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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Three Cool Launches

Thérèse Lloyd: Other Animals (Wellington: VUP, 2013)
[Image: "Ursus Arctos," by Jane Dodd]

So Bronwyn and I flew down to Wellington last week for the long-awaited launch of her sister Thérèse Lloyd's first full-length book of poems, Other Animals - published by Victoria University Press, and launched by her long-time friend and mentor, poet Bernadette Hall.

[Thérèse & Bernadette waiting to speak]

One of the very first publications from Pania Press, back in 2006, was a chapbook of Thérèse's poems entitled many things happened, so I think it's safe to say that we've been supporters of her work for quite a long time now.

[VUP managing director Fergus Barrowman introduces the book]

There's a dark, haunting quality to her poetry which seems to me quite inimitable. I will admit that it scares me at times, but never in a gratuitous, "Gothic" kind of way - the things that preoccupy Thérèse are the things that should be worrying all of us: environmental catastrophe, social collapse, the chaos and alienation of modern life.

[The crowd in Unity Books]

So, while this was an very joyful occasion - so many friends and well-wishers grouped in one venue I've seldom seen before, while the book positively flew off the shelves! - the poems we were celebrating are anything but "safe." In fact, as she read, I suddenly felt as if a kind of ventriloquism was taking place: the poems sounded as if they had been crafted in some other language, by Rilke or Paul Celan, then somehow transmuted back into English. It was quite uncanny.

[Thérèse signing books]

I really recommend this book. Judging by the audience reaction on the night, it seems to have hit a nerve. Nor do I believe that there's anything flash-in-the-pan about Thérèse's poetry. She's taken the trouble to think it through and arrange the contents with consummate care, and I think you'll agree that it's been worth the effort. We couldn't be happier with her success.

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Tessa Laird: Chupacabra Candelabra
[Auckland: Melanie Rogers Gallery (13 Feb-9 March, 2013)]

About a month ago now, we drove over to Ponsonby one fine evening to attend the opening of Tessa Laird's new show in the window of Melanie Rogers Gallery (you can see the trees of Jervois Road reflected in the glass in the picture above). Pania Press is intending to publish a catalogue of the exhibition at some point in the near future, so it was with a certain trepidation that we awaited our first sight of Tessa's strange new set of works.

[Chupacabra Candelabra (1)]

The show is called "Chupacabra Candelabra," and consists of a set of ceramic "books" arranged in alternation with various brightly coloured candlesticks, on five beautiful pink cloud-shaped shelves. Tessa's a writer as well as an artist, and the works she's created for this show build on her wonderful 2012 Objectspace exhibition Reading Room, with Peter Lange.

[Chupacabra Candelabra (2)]

This time the books are mostly South and Central American in inspiration. There are Mayan and Mexican and Aztec motifs all jumbled together in syncretist profusion. I say "profusion" rather than "confusion" because there's a underlying spirit of joyous intensity which seems to combine all these various directions in her work into one colourful whole.

[Pyramid]

And it's perhaps worth remembering, when you look at this magnificent pyramid of clay books, that the Maya themselves used Toltec motifs in some of their art - and in the post-classic period, even Aztec influences began to appear in the few surviving works of art (mostly codices) from that era ...

Kirstin Carlin / Tessa Laird / Ruth Thomas-Edmond
[Auckland: Melanie Rogers Gallery (13 Feb-9 March, 2013)]

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Renee Bevan: The World is a Giant Pearl
(Photograph: Caryline Boreham)

Last (but not least), a few days before we attended the opening of Tessa's show, we went to Renee Bevan's artist talk - with curator Karl Chitham - for her new show "Stream of Thoughts" at the Gus Fisher Gallery, on Saturday 9th February.

I guess what interested me most about it - and what made me think that it might make a nice triad with Thérèse and Tessa - was the largely conceptual nature of the whole show. Renee is a jeweller, but her jewellery practice is beginning to intersect with an almost Duchampian playfulness and wit.

Renee Bevan: A Whole Year's Work
(Photograph: Caryline Boreham)

This image, for instance, takes its significance from the fact that the powder being poured over Renee's head consists, in fact, of the ashes of a whole series of her own visual diaries which she's discarded and burnt.

Renee Bevan: Parting Breath (2012)
(Photograph: Caryline Boreham)

This one, "parting breath," was originally intended to preserve the remnants of her own breath in a collapsed balloon. The first attempt broke while it was being electroplated, though, so this substitute is coloured black in mourning for its lost progenitor.

Renee Bevan: Wearing Myself as a Bracelet (2012)
(Photograph: Caryline Boreham)

This last one, "wearing myself," is perhaps the one which best expresses the spirit of the whole show. Draping herself around her partner as a human necklace, or making a velcro brooch which literally "attaches" you to other people, goes a bit beyond satirical celebration of the ephemeral nature of things. Renee's art is all about emotion, connection, cherishing. The subtlety and humour in her show shouldn't be allowed to distract you from the depth of her convictions on the matter.

I suppose, finally, that the reason I like these three shows so much is that they seem to me to be saying many of the same things in their very different ways. It's not so much hope they offer us as companionship. "There never really was much hope," as Gandalf tells Pippin when things are at their worst in the middle film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy: "Just a fool's hope."

Even a fool's hope is better than none, though. Renee, Tessa and Thérèse may not be able to set things right for us once and for all - the crooked made straight, the rough places smooth (Luke 3: 5) - but the wit and compassion they show in these three bodies of work at least show us that they're not going to allow us to give in to despair too easily.

They've given us three gifts, and I for one would like to express my gratitude to all of them.

[Pyramid]

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Postscript (Friday, 15th March):

We've just heard that Tazey's book has entered the official Nielsen Weekly Bestsellers List (for the week ending 9th March) at Number One! There are three categories: NZ Fiction for Adults; NZ Non-fiction for Adults & NZ Children & Teens (as well as international listings for each). Other Animals is at the top of the first list, ahead of titles by Janet Frame, Witi Ihimaera and Fiona Kidman. Fantastic! It sure must have hit a nerve ...

Nielsen Weekly Bestsellers List: week ending 9 March 2013

[14 Mar 2013]

The Bestseller Charts represent the bestselling books in New Zealand for the week up to the date given. The Bestseller Charts are compiled by Nielsen BookScan and comprise data supplied from the New Zealand panel of participating booksellers. Please note these charts are subject to copyright and may not be reproduced. Books are categorised according to country of publication.

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& check out Hamesh Wyatt's review in the Otago Daily Times Online:

Therese Lloyd's poems have appeared in a number of places. Other Animals is her debut collection of poems. Lloyd certainly has spark. Like Smither, her poems are simple, spare and beautiful. But rather than hitting on the soft things, Lloyd develops a lyrical pathway through some thorny issues.

She uses everyday lives in her poems. People rummage through rubbish and compost. Mice, rats and flies make regular appearances in these 38 short poems.

'Proof'': ...You trapped the mouse in the wall by nailing a
square over the hole. For days afterwards I thought I heard
it desperately scraping, its claws worn down to stumps. As we
slept cramp seized your leg. You leapt out of bed clutching
your thigh. You looked enormous in the strange morning half-
light. The way things morph - shapes forming imagined shapes
- I thought I saw the mouse squeezing through a gap and you
reaching down to carefully, slowly, crush him in your hands.

It is impossible not to enjoy this new work from the get-go. Lloyd adds bile, bite and a few surprise twists. She tells us what is on her mind. Other Animals will intoxicate the reader.

... She has produced a little book that is watchful, armed with warning and observations of people who are sometimes totally out of their depth. I like how this is new and exciting.

Cool bikkies, eh?

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& now there's another great review (by Siobhan Harvey) on Beattie's Book Blog (2/4/13) ...

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