Every month or so, this blog turns into a chat show: I interview an author, usually but not always a New Zealand author, about their inspirations for writing, their current work, the genre(s) they work in, or whatever else seems relevant and appropriate.
I will be posting my first interview for 2010 before too much longer, but in the meantime, here are the interviews I did in 2009. I think they make quite a worthwhile collection.
March
An Interview With Sue Emms
April
An Interview With Trevor Reeves
May
An Interview With Iain Britton
An Interview With Julie Czerneda
June
An Interview With Lyn McConchie
July
An Interview With Mary Cresswell
An Interview With Joanna Preston
August
An Interview With Tim Upperton
September
An Interview With Frankie McMillan
November
Under Government And Restraint: An Interview With David Howard
December
An Interview With Sally McLennan
An Interview With Nalini Singh
If you'd like to read yet more author interviews, this post contains a linked list of my 2008 interviews.
24 January 2010
Chat Show
20 January 2011
I Only Read It For The Interviews
One of my tasks this week is to draft the questions for my first blog interview of 2011, with poet Owen Bullock. I've been conducting author interviews since 2008, and here is how you can access them:
Links to 2008 interviews (third item in the post)
Links to 2009 interviews
Links to 2010 interviews
February
An Interview With Bryan Walpert
March
An Interview With Robert McLean
April
An Interview With Vana Manasiadis
May
An Interview With D J Connell
June
An Interview With Penelope Todd
July
An Interview With Chris Bell
An Interview With Kathleen Jones
September
An Interview With Renee Liang
October
An Interview With Kerry Popplewell
November
An Interview With Douglas Van Belle
14 January 2014
The 53 Books I Read In 2013: Part 2: 27-53
And now, on with the countdown!
27. Wolf at the Door by J. Damask - novel/urban fantasy (4/5)
Joyce Chng (J. Damask) is a Singaporean author whose work features, among other places, in The Apex Book of World SF 2. I was so impressed by her story in that anthology that I bought this novel, about werewolves of Chinese descent living in Singapore, and I enjoyed it.
The great strength of this novel is the way the author interleaves the social dynamics of pack and family, as both family members and outsiders threaten to disrupt the lives of the protagonist and those near and dear to her.
There is a quite complex sequence of flashbacks embedded in this comparatively short novel, and those didn't work so well for me - the story they told was interesting, but in the limited space available, I found it too fragmentary. Still, that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the main story, which is well characterised and well told.
28. Old Hat by Mark Pirie - poetry/collection (3.5/5)
This is a collection of triolets - 8 line poems with several lines repeated, based on medieval French poetry. Mark Pirie is a fine poet, but this is a very restrictive form, and I found that the limitations of the form limited my interest in many of the poems here - still, despite that, there are some fine poems in this collection.
29. Let me be Frank by Sarah Laing - cartoons/graphic memoir (4/5)
"Let me be Frank" is Sarah Laing's memoir of her five months as the Frank Sargeson Fellow, a literary fellowship in Auckland. It's an entertaining book that shows off her skills as both an author and a graphic artist, though ironically, one of the themes of the book is that having well-developed skills in both these areas makes it hard for her to be taken as seriously as she would like in either.
If that makes the book sound like an exercise in whinging, it isn't - instead, it's a well-told (and drawn) tale of balancing literary life and motherhood.
30. Skirting The Boundary by Isabelle Duncan - nonfiction/history of women's cricket (4/5)
If you are interested in women's sport in general or women's cricket in particular, then I recommend this book - my only reservation being that it is strongly focused on women's cricket in England and to a lesser extent Australia, and goes into a lot less depth about other countries. But it's still a very welcome entry in a sparsely populated field.
31. The Linen Way by Melissa Green - nonfiction+poetry/memoir (4.5/5)
This is a very moving personal memoir by a poet whose work drew the praise and admiration of such great poets as Derek Walcott and Joseth Brodsky, yet who has fought a decades-long battle against mental illness and the impulse to suicide.
"The Linen Way" quotes liberally from Melissa Green's debut collection The Squanicook Eclogues, a multiple prize-winner on its publication in 1987 that was republished in 2010, and also features poetry by Brodsky and Rilke.
This is another excellent ebook from New Zealand's Rosa Mira Books, whose adventurous publishing programme includes writers from the US and Argentina as well as New Zealand.
Highly recommended to everyone, and even more highly recommended if you love poetry.
32-36 comprise the five volumes published so far of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin.
32. A Game of Thrones - 4.5/5
33. A Clash of Kings - 4/5
34. A Storm of Swords - 4.5/5
35. A Feast for Crows- 3.5/5
36. A Dance with Dragons - 4/5
High (but most certainly not heroic!) fantasy novels, Books 1-5 of the projected seven volumes of "A Song of Ice and Fire", which I discussed on this blog as follows:
Maybe Modern Life Isn't Rubbish After All: George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire":
http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/maybe-modern-life-isnt-rubbish-after...
37. Iceland Saga by Magnus Magnusson - nonfiction/history (4.5/5)
A very interesting and enjoyable telling of Iceland's history through the medium of the great Icelandic Sagas. While this approach means some aspects of Iceland's history are downplayed - for instance, I'd love to have read more about how volcanic eruptions and climatic change have affected Iceland since its settlement - I still found this book fascinating - and as a bonus, Icelandic place names now make a whole lot more sense to me.
38. The Guild by Felicia Day - graphic novel (4.5/5)
This was a re-read - something light between finishing volume n of "A Song of Ice and Fire" and starting volume n+1. As I did the first time I read it, I enjoyed this origin story for the web series - it's well told, well drawn, and often poignant as well as funny.
39. The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling - fiction/novel (4/5)
Suppose J.K. Rowling had written a book about a stultifying middle-class family who kept a young wizard under the stairs - and then decided to throw away the bit about the young wizard, and write about the middle-class family and their equally insufferable social milieu instead. If she had, "The Casual Vacancy" is the book that would have resulted. It's a very well-written and well-observed novel about the English bourgeoisie at their worst: narrow-minded, self-serving and intolerant. It is a fine novel, but far from an enjoyable one.
Another fine collection of New Zealand speculative fiction stories from the same team that edited and produced "A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction". My story "Rescuing the Airmen" is included in this collection.
A fine debut collection of short stories by Wellington (NZ) author Latika Vasil - a collection whose power is cumulative, and derives from the author's understated, observational style. You can read my interview with Latika Vasil here:
http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/an-interview-with-latika-vasil.html
This is the second collection by Wellington, NZ poet Saradha Koirala, whom I admire very much for her word choices, which always seem to be exactly right. I enjoyed her first collection, Wit of the Staircase, and I think "Tear Water Tea" is better yet - more varied in style, more sophisticated in delivery. It's also beautifully illustrated.
You can see a sample poem, which I think captures Saradha's style well, here:
http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.co.nz/2013/08/tuesday-poem-secret-i-dont-mind-you....
and read my interview with Saradha here:
http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.co.nz/2013/08/an-interview-with-saradha-koirala.ht...
This autobiography of a well-known New Zealand artist covers the first half of her life. It's full of interesting material - she grew up in Timaru, not far upcountry from Janet Frame's Oamaru, and readers familiar with Janet Frame's work and life may find a number of echoes here - but Fahey doesn't have Frame's facility with narrative, and the telling of her story is so jumpy that it's often hard to work out who is doing what with whom where. Still, it's worth seeing past the disjointed narrative for the picture this book paints of growing up Irish Catholic in mid-20th Century New Zealand.
I like Edith Wharton's writing very much, and this novel has many of her strengths, but I struggled with it because of Edith Wharton's relentless snobbery towards her main character, Undine Spragg, a loathsome and predatory specimen of the "nouveau riche" who preys on and ingratiates herself into classy but faded old-money New York society.
Edith Wharton directs (or at least strongly nudges) the reader to hate Unidine and take the side of her victims, but the old rich of New York are no better than the nouveau riche in my view: their old money ultimately derives from expropriating Native American land, so why should I sympathise with them?
Thus, although Undine is most certainly far from likable, I found myself with a sneaking admiration for her, and felt that, portrayed by another author with a broader range of human sympathies, she could have emerged as a heroic, or at least anti-heroic, character. I'll fight you for her, Edith!
It's taken a long time for Wellington poet Maria McMillan's first collection to appear, but the wait has been worth it: this collection, another beautiful job of production from poet and publisher Helen Rickerby's Seraph Press, is a good showcase for Maria's poetry and is well worth reading. You can see a sample poem from the collection here:
http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.co.nz/2013/08/tuesday-poem-ghosts-by-maria-mcmilla...
This is Bill Bryson's memoir of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950s and early 1960s. I'd classify this as minor Bryson: it's always interesting, occasionally very funny, but doesn't reach the heights of his best books - perhaps because his childhood was simply too happy and, mostly, too uneventful to provide enough material for a consistently interesting book.
I've reviewed this book for Landfall Review Online, so I'll wait until that review appears before saying more here.
I'm re-reading the Divine Comedy (in the translation by Mark Musa) for the first time in a number of years. From memory, this is the third time I've read it, and it remains as wonderful as ever - this time, though, I'm dawdling rather than hurrying through it, and as a result I'm paying more attention to the poetry itself - and the excellent blank-verse translation by Mark Musa. What a book!
Bill Bruford came to fame early as the drummer for progressive rock band Yes before leaving to strike out into more challenging musical territory with King Crimson and then various jazz and jazz-rock groups.
This is a bittersweet autobiography, as it was written at the point at which Bruford had decided, after forty year's active service, to retire from being a professional musician. Bruford is very much a thinking drummer, and this is a thoughtful autobiography. Much of what he says about the problems of maintaining confidence in one's abilities, and of dealing with a rapidly evolving (devolving?) industry, I could identify with from my own (much more modest) writing career.
There is at times a slight whiff of "you young people today don't know how lucky you are" at which I suspect the younger Bruford would have taken umbrage - but this is still well worth reading for those interested in Bruford's musical career or in what it's like to try to maintain a meaningful career in the creative arts.
Rugby is New Zealand's national sport, but it hasn't been the subject of very much New Zealand poetry. This chapbook is full of rugby poems, all of them interesting, and some of which I enjoyed very much. I'm going to post a review and, I hope, a sample poem on my blog, and will link to that from here.
PS: Here's a triolet by Mark - about music rather than rugby.
I enjoyed this collection - mostly nature poetry, including some fine poems about Banks Peninsula near the author's home city of Christchurch, but it also includes poems about such diverse subjects as John Clare and Katherine Mansfield.
In 2012, I featured Jan Hutchison on my blog: You can find an interview with Jan here:
http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/an-interview-with-jan-hutchison.html
and the title poem of the collection here:
http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/tuesday-poem-happiness-of-rain-by-ja...
In the past few years, my long-standing interest in Antarctica has broadened to encompass the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions as well. I've been reading about Iceland recently - and now I've moved south-east, about halfway between Iceland and the Shetlands, to the Faroe Islands, a remote but rather wonderful collection of islands settled a couple of hundred years before Iceland. This book is a very interesting guide to the history, culture and geography of the Faroes. Recommended if you're interested in travel (including armchair travel) or geography.
I see that my second book for 2013 was Wolves Eat Dogs, in my view the best of Martin Cruz Smith's series about ex-Soviet detective Arkady Renko - and Havana Bay is the one book in the series I hadn't previously read. While it doesn't quite match Wolves Eat Dogs, it's still very good.
Renko is a fish out of water anywhere outside Moscow, but doubly or triply so when plonked down in Havana, where (as usual) he gets beaten up, starts a new relationship, and solves a complex crime. There are times the travelogue aspect takes over a little too much, and (unusually for me) I figured out what was going on well before the end which reduced the tension somewhat, but on the plus side Renko's Cuban partner-in-crimesolving is a very well-realised character who could shoulder a series in her own right. Recommended.
17 December 2011
At Home He's A Blog Tourist
Latest Blog Tour Interview
Wellington poet and author Janis Freegard asks me about how Men Briefly Explained fits with my previous books, and what I'm working on at the moment: Interview with Tim Jones.
Previous Interviews
12 December 2011: Wellington poet and publisher Helen Rickerby asks me about the development of Men Briefly Explained as a collection, and I revealed that it started life as a never-published chapbook called "Guy Thing": Tuesday Poet: An interview with Tim Jones about Men Briefly Explained.
12 December 2011: Christchurch fantasy author, poet and book blogger Helen Lowe talks with me about whether men buy poetry, the identity of those mysterious men who write poetry, and what relationship there is between poetry and speculative fiction. Look through the comments for a giveaway I'm offering! A Magical Mystery Tour Through “Men Briefly Explained” — & A Few Side Topics — With Author Tim Jones
7 December 2011: Auckland poet, graphic poet, short story writer and novelist Rachel Fenton asks me to dance: Tim to dance: Rachel Fenton interviews Tim Jones.
6 December 2011: Wellington poet Harvey Molloy talks with me about men, mid-life crises, art and politics: An Interview with Tim Jones.
1 December 2011: Dunedin poet Kay McKenzie Cooke talks with me about Southland, prose poems, and the fabled Gore High School jersey: New Zealand Writer Tim Jones Explains.
27 November 2011: Canberra poet PS Cottier talk with me about hard work, whether the male sex has a future, and Swannis: Of Poems and Men: Interview with Tim Jones.
12 November 2009
Under Government and Restraint: An Interview With David Howard
UPDATE: An extended version of this interview will appear in the Journal of New Zealand Literature during the first quarter of 2010.After serving as a pyrotechnics supervisor for acts such as Metallica and Janet Jackson, David Howard retired to Purakanui in order to write. His collaboration with photographer Fiona Pardington, How To Occupy Our Selves, was published in 2003. A draft of the opening poem "There You Go" featured in Best New Zealand Poems 2002; the full text was set for mezzosoprano, narrator and piano trio by the Czech composer Marta Jirackova. "The Harrier Suite" appeared in both Best New Zealand Poems 2004 and The Word Went Round (2006).
In 2007 David worked with Brina Jez-Brezavscek on a sound installation, The Flax Heckler, in northern Slovenia. On 18 September 2009 soprano Judith Dodsworth premiered Johanna Selleck's setting of his lyric "Air, Water, Earth Meld" at Melba Hall in Melbourne; a recording is planned for release by Move Records later this year. David's texts for composers are collected in the limited edition S(t)et (Gumtree Press). His poetry has been translated into German, Italian, Slovene and Spanish.
David, I hope I'm not being unfair when I say that your profile as a poet is comparatively low within New Zealand, despite your impressive track record. On the other hand, you have worked extensively with overseas artists. Is the international aspect of your collaborative work a matter of choice, necessity, or a little of both?
Profile, which is periodically if irregularly the consequence of talent, is determined by third parties who are immovable objects before the irresistible force of authorial ego. I prefer pyrotechnics and production management to talking about words; my modest profile reflects my immodest choices.
Choice is, in part, the acceptance of necessity. I can't regret working with the All Blacks or touring with Metallica, so I can't regret the invitations that never came to present my poems – nor can I deny that I'd have enjoyed such invitations. Am I saying that the book world is like a classroom where the noisiest pupil gets the most attention? Only on Black Fridays – although a talent for self-promotion naturally turns heads and gets bums on seats. There's no conspiratorial mystery here. Despite my physical absence, I've enjoyed ten fifteen twenty years of respectful reviewing. It began with Kendrick Smithyman:
David Howard’s poems are accompanied by photographs from Paul Swadel. These are formidably sophisticated. They may make you doubt that you are intellectually up to them. The poems may have a similar effect at first, certainly a sense of shock, an uncommon astonishment at the extraordinary poise which is part and parcel of these usually quite short pieces. They are admirably judged, they last long enough to get their various effects but not longer. A certain authority matched with an appreciable intelligence, a body of information used with taste guides the reader into puzzling and on to delight, under government and restraint . . . Howard’s collection comes from 10 years, 1980-1990, his twenties. It should be exciting seeing what he produces in his 30s. (Auckland Sunday Star, 30 June 1991)
And it continues with the younger generation of Richard Reeve, Anna Livesey, Emma Neale and Kapka Kassabova:
David Howard is a mystery figure on our poetic landscape. Sparse in his output, virtually invisible to the media and involved for the last few years in staging entertainment shows around the world as a pyrotechnician, he belongs to an endangered species: the truly independent artist who remains quietly active throughout the years… In poems like ‘Care of the Commanding Officer’, ‘Cain’, ‘On the Eighth Day’, ‘Dove’, ‘To Cavafy’, to name but a few, the cerebral blends with the visceral with a brilliant lightness of touch. (New Zealand Listener, 2-8 Feb 2002)
So it’s valorizing crap to quote Hofmannsthal, ‘Die andern wollten mich daheim zu ihrem Spiel,/ Mich aber freut es so, fur mich allein zu sein.’ (‘The others wanted me to join them in their games,/ But to roam freely and alone is what I like.’) The latter is true but if I haven't been invited to join then it's partly due to my curiosity for exploring the byways of elsewhere.
Like everyone else, I need to work with people who are interested in what I do. After all, the faithless man discards himself. For me collaboration is a halfway house between the private ideal and public service. Perhaps it’s a corollary to the pastoral/urban tension, with genre rather than geography providing the frame.
Shebang, by David Howard, on Trout
Having happily collaborated with artists Paul Swadel, Jason Greig, Fiona Pardington, Kim Pieters and Garry Currin I wanted a more compressed, essential process so my interest shifted to music. Who? Anthony Ritchie has creditably set poets but I don't like his music. I'd like to like it however, as philosopher Alan Musgrave points out, we don't choose our likes or dislikes, nor do we choose our beliefs. So far I’ve worked with three composers: Marta Jirackova of the Czech Republic, Brina Jez-Brezavscek of Slovenia, and Johanna Selleck of Australia.
When most of my contemporaries (and potential listeners) are rocking backwards and forwards to variants of popular song, why am I attracted to the art song, oratorio and songspiel? The latest hit song gives us the liberty to be superficially involved but still enjoy; it is the artistic corollary of casual sex. A contemporary classical piece demands commitment before it surrenders its charms. Karlheinz Stockhausen, speaking about Stimmung, asserted: 'One listens to the inner self of the sound, the inner self of the harmonic spectrum, the inner self of a vowel, the inner self.' I hear that as a Kantian challenge to respect the autonomy of whatever and whoever. Each of my collaborators has the modesty of one who understands ‘the fascination of what’s difficult' (Yeats). They care more for the material than for attention; otherwise why set a poet from New Zealand? Marta's answer: ‘I see that it is a country of miracles.‘
Reading Richard Reeve's 2002 interview with you in Deep South, I got a strong impression that you are largely out of sympathy with the current state of poetic practice in New Zealand – both with much of the poetry being produced by individual poets, and with the infrastructure by which poetry is published, reviewed, and brought to the attention of its potential audience. Is that fair comment, and have your views changed since 2002?
As the view has got darker (it must have, look at all those stars!) so have my views. But I've been lucky enough not to wake up a curmudgeon who is bruised by youthful failure. I still smile at the horizon as I sip coffee that is stronger than my attraction to the NASDAQ. When I arrive at my desk I find the draft of a literary quiz; it begins 'Which top or leading New Zealand poet is the subject of these lines?'
Because his subsidy comes from the State
For teaching self-expression to the masses
In jails, nut-houses; worse, in grad-school classes
In which his sermon is (his poems show it)
That anyone can learn to be a poet.
With pen in hand he takes the poet's stance
To write, instead of sonnets, sheaves of grants
Which touch the bureaucrats and move their hearts
To turn the spigot on and flood the arts
With cold cash, carbon copies, calculators,
And, for each poet, two administrators.
In brief, his every effort at creation
Is one more act of self-perpetuation
To raise the towering babble of his Reputation.
Small wonder that his subject matter's taken
From the one sphere in which his faith's unshaken
As, fearful of offending powers that be,
He turns his gaze within, exalts the Me,
And there, neither with wit nor with discretion,
Spews forth page after page of mock-confession
Slightly surreal, so private, so obscure
That critics classify his work as "pure"
Because, in digging through the endless chatter,
They can't discern what is the subject matter,
And so, instead of saying they don't get it,
They praise the "structure" they invent to fit it.
He has no fear, for when his work's reviewed
Friends do it; thus, he's never gotten screwed.
He'll do the same for them, and they remain
Pals in the literary daisy-chain
Where every year, like Hallowe'en surprises,
They pass each other fellowships and prizes,
Include each other in anthologies
And take their greedy cuts from poetry's moldy cheese.
You’re wrong, it's not Bill Manhire. But your inference makes my point. I hear you clear your throat. Of course the question was unfair – a low blow intended to double up the reader, albeit with laughter. That excerpt is from The Narcissiad (Cedar Rock Press, 1981) by the American satirist R.S. Gwynn so the situation described is typical rather than particular. Typical of what? An institutionalised poetry scene such as has developed here over the last three decades.
When Richard Reeve interviewed me after my return to the mainland I affirmed that the first responsibility of an institution is to export its values, its valuations, in order to extend its longevity and therefore make more money. The imperative is economic rather than poetic. This means that statements by the representatives of institutions should be viewed as propaganda regardless of their truth quotient. In other words, whether the statements are true or not, their primary purpose is to impress rather than inform. The IIML is infamous for referring to itself as famous; the frequency of repetition is Orwellian yet commercially irreproachable.
Institutional or not, we do seem desperate to puff up our chests and strut like roosters across a painfully small backyard. Even the finest suffer. When Andrew Johnston asserts that Manhire is ‘our best poet’ then I hear Johnston's ambition rather than Manhire's achievement, which is (brilliantly) derivative and acknowledged as such by him. Curnow's polished poems appear to have been written primarily so they (and their author) could be admired, while Baxter insists on repeating stage directions out loud. Karl Stead (institution and iconoclast in one) is the world authority on C.K. Stead; we learn this by reading any recent essay by him irrespective of its stated topic. In an age when reviewers crib press releases, assertion of will is a determinant of reputation (it was Dan Davin who mentioned 'the plasticine of truth') but evangelical self-regard is rather different to the verdict(s) of history.
Look back a century – what most people believed then is not what their descendents believe now. Future generations will have a plurality of responses to today’s poetry, responses that will negotiate the leverage of today’s institutions and discard authorial special pleading. Who knows what will settle where and for how long? Our superior collections have had mixed fates: Michele Leggott’s Dia deservedly won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, whereas Graham Lindsay’s stringent The Subject was sidelined. Both books were published by Auckland University Press in 1994 so imprint, release date, publicity and distribution were comparable and therefore neutral factors. Admittedly, as a Christchurch resident, Lindsay was disadvantaged – and this despite the presence of literary historian Mark Williams who, like a colonial functionary, looked to the main chance of Wellington.
Tim, since you speak Russian, here's an instance where the main chance was a missed chance. This example avoids the prickly pear of reputation; instead it squeezes the lemon of ignorance. Had Williams put down Sport long enough to browse the Christchurch journal Takahe, which I co-founded in 1989, then he could have read the editorial of Takahe 3 (Autumn 1990) by Tatyana Shcherbina and R.V. Smirnow. "The New Zealand Project", an open letter sponsored by 42 Russian signatories, called for an autonomous laboratory of new artists, asserting:
The geographical place where this autonomous laboratory will meet the new age, and perhaps be realised in its integrity, we call New Zealand. This is a land out of fairy-tales, belonging to the Queen of Great Britain and to God in equal measure, islands at the «end of the world» which, compared with the rest of the world, are governed with more ecological sensitivity, which have preserved a culture and a political purity that quite miraculously turn out to be parallel, new and independent in relation to the rest of the world. So it is to this country that we would like to present our computer-bucolic project of a community of free people.
Williams could have looked through Curtainless Windows: Contemporary Russian Writing (Takahe 5, Spring 1990), discovering poems from Mikhail Aizenberg, Tatyana Shcherbina, Alexandra Sozonova, Ludmila Stokowska, and Sergey Stratanovsky – all translated by J. Kates, whose Zepyhr Press published The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1990). He would have learnt that the Cyrillic alphabet abbreviates 'emergency ration' to 'N.Z.', but for Shcherbina
N.Z. is now only New Zealand.
Once it made me think of emergency rations,
I mean, a touch of the commie state – not its ill-wishers
but its orphans (that obscene look never wears thin)
a touch ever more unfeeling, without strands of wool
on its pelt, nor birthmarks.
You can love a hag's eyes and touch eyelids
where the eyelashes have fallen out, white and iris –
shot off into space at an enemy.
Only a single husk left over, a foil
with the superficial depth of a hologram.
You can scrutinize it, and wait until it revives,
skewer it on a Finnish knife –
the way spectators got into silent movies,
now that N.Z. is an antique canvas.
In America this material was commended by the likes of Marilyn Hacker, who wrote of Mikhail Aizenberg: 'American readers are introduced to the work of an important contemporary Russian poet, whose world-view and aesthetic will seem at once welcome in its otherness and pertinently familiar… In J. Kates' translations, these poems have a new and discrete life in English.' But not a life our scholars share – there's no acknowledgement in either Mark Williams’ introduction or Gregory O'Brien's preface to Land of Seas: An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry (with E. Pavlov, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2005).
Perhaps this is forgiveable; their task was to showcase New Zealand poets to Russian readers, not to catalogue contacts. But Landfall 213: Russia (OUP, 2007) shows that a history missed is a history rewritten. What are we to make of the failure by Jacob Edmond, Gregory O'Brien, Evgeny Pavlov and Ian Wedde to recognise a direct precursor, "The New Zealand Project"? They are scholars not enthusiasts rapping in a back yard as the barbecue spits. How can an essay entitled "No Place like Home: Encounters between New Zealand and Russian Poetries" fail to cite (to sight) the Kates’ translations, which also appeared in Takahe 15 (Winter 1993), especially when Edmond discusses the samizdat issue (Leningrad, 1989) of the open letter? [To be fair, when I directed his attention to this he was enthusiastic and apologetic.]
It's simple. When there's a lot of noise from one direction then heads naturally turn that way. Scholars of contemporary poetry look to Wellington with good reason. The obligation is not on the IIML/VUP/Sport nexus to quieten down, but on scholars to explore elsewhere before drawing conclusions. Too often when they turn their backs on the capital it's to use a Claude glass. Rita Angus’ absurdist quip from 1947: ‘New Zealand is, in essence, medieval' could be whimsically applied today, with Bill Manhire our urbane Aristotle: an influential teacher, a model of professional generosity, whose centrality is simultaneously inspiring and an obstacle to seeing clearly.
Perhaps, all said and nothing done, I have woken up as a curmudgeon. If I think of New Zealand poetry then I think of a schoolchild in the front row, arms tightly folded, seeing no one but the registered teacher. If I think of, say, Arabic or Spanish poetry then I think of a schoolchild in the back row, arms wide open, looking over dozens of others, perhaps adopting this one's posture but that one's gesture then abandoning both. And I know that Arabic and Spanish are greater for engaging with an overt subject rather than pirouetting on a pinhead, which is the indulgence of the privileged. I can't regard the cynical non-poetry of Damien Wilkins as more deserving than that of the committed Bill Sewell, who wrote to Iain Lonie: 'no doubt/ the palace seems full of intruders.’
Again based on your interview with Richard Reeve, you are not enamoured of the role of artists within a capitalist system…
Privilege and barbarism should be strangers; instead they are close relatives. Capitalism is that procedure whereby we sanctify greed. When our politicians reinforce the imperative of ‘economic growth’ they are enlarging the cathedral – in order to maintain the cemetery out back. Poetry is what marks the headstones and honours those below. It is antipathetic to systems. William Morris offers the consolation, but also the impotence, of hope: ‘It is not this or that...machine which we want to get rid of, but the great intangible machine of commercial tyranny which oppresses the lives of all of us' (Art and Its Producers, 1881).
Privation magnifies appetite, but so does abundance. Whether blue or white, New Zealanders are greedy (once, say 10.47am on 17 June 1996, even I was greedy). We consume well above our share, and we go into debt to do so. That can’t last, nor should we try to make it last. Dr Megan Clark (CSIRO) warns that 'in the next fifty years, we will need to produce as much food as we have ever produced in the entire human history.' How? Our lifestyle is founded and founders upon impossible assumptions, our arts are regarded by administrators (who should know better) as consumables, and more people ask themselves 'When Madonna adopts an orphan does she get stretchmarks?' than worry over global warming.
I'm too worn to believe that the lyric fosters intimacy beyond a one-on-one reading – it's not a blueprint for unity between people(s). But I recall Charles Brasch’s early pointer:
…the arts do not exist in a void. They are products of the individual imagination and at the same time social phenomena; raised above the heat and dust of everyday life, and yet closely implicated in it. Any serious consideration of them is bound to involve an inquiry into their place in society and the social functions which they fulfil – what part they play in life, what use they are. This in turn must lead sooner or later to questions about society itself and what it exists for, and, eventually, about the nature of man. (Landfall 1:1, March 1947)
After reading material from the winners of the seven literary prizes highlighted this week, I have to ask: Did we wean ourselves from an imperial motherland in order to suck the tit of free market globalization? Following New Zealand's political reorientation, our poetry has turned from British to American (rather than indigenous) models. This is change but not the liberation that many claim.
Yes, this is a young country – but that doesn't mean we have to trumpet the infantile. Perhaps the reward of sentiment and bathos is one indicator of our exhausting immaturity as a literature. Reading Jenny Bornholdt's The Rocky Shore, which is anecdote leached of the life it purports to honour, I recall Christopher Lasch's warning: 'The record of the inner life becomes an unintentional parody of inner life. A literary genre that appears to affirm inwardness actually tells us that inner life is precisely what can no longer be taken seriously.' E.M. Cioran is sharper and blunter: 'art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.' There's an ocean of talk but no one is walking on water. I take pleasure and hope from those prepared to ask harder questions than 'How much attention?' and 'How much?' Sally Ann McIntyre and Robert McLean, both of whom have yet to publish collections, can think and write beyond the obvious.
I remain a naturally reclusive character who, politically, is committed to the notion of community. There are many ways to approach that notion. For the poet Thomas James, whose stony tenderness I admire, it was through the theatre of extremity. You might write yourself into a corner, yet a corner is also a social place.
It's my impression that some poets are writing primarily for an audience – writing to be heard, or read – whereas others are writing primarily for themselves. Do you think there is any truth in this distinction, and if so, which "camp" would you put yourself in?
Logically it’s possible to do both simultaneously. It depends on your temperament. You need to be extroverted to work the populist (rather than the public) vein with integrity. An audience may be the intended but it is not the only beneficiary of fine writing. Here some poets proceed, filled with a rather bumptious enthusiasm, on the basis that they are required to entertain primarily rather than secondarily – and they do violence to their work by trying to be stand-up comedians. They may be praised for a gritty accessibility (Tuwhare, Colquhoun, Camp) but, after picking up their collections, my fingers are left sticky because the appeal is often sentimental. I don’t feel either capable or obligated to enter the bun fight for popularity so I suppose I write for my self.
If I attend then language will provide entry points for that silence which is the reservoir of the reader's memory – although I know it is impossible to reach let alone satisfy an undifferentiated mass. 'I write for the people' is meaningless, whereas 'I write for the person' means a good deal. Like many others I attempt to make sense of the senseless, to move with purpose through the arbitrary, to learn from instances of hate how to rage my way into the impassioned calm that is love. You don't have to be a poet to do this. A gardener might have more success. But poetry is my method and my madness. Because language is social then I necessarily have a social vision – it's not coherent but it is motivating.
More generally, why do you write poetry?
Poetry is a way of knowing. My poems work to limit the claims of pathos as they announce them.
You have previously worked as a pyrotechnics technician and SFX supervisor for acts including Janet Jackson and Metallica. Has it left traces on your poetry?
Pyrotechnics promised a wider collaboration with the musical, sporting and entrepreneurial worlds than was possible in literary New Zealand. While visceral, fireworks are impersonal and I wanted clear of the word writer. Perhaps my poems had come, like the trees of Birnam Wood, to rout the person who owned them. I withdrew from the submission-publication-review cycle. I fell silent, only it didn't feel like falling.
What then? Kenosis. Fireworks were and are part of that challenge to empty. They appear to dominate the sky but it’s a percussive illusion; they get their power through surrendering to the night. By vanishing they stay with us. Seeing is not believing; belief comes after the seeing, when you’re gazing at black. And with poetry you have to listen for what’s not there. An attentive listener knows the word partners something larger than a dictionary definition. On tour, rigging in gantries, then smoking at four in the morning under security lights rather than the moon – it all helped me to weigh silence.
Designing fireworks displays, articulating space, gave me the strength to attempt longer poems: I was now confident of my ability to structure the unseen, the becoming. How? If site provides context then fireworks don’t so much map as transcend it because they take the viewer into an apprehension of the eternal through the momentary. The report of a launching charge is more than a deafening report on experience. Exposed by the exploding shell, perhaps site is akin to the light-sensitive paper that photographs are printed on – but a paper that has not been treated with fixative. When the spreading charge transforms common chemicals into uncommon effects, then the audience participates more than the pyrotechnician. No exposure matches that of the spirit – it cannot be captured. After all, is this so different from what happens with language? Words turn around the world, searching the pockets of discarded jackets for secrets. See, here is a piece of crumpled paper. It is the charred casing of a star shell.
If it were possible, would you want to be a full-time poet?
A poet is like an alcoholic: dry or wet, he remains one until he runs out of time. My maternal grandfather and uncle both died at 61. They were only 11 years older than I am now. I’d like the opportunity they never got to work uninterrupted. So many poems have been lost because of my peripatetic history, however I’m still writing. I’m conscious of the sustained silence of talented poets like Rob Allan, Julia Allen, Blair French, Brian Garrett and Michael Mintrom; also of the passing of Michael August, Iain Lonie, Joanna Paul, Nancy Ragland and Bill Sewell. I wear a ring which was made in Moesia shortly after the death of Ovid. Whenever I'm worried by trivia I admire the bezel. It tells me that I have all the time in the world, which is no time at all.
ORIGINALITY
Freighters destabilized by their cargo,
poets nose into the bar
and take on water.
The resigned smile of a lemon slice;
the parasol that drags like an anchor.
What a to do
now there's nothing to be done.
*
The strength of the current
measureless, everyone was swept
off - even the historian
before he could take note.
You never know muttered Mum,
tucking in her skirts
as the sun came up for air.
*
Too ridiculous alluding to Odysseus:
One man they hate and another they love...
The terror of being
overlooked, the pleasure of obscurity
balance on a blade of grass
moved by sharp gusts rather than gods
who are edgy yet blunt.
*
You can't take the faces with you
but they come. No miracle
on the road, just haze
and the dust ahead, although
direction is neither here nor there.
The signposts are left-overs:
Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Disneyland.
UPDATE FROM TIM: This interview has sparked off a very interesting discussion on Ross Brighton's blog. Worth checking out!