Best New Zealand Poems 2009

Best New Zealand Poems 2009 was launched at midday today, which made me happy: it's becoming a key date in my reading year. I was in Uruguay when last year's version came out, but in 2008 I blogged about Best New Zealand Poems 2007 and compared this anthology to the Scottish version published by the Scottish Poetry Library.

Funny, then, that this year's editor of BNZP should be Robyn Marsack, the director of the Scottish Poetry Library.

Marsack, a New Zealander who left these shores in 1987, notes in her introduction that her selection comes from a particular place: "New Zealand viewed from Scotland", but has little to say about the actual poetry being written in Scotland.  Introductions for anthologies of this sort always follow the same recipe (a dash of 'O! the subjectivity', a pound of generalisation, a tablespoon of pet peeves, toss with liberal references to contributors and season with the best sources...), but one comment struck a chord:

"There are a lot of two-line stanzas out there, and sometimes that construction seemed quite arbitrary."  

This was a general criticism of New Zealand poetry circa 2009, but even BNZP09 is awash with two-line stanzas.  By my count 7 of the 25 poems present their wares in two-line chunks... So less than a quarter, but by far the most dominant type of verse here.  It's a relief to find something longer, like Louise Wallace's rhythmic 'The Poi Girls' or the rhyming quatrains (shock horror) of Tim Upperton's 'The Starlings'.

Just as it was with BNZP07, my initial faves this year were shorter poems, namely Elizabeth Smither's 'Two Adorable Things About Mozart', and Lynn Davidson's 'Before We All Hung Out in Cafes'.  I also really like Tusiata Avia's 'Nufanua Goes to Russia and Meets Some Friends from Back Home', which is longer (like its title).

But it's all online and you can quickly read all 25 and decide on your own favourites (from Robyn Marsack's favourites from New Zealand poets from 2009).  It's worth remember the restrictions, eh?  Coz if you like a couple here, then heck, you're bound to find more in the big wide world...

And while I'm talking about poetry, I should mention the burgeoning Tuesday Poem movement in Blogland Aotearoa.  See progenitor Mary McCullum's blog for details.  Basically, poet-bloggers are posting poems (their own or by others) on Tuesdays...

This, combined with my growing interesting in more rigourous structures in poetry (credit to Tim Upperton's A House on Fire and more recently Geoff Cochrane's villanelle, 'The Lichgate') leads me to my theme for April...

I hereby commit to attempt a villanelle, a triolet, a rondeau, a cinquain (though not necessarily in this order) this month and subject you to them.  A-ha!

March Theme: Choose Your Poison

Depending on your outlook, my theme for March is either The NZ International Arts Festival or my own frugality. I plan on attending as many free events as I can (see list below), but can only afford to go to the other shows if I manage to get $20 tickets. (The Festival has introduced a new initiative this year, "Tix for Twenty", where 10 tickets for each show are held back and sold for $20 on the day of the show to lucky/patient people at the booth in Midland Park).

The main focus of the festival for me is always the Writers and Readers Week. This year the standard sessions (60-75mins duration) are $18 plus a booking fee. There are some sessions that tempted me at theat price, but they are mid-week during work hours… I understand the economics of putting on a book festival with international authors, etc etc, but I do feel priced out of a situation where I can discover new writers. I guess I'll just have to stick to buying and reading books!

But the Festival (especially the book week) are to be commended for the number of free events (at times outside working hours!).  My booky highlights:

Monday 8 March - Once Upon A Deadline (all day around Wellington, with a read-off at 6.30pm in the Town Hall).
Wednesday 10 March - Poetry Reading, featuring Glyn Maxwell, Kevin Connolly, Kate Camp, Geoff Cochrane and Ian Wedde (5.15pm, Embassy Theatre)
Thursday 11 March - VUP Publisher's party (doubles as the launch for new poetry collections by Geoff Cochrane, Bill Manhire, and Kate Camp (6pm, Exchange Atrium, 22 Blair Street)
Friday 12 March - Telling Stories session, featuring short story writers: Anna Taylor, Charlotte Grimshaw, Lisa Moore, Joan London and Fariba Hachtroudi (5.15pm, Embassy Theatre)

There's also a bunch of visual art exhibitions (free) around the city which I hope to check out.

On Novel B: A Love Story

When discussing the theme for this month -- a window into my novel in progress -- I said I would look at:

• those cloud-burst moments when an idea arrives perfectly formed (check)
• the issue of point of view and narrative voice (check); and
• why I keep falling out of love with this manuscript.

Some of the answers to the final question are contained in the previous two discussions. There are other answers, or at least, other discussions I could have about this subject, but I won't.

Talking about falling out of love, relationship breakdowns or break-ups, is something you only do when you're down/out/broken. We've all played dutiful friend for someone who needs to unload during or after a relationship meltdown. But try talking to that friend after they've decided to get back together with their ex: you'll get a rather different, rather more general story. The friend has not forgotten the irksome things about their partner, or the wedge that drove them apart in the first place, but they have attempted to move past them: there's no benefit to be had from dwelling on his/her chewed down nails or a drunken kiss at a work Xmas party.

Same goes for me and Novel B. We've made up. It helped to talked things through this month, to see what I've got, and what lies ahead of us. We've decided it's worth another go, worth sticking it out. Sure, I could bad-mouth Novel B, and there’s plenty it could say about me. But where would that get us?

In the spirit of renewed vows, growing optimism and ever-present generosity, I will instead point the budding (and blossomed) writers among us to a piece from the Guardian Online. To commemorate-slash-spruik Elmore Lenard's new book, Ten Rules of Writing, the Guardian asked a number of successful writers for their own rules.

Novel B and I like Margaret Atwood's ninth rule:

Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

The two of us can have a good chuckle about this now.

Novel B also likes the advice from Jonathan Franzen (“Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.”) and the even more succinct Colm Tóibín (“Finish everything you start.”)

Zadie Smith offers sage advice (“Work on a computer that is disconnected from the –internet”) but on the topic of distractions, Phillip Pullman’s entire response says it best:

My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.

I’m going to try to use this in a work email one day, you know, when I feel like burning bridges.

Hopes and Hobbies: February Begins

The Month That Was

January was a strange one. About five days of summer here in Wellington, the rest an admixture of autumn and winter. Perhaps I'm being unkind. After all, I managed to get to Kapiti Island, Karori Wildlife Sanctuary and roam the South Coast in search of native birds and trees. I cooked on the barbeque four times (I can't use it in a northerly as the wind blows the flames out). I even swam in Lyall Bay (but only once, on Saturday). And it didn't rain as much as my last full summer (in Edinburgh), but now I sound like I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

A Design For Life?

I look out my window on a day like today (high of 15 degrees, drizzle, strong southerly, and can't help but think those kite surfers are on to something. Back on Saturday when it was calm and 26 degrees, Lyall Bay was left to the tanners, sand-castlers, and bathers. Today, the bay belongs to wet-suited daredevils. And where are the tanners, sand-castlers, and bathers: at home watching Campbell Live, clipping their toenails and nursing a severe bout of Mondayitis.

The kite surfers have managed to find a way to turn a bad day into a good one. Isn't that the secret of a good hobby?

The same goes when the wind is slightly different and the bay belongs to the wind surfers (sometimes they try to share with the kite surfers, but one form of wind-propulsion generally prospers). When the swell is up, the plain old surfers don't care if it's raining or blowing a gale…

When it still and sunny, the -surfers can laze around with the rest of us. A sunny day is the day we least need hobbies. Am I right?

I used to be into Fantasy Football, as in American Football. Most of the games are played on a Sunday afternoon in the States, which corresponds to the early hours of Monday morning in New Zealand. I would wake each Monday during the football season, eager to find out how my players had performed. After a scanning the box scores, I would head to work, my head filled with calculations of points scored and players left to play. The Sunday evening games would take place on Monday afternoon my time, and I'd hurry home from work to check the latest developments in my match-up and watch the highlights on ESPN. During the sixteen week fantasy football season, Mondays were one of my favourite days.

But like everything pre-empted with the word 'fantasy', my attention eventually waned. This year, I didn't have a fantasy football team, haven’t watched the box scores, nor trekked down to the nearest sports bar to watch a prime time contest. My Mondays have reverted once more to the first day of the working week and nothing more.

I'm in two minds whether writing counts as a smart hobby or not. It's certainly well suited to dodgy weather (and is less attractive on the beaut days). And it can fill your head with distracting thoughts on the bus to work on a Monday morning. If you could siphon off this aspect from any ambition, if you just wrote for fun, then sure, it's a great hobby.

If, on the other hand, you want people you've never met before to read your writing (a strange desire when you think about it, but most writers are strange people), then you can't help but let your writing thoughts seep into your working day. Your sunny days spent at the beach are tinged with guilt. You're never writing enough, or well enough. There's never enough time.

The perfect hobby should better fill your time, but the writing bug is insatiable. It demands you spend days writing when you are better off earning a crust, playing sport or socialising with friends. No wonder so much literature is obsessed with lost time. With looking backwards. Writing is a deliberate slow-down of life, because to be a writer comes with sacrifices.

No more fantasy football. No kite surfing lessons. I want random people to read my stories.

The Month That Will Be

So what will February have in store?

I can't control the weather, but I do have some control over what I do here at my desk. My head still isn't back into Novel B, but it needs to be. My theme for this month, therefore, is Writing a Novel. Not: How To Write A Novel, because although I have completed two, neither were published, and this third one sure isn't writing itself. Rather, I hope to open a few windows on the living, breathing process of writing a difficult manuscript.

I will look at those cloud-burst moments when an idea arrives perfectly formed; the issue of point of view and narrative voice; and why I keep falling out of love with this manuscript.

In navel-gazing once a week, I hope to finally get my head right, address a few lingering issues, and return my full focus to the novel. For the contemporary reader, I make no promises. My only hope is that the novel gets finished (soon) and published… perhaps then these February fumbles will be of interest.

This Fluid Thrill goes native

The holiday season is behind us, and so is the theme holiday I took during December (a failure of a month all round). Newsflash: I'm just not interesting enough to generate content without some sort of guidance/gimmick.

So it’s back to the themes…

As I mentioned a while ago, I asked for books on native flora and fauna for Christmas and ol' Saint Nick delivered, bless gin blossomed nose. That's been my holiday reading pretty much (the two novels I took away with me weren't up to much), and there's been a lot of interesting stuff. Some of it may appeal to more than just the treespotters out there.

So January will be Native Month. I'm going to Kapiti Island this Saturday, weather permitting. I'll also make the effort to get to the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary this month. Both are mentioned often in my book on native birds as great places to spot uncommon species. I'll also trek into the bush around the south coast and see what I can find. If you're lucky I'll convince my brother the photographer to come along and you'll get some nice pictures to go with my ramblings.

While I'm talking about new beginnings, I should mention that over the break I finally bought a new pair of jeans. Big whoop. Well, in November I blogged about how the life of my book length projects and jeans appears to synch up, and hoped that the purchase of a new pair of denims would propel me headlong into Novel B… The search took longer than expected (and Novel B remained docked at Cape Canaveral) but here's hoping things take-off shortly.

One more new year’s resolution: I’ve decided to institute another regular feature here. At the end of every month I’ll post a summary post of the books I’ve read. That way I’m absolved of full-on reviewing pressures for every book (though I may still lavish attention on deserving tomes), but still keep a track record of my reading and responses over the year.

Okay, enough agenda-ising. How 'bout tomorrow I post some actual content?

Where to Gumshoe?

September's theme was Reading The Count of Monte Cristo. October was Owen Marshall Month. Now I've just finished writing a 100 word story every day of November and I have no ideas for a December theme -- it just seems like an impossible month to do anything.

So for now I'm taking a theme holiday (as opposed to a themed holiday… couldn't think of anything worse).

Permit me, then, to reflect back upon November.

Of the 30 stories I told, some were harder to nut out than others. And some characters just didn’t work:

The boy who found the dinosaur bone
The plagiarist (shelved when the Witi Ihimaera thing broke)
The daredevil
The unborn baby (much harder to pull off than the newborn baby)
The boy who smells like fireworks (or garlic)
The veteren
The hair dresser
The greenskeeper

Some, I couldn't tell their story in 100 words. Others struggled to warrant 100 words.

In addition to the 30 townspeople that made the cut, 23 other Marumaruvians are mentioned, some by name (like Neil Southgate), others by their relationships (the vet's husband, the postie's grandfather). I wouldn't want to write any more than 30 stories like this about a small town - things would either start to get too incestuous, or the town would seem too big.

The question for today is: now what? Is '30 Ways of Looking at Marumaru South' actually a 3000 word short story? Is it a chapbook of prose poems or a picture book for adults? Is it just a month long experiment posted on a blog and its main purpose is to appear on search result pages when people google "starting a crematorium", "takeaways on Beach Road", or "The Sporanos".

[If you google the three phrases above, I'm currently the 2nd result, the 1st, and somewhere down the list of 27,500 results respectively.]

I'll leave it a while and decide what to do with it, if anything, in the new year.

October, Nice To Know Ya

That's it for Owen Marshall Month folks.  But don't worry, November will be themed too!



In addition to having 'Mr November' stuck in my head for the next thirty days, I'll be writing more hundred word stories...

Thirty Ways of Looking at a Blank Page: 2009

Last November I wrote a self-contained story in 100 words every day and posted them on my blog. I enjoyed the process so much, I'm going to do something similar this year...

Marumaru South - A Portrait

This time my thirty shorts will be linked. Each story will centre on a different character in the fictional South Island town of Marumaru South (there's a real Marumaru in the North Island, somewhere on the East coast). In my mind Marumaru South lies somewhere between Timaru and Oamaru (hence the name).

That's pretty much all I know at this point. My hope is that each day the town will come a little more into focus, and that maybe one day I'll be able return to Marumaru South with more words to spare.

The Process

Unlike last year, I won't include the title of each story in the 100 word tally as each will just be the name (or descriptor) of the character the story is about. I don't think it's fair The Principal gets one more word to his story than The Opera Singer… And maybe there won't be any need for titles when the stories are all brought together at the end of the month.

Another divergence from last year is that I will post each story individually on (or as close as possible to) the day it is written, rather than using the sidebar.