Pirie, Jenny Powell, Elizabeth Smither, Laura Solomon, Michael Steven and Sue Wootton, and I'm expecting to make some new discoveries too.

Side Stream deadline tomorrow

And the last of my many short posts of the weekend - Side Stream poetry zine has a deadline for its next issue tomorrow (15 June 2009). For more info, check out the submission guidelines on their MySpace page.

NZ Poetry Society AGM and free poetry workshop

Monday 15 June, 7.30 pm
The Thistle Inn, 3 Mulgrave Street, Wellington

There will be no guest poet this month. The Annual General Meeting will take place, followed by a mini-workshop for those attending the AGM. This will be run by the National Coordinator, Laurice Gilbert, and there will be no charge (but you have to attend the AGM to qualify).

broadsheet 3 out now

The latest issue of broadsheet is out now. broadsheet is edited by Mark Pirie, and comes out twice a year. (It's invitation only, at this stage.)

This issue is kind of dedicated to US poet Robert Creeley. It includes a poem by Mark dedicated to Robert Creeley, and an interview/conversation between Creeley and poet and Poetry NZ editor Alistair Paterson from 1982. Creeley visited NZ in 1976, at the invitation of Paterson, and seemed to have had a significant influence on NZ poetry of the time. (Creeley also picked up his 3rd wife at a reading in Dunedin, so it was a fruitful trip for him too.) It's really interesting 'overhearing' Creeley and Paterson talk about poetry at the time, especially New Zealand poetry.

Another highlight of this issue for me was Harvey Molloy's poem 'Ghosts of St James', which I very much admired when I heard him read it last year. It's right up my alley - though almost too creepy for me! It tells the stories of two of the St James theatre's resident ghosts, Yuri and the woman in red.

I also particularly enjoyed two poems by Paul Wolffram, who was one of the other original JAAMers from back in 1995 when Mark kicked the whole thing off. I haven't seen that much of Paul lately - he spent a while hanging about in Papua New Guinea as an ethnomusciologist, and these two poems are about that time.

And there are two poems from Jenny Powell's upcoming book Viet Nam: A Poem Journey which I'm looking forward to the publication of sometime this year. I've been lucky enough to have a sneak preview.

You can also enjoy poems by Tim Jones, Barbara Strang, John O'Connor, James Norcliffe, Peter Olds, Rachel McAlpine, Riemke Ensing, Will Leadbeater, Laura Solomon, Richard Langston and Wanjiku Kiarie.

broadsheet 2 was a memorial issue for poet Louis Johnson, marking 20 years since his death. I had a couple of poems in that issue, along with Peter Bland, Marilyn Duckworth, Kevin Ireland, Louis Johnson, Miranda Johnson, Harvey McQueen, Vincent O'Sullivan, Alistair Paterson, Harry Ricketts, Martyn Sanderson, Nelson Wattie and F W N Wright. I wrote about broadsheet 1 back in June of last year.

You can find out more about it, including subscription info and even pdfs of each issue, on its page on the HeadworX site.

Cultured types needed to help with geographic references

My friend Quincey has sent out a 'help me' call to the cultured folks of the interweb.

For some reason known only to herself, and anyone else she's told, she need recommendations of films, books, songs, poems, works of art of almost any form set in one of the following locations:

- Venice
- Athens
- The Greek Islands
- Vienna
- Salzburg
- Geneva
- El Camino de Compostela
- Barcelona.

Now's your chance to show off your wide knowledge of art and literature. Go visit her and leave your recommendations: http://ktrmc.blogspot.com/2009/06/vignette-6-help-me-you-hip-savvy-clued.html.

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.

What makes good book launches and poetry readings

Tim Jones has a really good post about book launches and poetry readings over on his blog. There's also quite a bit of discussion going on in the comments. I've written a blog-post-length comment about my thoughts on book launches and poetry readings, which I'll include below as well, but it's worth checking out the post and joining the discussion if you're interested in this sort of thing.

My comment:

Great post Tim! Over the last few years, as I’ve done more launches (both my own and for Seraph Press books) and more readings, I’ve been thinking about both these things quite a bit.

I agree about launches – it’s more important to have your friends, family, work colleagues, people who care about you there than the local literati. It’s nice to have them there too of course, but the best launches I’ve been to/had have been ones that are warm, supportive and enthusiastic.

Pick a venue that will be friendly, and also if it has things for people to look at if they aren’t mingling, all the better! I’ve tended to go for galleries rather than bookshops for my launches – partly out of cost – a Unity launch doesn’t come cheap, because they have to actually pay their staff, while my books-table man (Sean) comes for free. Also, I do the catering – usually with the help of my mum, and other people. I quite enjoy the home-madeness of that.

I like to give the launch goers a discount on the recommended retail price, so they feel like it’s worth buying the book on the night. Sometimes at book launches there are other incentives – at one of Harvey McQueen’s launches everyone who bought the book got a kowhai seedling (which has now grown into quite a shrub).

In terms of readings, I could write a whole post about that, which this comment is fast turning into!

Basically, I think you should try to make it easy for people to listen to you. I usually start with something that I think will grab people – usually something with a bit of humour, and not too long. Then I’ll move on to more serious darker or longer poems. Quite often I’ll bring it back up again at the end. Readings, like books, have a kind of a rhythm.

I’m also not of the monotone reading school – that can work for some people, but I mostly find it boring and hard to listen to. I try to vary my tone and speed and loudness (as appropriate:)).

And I agree with Harvey’s comments about talking to audience. I saw musician Amanda Palmer perform earlier this year, and she was amazing. What was so good about her though wasn’t just that I enjoyed her music, it was that she connected with the audience. She wasn’t just performing to a bunch of people she’d rather ignore, as many people do, she was trying to engage with this bunch of people. As a shy person, that can be quite hard, but I think it’s rewarding for everyone.

Phew!

Voyagers on the radio

Tomorrow (Sunday 7 June) Mark Pirie and Tim Jones, the editors of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand (an anthology I’m delighted to be in) are going to be interviewed on National Radio by Lynn Freeman.

They’re scheduled to be on between 2.30 and 3. If you don't catch them them, you can listen to them later at you leisure on the really rather fabulous Radio NZ site.

JAAM 27 update

I've just posted an update about where we're at with JAAM 27 on the JAAM website: http://jaam.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/jaam-27-update/

Ingrid's going great guns, and the selection/replying part of the process is nearly over.

Next Seraph Press book – Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima, by Vana Manasiadis

Today is one of the few days I appreciate the monarchy. Thanks for the holiday, it’s been lovely.

I haven’t left the house today, not even to poke my nose out into the courtyard. But it’s been a lovely, productive day, answering emails, reading things I need to read, doing some JAAM admin things, and typesetting. I love typesetting. It’s the point where the manuscript becomes a book, almost.

The book I’m typesetting is Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima by Vana Manasiadis – the next proper book Seraph Press (that's me, basically) is going to publish (though I’m likely to be doing at least one chapbook before then – more on that soon). It will be published by the end of this year.

I’ve loved Ithaca, Vana’s debut collection of poetry, since I first read it in its early form several years ago, and it’s been exciting seeing it develop. Working on it again today I got really excited. I love this book! I love every book I’ve published – I have to really love them before, which is one of the reasons I publish so little. (The other reason is because it’s quite time consuming, and I have a lot of other competing things to consume my time.) But I’m enjoying how beautiful this book is, how special it is. Even the little negotiations – whether to have a glossary (no), a contents page (not where you’d expect it) – have been fun.

Like poetry collections I especially enjoy, Ithaca Island Bay Leaves is a collection that works as a whole. It weaves, it resonates, it has threads that run throughout it, threads that don’t. I’ve always seen it as being about being here and not here – being in New Zealand and Greece at the same time, being in the past and the present at the same time: ‘my cartography of there and not there’ , being between things: ‘the ocean is what I’m standing in – one tiptoe on the Pacific rim / and one not.’ It’s about Vana’s grandmother, and then about her mother, it’s people with people from Greek mythology hanging out in Wellington. It’s funny, and sometimes it’s so moving that it makes me cry.

And now I’ve applied for an ISBN, I’ve mocked up a cover (still need to request permission to use a very cool lithograph as the cover image, but I’ll show you it when it’s sorted – it’s going to be gorgeous!), and we’re well on our way to publication.

New video poem by Meliors Simms

I had another new addition to my New Zealand Poets on Video YouTube group – http://www.youtube.com/group/NZPoetsonvideo – last week: 'Daintree Calling' by Meliors Simms. I've duly added it to my still-rather-undeveloped directory of New Zealand Poets on Video (http://nzpoetsonvideo.wordpress.com/), and am challenged to get myself going on a new video too.

I have one pretty much ready - though this one was a bit easier than my last effort, as this is just a video of an impromptu performance of a poem by Scott Kendrick at his birthday party – where normally people would yell 'speech!', they yelled 'poem!', and after only a few moments of hesitation, he performed 'Battle Rattle Sally', from Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete. All I really had to do was add titles. So expect this to be up on YouTube soon.

The city in New Zealand literature – civilisation or cesspit?

I’ve been a bit silent lately, due to various kinds of busy-ness, but I have several things to blog about, which I hope to do during this long weekend. But in the meantime, perhaps you literary folks can help me out – well not be exactly, but one of my work colleagues.

Ben is writing an entry on images of city life in art and so forth, and would like some help with how the city is represented in New Zealand literature. He also doesn’t have time to read lots of novels, so we’re hoping literate types can all put their brains together and see if we can come up with something.

Check out my blog post on my work blog – http://blog.teara.govt.nz/2009/05/28/the-city-in-new-zealand-literature-can-you-help/ – and please do leave a comment if you have any ideas.

Thanks in advance!

Poetry readings in Welly: Chris Price and Glenn Colquhoun

I've taken the day off work to catch up with myself. I'd envisaged sitting here in the sun tapping away at the computer, but instead the weather is windy and rainy and vile. I suspect I may not leave the house ALL DAY. Oh goodness, now there's thunder and lightning, and it's raining so hard that I can't see the city. I can barely see across the valley. And the gutter seems to be overflowing. Sigh.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about. It's about two poetry events to attend next week, if you're in Wellington.

Poetry Society: Chris Price

Monday 18 May, 7.30pm
The Thistle Inn, 3 Mulgrave St
Guest Poet: Chris Price, poet, editor, and educator at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Chris's latest poetry collection, the blind singer, will be available for purchase. The meeting will begin with an open mic. Entry $2.

Writers Read Series: Glenn Colquhoun

Thursday 21 May, 6-7 pm, followed by Q & A and refreshments.
5D16 (Wellington Campus, Massey University, Wallace Street, Entrance A, Block 5, Level D, Room 16).

Poetry reading by Glenn Colquhoun, doctor, children's writer, and best-selling poet. This is a free community event open to students, staff and the general public. We welcome your friends and colleagues. RSVP: d.puna@massey.ac.nz

Oh yay, the city has reappeared. It looks rather grey and washed-out though. My courtyard has also ceased flooding. Hurrah.

First new poetry video on my YouTube group - NZ Poets on Video

Yay! Someone else has added the first (other than my effort) video to my YouTube NZ Poets on Video group - thanks Meliors.

You can view her video, 'Non Linear Time', on YouTube, or on her blog. You can tell from the visuals that she's a book artist.

Now I just need to update my New Zealand Poets on Video directory! I have several more things I need to add. Who needs a job eh? I could totally fill my days without one. Oh yes, that's why I need a job . . .

Poetry adventures in Palmerston North

The major reason my week was a bit crazy was because, as I said last week, I was guest poet Stand Up Poetry in Palmerston North. Very exciting.

We made it into a bit of a road trip – I went to work for a couple of hours in the morning and then headed up the coast. I’d planned what I was going to read beforehand, but changed my mind about a few things on my way up, when I ran them through with Sean between Levin and Palmerston North. One of the ones I decided to sub in was ‘Vital melancholy’, which turned out to be the right thing as when Helen Lendorf was introducing me, she read out the end of that poem. So people got to hear the whole thing.

Anyway, after perusing the excellent stock at the nearby Bruce McKenzie bookshop, we popped in to the library – where Stand Up Poetry is held, and met Helen, who I’d previously only met online, and several very lovely librarians. We also managed to get the datashow working, which meant I was able to use PowerPoint slides to accompany a couple of poems at the end.

We wandered off for sushi and when we came back there were dozens of people already there and listening to a live two-man band (a New Zealand music month event). And all the open-reading spots had long gone – they restrict these so the event doesn’t go on all night. They’d stretched it to 13, from their usual 10, and they were all filled up quarter of an hour before the event started.

The open reading was lovely – there were so many different kinds of poets and people, and at different stages of their writing careers. There were young students, young actors, older comic poets, older farmer poets, serious, funny, rhyming, free verse. It seemed much more ‘grass-roots’ than the Wellington poetry scene. And it was all held together by Helen’s encouragement and organisation. A really good atmosphere. Two particular highlights were a poet called Felicity – who spoke quite quietly, but whose poetry was gorgeous – and Glenn Colquhoun. It was really cool that Glenn, who has a three-month residency in Palmerston North, joined in the open-mike. He’s an amazing performer – go and see him if you get the chance.

After a short break, where coffee and cookies were available, Helen introduced me and it was my turn. I stuck mainly to poems from My Iron Spine, which for some reason seemed the right thing to do. I was really pleased that the audience got the humour in my poems – they laughed in (most of) the right places, and afterwards one young woman who was there said she like how my poems swung from funny to sad like a pendulum.

I did my last two poems – ‘Elizabeth Siddal’ and ‘Artemisia Gentileschi’ – accompanied by PowerPoint slides of appropriate images. With Elizabeth Siddal I was able to show some of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings and drawings that had inspired me when I wrote the poem. ‘Artemisia Gentileschi’ is even more closely tied to images – the poem is basically (my version of) the artist talking about some of her paintings, while really talking about her life and experiences. It’s much easier to see the images they’re right there in front of you, rather than trying to imagine them, and people seemed to really enjoy it.

Have any of you ever used visuals when performing your poems? Because it went down so well, I think I’ll try it again. I’ve been asked to read at the October meeting of the Poetry Society (yay!), so if I can get some equipment together I’ll try to use some visual, or maybe even audio-visual aids.

I know of several other Wellington (or nearby) poets who are heading up to Palmy for Stand Up Poetry – you’ll enjoy it and they’ll make you very welcome.

My Iron Spine reviewed, me interviewed in Poetry Society mag

It's been a bit of a crazy week - more on that in my next post - and I've been wanting to write this post since last weekend, but hadn't found the time.

At the end of last week my pdf of the New Zealand Poetry Society magazine, A Fine Line, arrived in my inbox, with not only a review of My Iron Spine, but also an interview with me.

First of all, the review. It was by Anne Harré, who also did the interview. She seems to like it - says it's 'an intriguing combination of poems'. She's a bigger fan of the first, autobiographical, section than the rest, which many people seem to (whereas most of my favs are in the second section). She says it 'lilts along' and that 'the images are, at times, sublimely beautiful, yet manage to convey a deceptive naivety. '

Ultimately the poems in this first section work because they are personal. It is the personal voice of the poet that cuts through deceptively simple narrative and grabs the reader’s attention through to the end.

She says of the second and third sections: 'While entertaining, they don’t hold the same sway as the first section', but likes 'Emily Dickinson'.

All in all, it's pretty positive: 'Overall, though, this is an accomplished collection. Rickerby has a strong poetic voice that draws the reader in and is well worth a read and a re-read.'

The interview, which was conducted via email, is the first in a series Anne is going to do with poets in the magazine. She sent me the questions, and I found I had to think a lot about (most of) them to come up with my answers - especially 'What is the point of poetry in the 21st century?' (What do you think? Let me know.) A really interesting exercise.

Anyway, Anne has very kindly said I can re-publish the interview here, so here it is.

Much of your work reads as deeply personal, deeply felt. How important to you is the personal, and how do you deal with the vulnerability that poetry provides?

I find it kind of curious that people respond to my work in that way. Some of the poems in My Iron Spine are deeply personal, but most of them are biographical – about other people. Sometimes poems that are autobiographical are not that personal, and sometimes poems that seem autobiographical aren’t. The more personal ones, I usually try to layer with other things, so they maybe don’t seem so personal. And the poems I write that are really personal haven’t seen the light of day.

This personal–impersonal thing in poetry is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’m pulled in both directions. Part of me wants to write impersonal, opaque, imagistic poetry, and the other part of me wants to write about my personal feelings and experience and say things that we’re normally too afraid to say. Sometimes poems become really universal by being very personal and specific – I’m not expecting people to be interested in me so much as find something that means something to them in my work.

Which writers inspire you, and why?

I’m inspired by heaps of different kinds of writers in different ways. In terms of poets, some I’ve recently been inspired by are Eliot for his gorgeous opacity and Sharon Olds for her honesty. Anne Carson and Anne Sexton have been inspirational in recent years. I’m also inspired by the poets and writers I know, as I see them change and grow and reach. I’m inspired by non-fiction a lot too, and lately I’ve been inspired by Alain de Botton’s combination of philosophy and the personal. Lots of novelists have inspired me – Jeanette Winterson and Margaret Atwood probably being the two major ones.

Do you ‘wait for the muse’ or are you one of those disciplined writers that try to write something every day?

I guess I’m somewhere in between. I’d love to write every day, and I did during a halcyon period when I wasn’t working. But in these days of full-time employment, that isn’t working for me. I do need to make some time and space though, or the muse doesn’t visit very often. I’ve found that going somewhere like a café, where I won’t get distracted by home things, and just thinking and reading and writing rubbish in my journal often creates a space where poetry can come.

Robert Frost wrote that “to be a poet is a condition, not a profession”, so for you is it one or the other (or a bit of both)?

It’s definitely not a profession for me – sounds too much like I expect money from it. It’s more like a condition or a vocation. For me it’s something I do, or something I am, depending on how I’m feeling about it and how much I’ve written lately.

What’s the point of poetry in the 21st century?

This is a difficult one to articulate. I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about the value of art, and I really do believe it is important, even in these days when we tend to value the utilitarian and the economic. And, while I think that art does have utilitarian and economic value, I think it’s really important to have art as both creators and audience; to make us think about things differently, to give our lives meaning, beauty and something bigger than ourselves.

For many people, poetry in particular maybe isn’t that relevant; but for me it is. The value and difference of poetry is its intensity of language. Probably more than any other art form, it works with metaphor and subtext – you say something, but you’re also saying something else. It might mean it enables you to say or explore something you might not have otherwise been able to. Or, that you’re saying multiple things at one time – for example, my poem ‘Winters of discontent’ is partly about the classical myth of Persephone and Demeter, partly about my own experiences of depression, partly the archetype of dying in winter and regenerating in spring, partly about the reader’s experiences of sadness or loss, and so on…

What is the appeal of live readings (either as an audience member, or performer)?

Hearing a poem read is very different to reading it on the page. I enjoy both and, although a few poets are quite bad at reading their work and it’s better to read it on the page, hearing the poem read can bring words to life in a different way. It’s interesting hearing the rhythm and pace the poet envisaged for the poem.

In recent years I’ve come to really enjoy reading my work, probably as I’ve gotten better at it – though, being a shy person, I can still get a bit nervous. I enjoy it when you get a good response from the audience – turns out I quite like instant gratification, like everyone else. It’s also helpful when it shows you that something isn’t really working, or that something works better on the page.

Do you prefer crunchy peanut butter or smooth?

Definitely crunchy, and only with honey.

What are you working on at present?

The poetry project I’m working on is what I hope will become my next book, Cinema. They’re poems that are loosely inspired by film – some specific films, some film technique, some film-related experience. And I’m still writing some more random poetry.

Inspired by the film stuff, I’m also starting to video poets reading their poetry, with the aim of sticking them on the internet and making them available to people. I’ve got several publishing projects on the way, including a new Seraph Press book (Ithaca Island Bay Leaves by Vana Manasiadis), and JAAM. And I’m blogging – http://www.wingedink.blogspot.com/ – and I’ve recently joined Twitter. As well as twittering inane things about what I’m up to, I also ‘tweet’ short extracts from poems I like.

Carol Ann Duffy is new UK poet laureate

I expect you've already heard if you're a poetry sort of person, but Carol Ann Duffy has been appointed as the new poet laureate in the UK. This is especially historic because she's the first woman, and this is part of the reason she accepted the post, because it was about time.

Carol Ann Duffy is a poet lots of people I respect really like, and whom I've never quite spent the time with but always meant to. I'm sure this will be a spur for me, and many other people, to check out her books.

There's heaps more out there on the net about this, but this Guardian interview is quite thorough: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/03/carol-ann-duffy-poet-laureate

Cool things, part 2: Guest poeting in Palmerston North

I'm lucky enough to be the guest poet at Stand Up Poetry in Palmerston North next week. If you're up that way, you can catch me at:

Palmerston North City Library
Sound and Vision Centre (ground floor)
Wednesday 6 May 2009
7.00 pm

Stand Up Poetry begins with an open mike reading - people are invited to bring 5 minutes of their best work. Then I get to read for 20-30 minutes. If we can figure out the technology, I'm also planning to do a couple of poems accompanied by images on a screen - I have some that are very inspired by artwork, and I've always thought it would be cool to try to present them together.

I haven't been to Palmerston North in a little while. I used to go there all the time because my grandparents lived there - my father had grown up there. Don't have many relatives left there now though.

Ok, now just have to figure out exactly what I'm going to read.