The 13 Book-launches of Dr J.

[Chris Cole Catley, Jack Ross & guest at Golden Weather launch, Takapuna Public Library]

"There's no such thing as a free launch"

-- Murray Edmond (attrib.)

I guess it's probably one of those old adages like "prise the gun from my cold, dead fingers" which endlessly migrates from speaker to speaker, but there's nevertheless a fair amount of truth in it.

As time goes by, you begin to learn the rules, however idealistic you were going in: always site the book-table near the exit (so that no-one can escape bookless without running the gauntlet of your reproachful gaze); never stint on food and drink (especially the latter-- you want to induce a false sense of euphoria in your guests); don't let the speeches go on too long; and (if possible) include a musician or a juggler or something novel to liven things up; only invite people who are likely to buy the book (that rules out the very rich and the very poor: too canny and too needy respectively).

It's with a certain amount of horror that I realise that the recent Classic Poets booklaunch was actually my thirteenth -- hence the melodramatic title of this post (I guess I was thinking of that old Dr Seuss film The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T; or else maybe The Nine Gates of the Land of Shadow, that Satanic tract in the Roman Polanski film The Ninth Gate, which damns everyone who looks at it to eternal perdition ...)

So here they are, in reverse order of occurrence:

1. 2006 (20 July) -- Peter Simpson & Elizabeth Caffin launch Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance, edited by Jack Ross & Jan Kemp (Auckland: AUP), in the Hobson Room, Jubilee Hall, Parnell. MC: Jack Ross. Readers: Riemke Ensing, Anne Kennedy, Alistair Paterson, Jack Ross, C K Stead, Richard von Sturmer & Sonja Yelich.
2. 2006 (15 June) -- Gabriel White, Scott Hamilton & Brett Cross launch The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis, by Jack Ross, & Bill Direen’s Song of the Brakeman (Auckland: Titus Books), at the University of Auckland English Department Common Room.MC: Michele Leggott. Readers: Jack Ross & Olwyn Stewart.
3. 2005 (16 November) -- Mary Paul & Grant Duncan launch Where Will Massey Take You? Life Writing 2, edited by Jack Ross (Massey University: School of Social & Cultural Studies) in the Common Room, Atrium Building, Massey @ Albany.
4. 2005 (21 May) -- Mike Johnson & Brett Cross launch Trouble in Mind , by Jack Ross, Olwyn Stewart’s Curriculum Vitae , & Bill Direen’s Coma (Auckland: Titus Books), at Shanghai Lil’s, corner of Anzac Rd & Customs St.
5. 2004 (24 October) -- Roger Horrocks & Raewyn Alexander launch Monkey Miss Her Now, by Jack Ross (Auckland: Danger Publishing), at the George Fraser Gallery, University of Auckland.
6. 2004 (19 September) -- George Wood, the Mayor of the North Shore, & Chris Cole Catley launch Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past & Present, edited by Graeme Lay & Jack Ross (Auckland: Cape Catley), at the Takapuna Public Library.
7. 2004 (12 September) -- Jan Kemp & Jack Ross launch the Aotearoa / New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive (Auckland University Library: Special Collections), at the Titirangi Pioneer Hall, Auckland. MC: Jack Ross. Readers: C K Stead, Janet Charman, Stu Bagby, Riemke Ensing, Mike Johnson, Paula Green, Bob Orr , & Sonja Yelich.
8. 2003 (4 June) -- Tina Shaw & A/Prof Mike O’Brien launch [your name here]: Life Writing, edited by Jack Ross (Massey University: School of Social & Cultural Studies) in the Common Room, Atrium Building, Massey @ Albany.
9. 2002 (10 November) -- Alistair Paterson launches Chantal's Book, by Jack Ross (Wellington: HeadworX) at the Birdcage Tavern, 133 Franklin Rd, Ponsonby.
10. 2000 (14 December) -- Alan Brunton launches Nights with Giordano Bruno, by Jack Ross, & Sally Rodwell’s Gonne Strange Charity (Wellington: Bumper Books), at The Space, 146 Riddiford Street, Newtown, Wellington.
11. 2000 (10 December) -- Professor D. I. B. Smith launches Nights with Giordano Bruno, by Jack Ross (Wellington: Bumper Books), at 6 Hastings Rd, Mairangi Bay.
12. 2000 (1 October) -- Jack Ross & Gabriel White launch A Town Like Parataxis, text by Jack Ross, photos by Gabriel White (Auckland: Perdrix Press) at 23 Maxwell Ave, Westmere.
13. 1998 (25 September) -- Theresia Marshall launches City of Strange Brunettes, by Jack Ross, & Lee Dowrick’s That was Then ((Auckland: Pohutukawa Press), at the Takapuna Public Library.

I guess my main impression, looking at this line-up, is to marvel at the number of people who've helped me and my collaborators out over the years. I mean, I have tried to do my bit to reciprocate, but it doesn't make nearly such an impressive list:

1. 2005 (5 December) -- Launched Richard von Sturmer’s Suchness: Zen Poetry and Prose (Wellington: HeadworX), with music by Don McGlashan, at the St Columba Centre, 40 Vermont Street, Ponsonby.
2. 2005 (20 October) -- MC, with Ahmed Esau, introducing Riemke Ensing, Deborah Manning, and Bill Manhire, at the launch of Ahmed Zaoui’s Migrant Birds: 24 Contemplations (Nelson: Craig Potton Books), in the Crypt of St. Benedict’s Church, Newton.
3. 2005 (17 October) -- Launched Bill Direen’s New Sea Land and Stephen Oliver’s Either Side The Horizon , with Alistair Paterson, launching Olivia Macassey’s Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Auckland: Titus Books) at Rakino’s, High Street, Auckland.
4. 2004 (17 July) -- Launch, with Jan Kemp, Olivia Macassey, and Richard von Sturmer, of nzepc feature: 12 Taonga from the Aotearoa / New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive, at the Gus Fisher Gallery, Shortland St, Auckland.
5. 2000 (21 July) -- Organised the book-launch of Leicester Kyle’s A Safe House for a Man (Auckland: Polygraphia Press) at the Takapuna Public Library.

I suppose they can be quite fun sometimes -- meeting your pals, scarfing bread & cheese, making sure you're next to the drinks table when the speeches begin ... next time you go to one, though, do remember that you are expected at least to consider buying the book. Otherwise it's a bit like spending all afternoon tasting fine vintages at the vineyard and then rolling off without having purchased a single bottle -- it can be done, but it is a little gauche.

Really, though, I just want to put on record my thanks to all of you excellent people who have taken the trouble to come along on these many, many occasions. I guess your true reward will have to be postponed till you reach the next world, because it's unlikely to come in this one. I hope you take some satisfaction in knowing that you truly are the salt of the earth ...

Pictures from the Paper Table Booklaunch (3/12/17)

Paper Table book display

Bronwyn and I would like to thank everyone who came to the Paper Table novella launch yesterday, and were generous enough to buy so many books! We'd also like to thank our two brilliant speakers, Stu Bagby and Tracey Slaughter; our visionary designer Lisa Baudry; Leicester's cousins Dave and Viv Kyle, who were there to represent the Kyle family; our two helpers Niamh and Hatty Fitzgerald, and all the rest of you who were able to spend your Sunday afternoon with us.

We really appreciate it.

The approach to the book table

Jack and his book

Book display

Hand-sewn bookbags

Leicester's first cousin, Dave Kyle, and his daughter Viv

Niamh and Hatty Fitzgerald, our two helpers

The back garden

Gabriel White

Richard Taylor and Tracey Slaughter were the first to arrive

soon joined by many others, including Stu Bagby, Jackie Ottaway and Richard von Sturmer

Bronwyn makes her publisher's speech

Stu launches Leicester's novella, Letters to a Psychiatrist

Tracey launches The Annotated Tree Worship

Bryan Walpert with his bookbag, with Matt Harris behind him

group shot (1)

group shot (2)

group shot (3)

If you have any questions about either the books or the imprint, please visit our Paper Table website.

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Brand design: Lisa Baudry

2011 - Our Year in Review

[Jack & Bronwyn (27 August 2011)
[Photo: Katharine Jaeger]

Last year at about this time I put up a post about various of the projects Bronwyn and I had got involved with in 2010. This year I thought I might do the same -- a little anthology of the year's activities (& blogposts):

1. February 17:
   
   
   [Massey University Vice Chancellor Steve Maharey launches 11 Views of Auckland, an anthology of essays about the city edited by Grant Duncan and myself, with a cover image by Graham Fletcher].
   
   
   


2. May 20:
   
   
   [Scenes from The Puppet Oresteia, a collaboration between me and US-based UK artist Bill Ayton, goes live on online publishing site Lulu.com].
   
   
   


3. June 6:
   
   
   [Bronwyn announces the completion of the Pania Press edition of Jen Crawford's poetry book Pop Riveter on her Mosehouse Studio blog].
   
   
   


4. July 4:
   
   
   [Launch of my online edition of Leicester Kyle's collected poems, a dual index / text website which I fear I'll have to continue to work on for quite some time (though the texts of all the major books are now up in full)].
   
   
   


5. July 8:
   
   
   [I give a paper entitled “A brief Poetics” at the Poetry & the Contemporary Symposium (Melbourne: Deakin University, 7-10 July)].
   
   
   


6. July 12:
   
   
   [I give a paper called “The Twenty-Year Masterclass: Paul Celan’s correspondence with Gisèle Celan-Lestrange” at the Literature and Translation Conference (Melbourne: Monash University, Caulfield Campus, 11-12 July), a summary of my two-year project of translating all the dual-text poems included in Celan's letters to his wife].
   
   
   


7. July 29:
   
   
   [Lopdell House's late Poetry Day reading in Titirangi coincides with the launch of Ila Selwyn & Lesley Smith's beautifully produced poetry anthology The Winding Stair].
   
   
   


8. August 26:
   
   
   [Bronwyn's Lugosi's Children exhibition opens at Objectspace in Ponsonby Road].
   
   
   


9. November 9-13:
   
   
   [Ian St George unveils our joint edition of Leicester Kyle's posthumous epic Koroneho at the William Colenso Bicentenary celebrations in Napier].
   
   
   


10. November 27:
    
    
    [Michele Leggott launches Bronwyn's first book of short stories The Second Location, together with Scott Hamilton's new book of poems Feeding the Gods, at Objectspace].
    
    
    


11. November 29:
    
    
    [Launch of the online Jacket2 NZ Poetry feature, edited by me].
    
    
    


12. December 25:
    
    
    [Bronwyn's wonderful Christmas gift: a limited edition of my Britain's Missing Top Model poem as a Pania Press single].
    

2,000,000+ Hits!

2,000,110 Pageviews (5/8/2024)

I wrote a post a little over five years ago about breaking the million hit barrier on this blog. I'm glad to see that the traffic must have more than doubled over this period, as it took me more than a dozen years to reach that original figure.

1,000,000 Pageviews (14/6/06-6/12/18)

As I said in that earlier post:

I find it rather amazing that this most self-indulgent of websites, dedicated to so many subjects which I suspect I'm quite unusual in finding fascinating - bibliography, ghosts, poetry, the 1001 Nights, poetry readings and book-launches - should have clocked up so many individual hits ...

Frequency of hits

Admittedly some of the more recent increase in traffic took place during the Covid lockdowns, when people were more prone to itinerant scrolling. However, if anything, the number of hits on my posts seems to have grown over the past few months, as you can see from the graph above.

Mind you, I do understand what a blunt instrument such counters can be. There's nothing qualitative about this data. A long read of a post will show up just the same as a momentary glance at a headline or an image.

Location of hits

They're not all from me, either. There's a little link you can click on to make sure that your own pageviews don't get counted in the total, otherwise it would all seem a bit incestuous.

Countries of origin

And as for the countries the hits are coming from, why so many from France, for instance? Why more from Russia (and Singapore) than from New Zealand? It's hard to reach clear conclusions about such matters, beyond noting the bare facts.

More to the point, though, I recently conducted a census of all the various websites I operate (you can find a complete list of them here, if you're curious). The nearest contender to this one, The Imaginary Museum, was my book collection site, A Gentle Madness, which has reached 439,131 pageviews. Most of the others were considerably less than that - though I was pleased to see that our Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive site has clocked up 319,446 hits.

In total, they came to approximately four and a half million pageviews, so I'd have to say that this long experiment on online writing / publishing must be seen as a success. I don't see how I could ever reached anything like that number of people by conventional means.

I know that blogs are now considered passé - but then the same fate seems to overtake each new social media platform in turn: even the giants of the internet, Instagram, X [the site formerly known as Twitter], Tik-tok et al. Enforced obsolescence pursues us all.

For my own part, though, I still like blogs. They're a great way to comment on the world around you - albeit usually to a very specialised sub-tribe of users. In my case this includes bookhounds and pop culture vultures generally.

Favourite Posts (5/8/24)

Pageviews (6/12/18)

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Devonport Library Poetry Reading - Tuesday 23/8/22

Te Pātaka Kōrero o Te Hau Kapua / Devonport Library
Poster design: Linda Hopkins

Waxing Lyrical

The Devonport Library Associates present Jack Ross with Johanna Emeney, Elizabeth Morton, Lisa Samuels and Bryan Walpert, all eminent poets reading from their own works.

Jack is a recent editor of Poetry New Zealand.

This event is part of Auckland Libraries’ We Read Auckland | Ka Pānui Tātau I Tāmaki Makaurau.

The idea of this reading, which coincides with the beginning of the Auckland Writers Festival, is to celebrate the reopening of the Devonport Library's event series - after a couple of years of pandemic-prompted closures - with a showcase of local, North Shore-based poets.

Each writer will have the chance to read a representative sample from their work. Their latest books will also be on sale, thanks to our friends at Paradox Books.

The real heroes of the occasion are, however, the Devonport Library Associates: chair Jan Mason, events organiser Paul Beachman, and publicity courtesy of Linda Hopkins.

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Johanna Emeney

Johanna Emeney lives with her husband David and a family of cats, goats, sheep and ponies. Jo’s latest book, co-written with Sarah Laing, launches on September 7th, 6pm at Takapuna Library. Sylvia and the Birds is part-biography of Bird Lady Sylvia Durrant and part call-to-arms for young environmental activists.

Johanna Emeney: Felt (2021)

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Elizabeth Morton

Elizabeth Morton is an Auckland writer, with three collections of poetry, the latest being Naming the Beasts (Otago University Press). She holds an MLitt from the University of Glasgow, and is completing an MSc at Kings College London. Her writing has appeared in publications from New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia and online.

Elizabeth Morton: Naming the Beasts (2022)

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Jack Ross

Jack Ross is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The Oceanic Feeling (2021), as well as numerous works of fiction, including The Annotated Tree Worship, highly commended in the 2018 NZSA Heritage Book Awards. He was managing editor of Poetry New Zealand from 2014-2020, and has edited many other books, anthologies, and literary journals. He lives in Mairangi Bay and blogs at The Imaginary Museum.

Jack Ross: The Oceanic Feeling (2021)

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Lisa Samuels

Lisa Samuels is Professor of English at the University of Auckland and the author of eighteen books, mostly poetry, and of many influential essays on theories of interpretation and body ethics. Lisa also works with sound, visual art, film, and editing, including co-editing the anthology A Transpacific Poetics (Litmus Press 2017). Her most recent poetry book is Breach (Boiler House Press 2021), and a Serbian translation of her novel Tender Girl has just been published by Partizanska Press.

Lisa Samuels: Breach (2021)

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Bryan Walpert

Bryan Walpert is the author of four books of poems, most recently Brass Band to Follow (Otago UP), named among the top 10 poetry collections of 2021 by the NZ Listener. He is also the author of three books of fiction, including the novel Entanglement, short-listed for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. A Devonport resident, he is a Professor of Creative Writing at Massey University-Albany.

Bryan Walpert: Brass Band to Follow (2021)

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Te Pātaka Kōrero o Te Hau Kapua / Devonport Library

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Bronwyn Lloyd: Jack as MC (23rd August, 2022)