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.

That Chekhov, he was a smart guy

Chekhov to his editor: "You are confusing two notions, the solution of a problem and the correct posing of the question. Only the second is essential for the artist."

Journey poems, and revisiting past self

Last Tuesday, while having a late lunch, I was rereading Martin Edmond’s chapbook, The Big O Revisited (Soapbox Press, 2008). The ‘Big O’ of the title is both Roy Orbison and Ohakune, the town where Edmond did his early growing up.

The poems in the book are about a trip he took around New Zealand when working on his book about artist Philip Clairmont. The poems are discrete – they work individually – but together they make up a journey.

I was thinking about this, and thinking that sometime I’d like to write a series of poems about a journey. Then I thought perhaps we’d better go on a trip soon, so I could write about it. But then I thought, why don’t I write about a journey I’ve already taken. And I knew immediately exactly which trip that would be.

So, by the end of lunchtime I’d already written several sections/poems for a poem/series of poems about a road trip around Northland Sean and I did a few years ago over New Year. It was a short but intense holiday – we only stayed in one place (Paihia) for more than one night, we drove for a lot of every day, and I visited Cape Reinga for the first (and, so far, only) time. (If you've never been there, it's way cooler than suggested in the pic to the left. But this is a Wikipedia Commons pic, and I couldn't be bothered finding another one I could use to brighten the blogpost)

So, later at night last Tuesday, after an evening of not doing too much (so far as I can remember), I sat down to write some more. By 11 o’clock I’d written 17 pages in my notebook, and decided that I’d written my first draft. I think that’s the most poetry I’ve ever written in one day. (Thanks Martin Edmond!)

That’s not to say it’s any good, but I think it will be a good basis for something. I haven’t read it over yet, but I think when I rework it I’ll want to pare it back a little, draw some of it out, and add more tension and subtext.

In search of the latter, I decided to have a hunt through my journals from that time (2003/2004). I found I hadn’t actually written anything during the trip – except the date and time of when we were at Cape Reinga (1/1/2004, 7.15 am), which we held up when taking photos of each other.

I also found that immediately after the trip I’d started trying to write a poem about it, but I’d abandoned it. There were some bits I really like now, and will be able to use in my new poems (I think I’ve just accepted that it’s a sequence), but I think it must have just been too soon for me to reflect on my experiences – too soon to mythologise it perhaps.

So I read in my journals about a year on either side of the trip – which didn’t actually take that long because I wasn’t writing all that much then. But I gained some really insights into what was going on with me then, what was going on with Sean, what was going on with us, what was bothering me, and how I was feeling – things I hope to incorporate subtly into the poems.

But it was also really good to see how far I’d come, how far we’d come. I was often unhappy, I was getting sick of my job, I was finding it hard to write and when I did I was usually disappointed with what I’d written. Looking back, I was actually writing mostly things I like now, and in fact that period was the beginning of what became My Iron Spine – I wrote more of it before I took time off work (2005) than I thought.

How quickly we forget our old selves – it’s good to be reminded sometimes. I’m glad I have this record (even though it often shows me to be a bit shallow and whiny). And now that I’m about to embark on typing up and reworking what I’m tentatively calling ‘Heading North’ (perhaps it will become a chapbook!), I’m hoping the journals will help me bridge then and now, the 2003/2004 me with the 2009 me.

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...