Showing posts with label Jack Ross. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack Ross. Show all posts

Thursday, August 01, 2019

My new book Ghost Stories is available today:



Cover image: Graham Fletcher (by courtesy of the artist) /
Cover design: Daniela Gast (2019)


The official publication date for my new collection of short fiction, Ghost Stories, was yesterday, 31st July 2019.

It's been a great pleasure to work on it with the team at Lasavia Publishing on Waiheke Island: editor Rowan Sylva, designer Daniela Gast, publisher Mike Johnson, as well as the other members of the collective. I also owe a big thank you to Graham Fletcher for the use of his cover image, and (as always) to my lovely wife Bronwyn for invaluable advice at every stage of the process. Thanks, too, to Tracey Slaughter for the use of that blurb quote.

So how do you obtain a copy of the book? That is, after all, the $64,000 question. If you wish to order one online, it's available from any of the following websites:
Amazon.com
RRP: $US 15.00 (+ postage)

Amazon.co.uk
RRP: £UK 12.28 (+ postage)

Book Depository
RRP: $NZ 29.44 (free postage)

Wheelers Books
RRP: $NZ 49.50
As usual, the Book Depository seems to offer the best deal, but remember that copies can also be purchased at a discounted rate, $20, at the Waiheke Market, or (for that matter) directly from Lasavia Publishing:
Lasavia Publishing
37 Crescent Rd West
Ostend
Waiheke Island
Auckland 1081
https://www.lasaviapublishing.com/
Lasavia Publishing: Editorial

RRP: $NZ 20.00 (+ postage)
We're planning a big launch party later in the year, which I'll describe in detail here on the blog once all the arrangements are finalised, so - if you prefer - you could wait until then. But I know what eager beavers some of you readers can be!






So what exactly is the book about? The easiest thing might just be to quote from the blurb:
David Foster Wallace once wrote that 'every love story is a ghost story.' Not all of the stories in Jack Ross’s new collection are about love, but certainly all of them concern ghosts – imaginary, real, or entirely absent. As it turns out, there are even stranger things in the world: from haunted hotel rooms in Beijing to drunken poetry readings on Auckland’s North Shore. Or perhaps, as the Mayan prophets foresaw, the world really did end on the 21st December, 2012, and 'all bets are off, all the rules have changed, and – new Adams, new Eves – we have to find the courage somehow to start naming the strange new things we see.'

'There’s no one in New Zealand literature exploring the dark ways of narrative with the alchemical touch of Jack Ross, and his gift of spinning tales which jump "from track to track on the time-space continuum" never fails to leave me exhilarated, in outright awe'.
- Tracey Slaughter

Jack Ross works as a senior lecturer in creative writing at Massey University. He is the author of five poetry collections, four novels and three books of short fiction. His novel The Annotated Tree Worship was highly commended in the 2018 NZ Heritage Book Awards. He has also edited numerous books, anthologies, and literary journals, including brief, Landfall, and Poetry New Zealand. He blogs at http://mairangibay.blogspot.com/.

And here's a - slightly more informative - abstract I composed to send to my masters at Massey University, who insist on full details of every publication by their staff:
This is a set of ten short stories, with two essays: 'The Classic New Zealand Ghost Story,' an introduction to the collection as a whole; and 'Kipling and the Cross-Correspondences,' an account of the alleged attempts at communication from the other side by various dead members of the Society for Psychical Research in the early years of last century. The stories, too, are grouped around the common theme of ghosts and ghost stories, but in some rather unexpected ways. Two ('The Scam' and 'The Cross-Correspondences') are set in China, but most are explorations of the haunted landscapes of the New Zealand's North Island, from Featherston and Eketahuna to Raglan and Auckland. All of them (with the exception of 'Paragraphs') have been previously published in periodicals or online.


Now those of you obsessed (as I am) by numerology, might well have noticed an ominous feature of that list of publications in the blurb above. My breakdown of books now stands at:
5 poetry books
4 novels
3 short story collections
+ 1 stand-alone novella
= 13 in total
Yes, this is indeed my number thirteen!

All I can say is that nearly as many traditions see thirteen as a lucky number as fear it for being unlucky.

Mind you, I could fudge the count a bit if I wished. I could count my novel The Annotated Tree Worship as two books rather than one, given it appeared in two separate volumes. But they are intended as interlinked novellas, and were never really meant to be read independently.

There's also the fact that I've published 16 chapbooks at one time or another. That would bring up the total to an innocuous 29!

And then there are the various books and anthologies I've edited (15 in all, it would appear). That would bring us up to 44.

But these expedients would really just be cheating. So far as I'm concerned, I've now written 13 books, so I've taken some care to make the thirteenth as appropriate as possible. It is, after all, an exploration of the paranormal, the supernatural, as it manifests (for the most part) in some of the gloomier parts of New Zealand ...

I hope it's enjoyable. I know not everyone shares my fascination with such matters, but a great many people do. And I would argue that most of these stories can be read in a variety of ways: as actual 'ghost stories' being just one of them.






Here's a list of the contents:
Introduction
The Classic New Zealand Ghost Story

Stories
Eketahuna
The Scam
Featherston
Leaves from a Diary of the End of the World
Is it Infrareal or is it Memorex?
Company
General Grant in Paeroa
Brothers
Catfish

The Cross-Correspondences
Paragraphs
Kipling and the Cross-Correspondences

And here's a list of my 13 books to date:

  1. City of Strange Brunettes. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: Pohutukawa Press, 1998) [poetry book 1]
  2. Nights with Giordano Bruno. ISBN 0-9582225-0-9 (Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000) [novel 1]
  3. Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002) [poetry book 2]
  4. Monkey Miss Her Now & Everything a Teenage Girl Should Know. ISBN 0-476-00182-X (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004) [short story collection 1]
  5. Trouble in Mind. Titus Novella Series. ISBN 0-9582586-1-9 (Auckland: Titus Books, 2005) [novella]
  6. The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis. ISBN 0-9582586-8-6 (Auckland: Titus Books, 2006) [novel 2]
  7. To Terezín: A Travelogue. Afterword by Martin Edmond. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007) [poetry book 3]
  8. EMO. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3 (Auckland: Titus Books, 2008) [novel 3]
  9. Kingdom of Alt. ISBN 978-1-877441-15-8 (Auckland: Titus Books, 2010) [short story collection 2]
  10. Celanie: Poems & Drawings after Paul Celan. by Jack Ross & Emma Smith, with an Afterword by Bronwyn Lloyd. ISBN 978-0-473-22484-4 (Auckland: Pania Press, 2012) [poetry book 4]
  11. A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014) [poetry book 5]
  12. The Annotated Tree Worship (Auckland: Paper Table, 2017) [novel 4]
    • Draft Research Portfolio. ISBN 978-0-473-41328-6. Paper Table Novellas, 2 (i).
    • List of Topoi. ISBN 978-0-473-41329-3. Paper Table Novellas, 2 (ii).
  13. Ghost Stories. ISBN 978-0-9951165-5-9. 99% Press (Auckland: Lasavia Publishing, 2019) [short story collection 3]



Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Paper Table Novellas Launch - 3/12/17



Brand design & images: Lisa Baudry


I'm pleased to announce the launch of Bronwyn Lloyd's new series of single-volume novellas, in our back garden in Mairangi Bay, on Sunday 3rd December, from 2 pm onwards:







Paper Table Novellas Launch:

When: Sunday 3rd December, 2-4 pm

Where: 6 Hastings Rd, Mairangi Bay, Auckland

What: Books by Leicester Kyle & Jack Ross

Who: All Welcome! (but please don't forget your wallet)






For a long time now Bronwyn and I have been lamenting the lack of attention paid to the novella form in New Zealand. Now, as the publisher of Paper Table Novellas, she's finally decided to do something about it.




The first of her titles, Letters to a Psychiatrist, is the strange tale of a West Coast spiritual odyssey by distinguished eco-poet Leicester Kyle.

The second, The Annotated Tree Worship, is a story told in two novella-length portions, relating the sordid adventures of a disgraced, self-pitying Academic, caught in the grip of his own psychic crisis:

  1. Letters to a Psychiatrist, by Leicester Kyle


    [$NZ 25]







  2. The Annotated Tree Worship, by Jack Ross



    [$NZ 40 the pair]
    (not available separately]







Stu Bagby (on the right, with his wife Sheila beside him)


Leicester's book will be launched by award-winning poet Stu Bagby. My book will be launched by award-winning fiction writer Tracey Slaughter.



There will also be a range of artworks on sale both by Bronwyn and by Paper Table's brilliant designer, Lisa Baudry.

The wine will flow and a range of culinary treats will be provided. Please do come and spend the afternoon with us.

If you have any further questions about either the books or the imprint, check out our new Paper Table website.





Brand design: Lisa Baudry


Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Pictures from a Booklaunch



The venue [JR]

Joint Launch of

The Longest Drink in Town
By Tracey Slaughter
(Auckland: Pania Press, 2015)

&


A Clearer View of the Hinterland:
Poems & Sequences 1981-2014
By Jack Ross
(Wellington: HeadworX, 2014)

Monday 25th May at 6.30 pm

At the Art Fusion Gallery
Waikato University
003 Student Centre (Next to the hairstylists)
Gate 5, Hillcrest Road, Hamilton


Photographs by Paul Hinton [PH], Bronwyn Lloyd [BL] & Jack Ross [JR]




Reflections [JR]




Jack, Tracey & Mark Houlahan [PH]




Mark Houlahan MCs [BL]




Tracey speaks [PH]




Tracey reads [PH]




Jack reads [PH]




The Band [JR]




Tracey, Jack & Rachael Elliott [BL]




Mark Houlahan & Terry Locke [BL]




Crowd scene [BL]




Crowd Scene [PH]


Monday, May 18, 2015

Double Booklaunch - Tracey Slaughter / Jack Ross



Booklaunch - Waikato University (25/5/15)


I'm pleased to report that there's going to be a double booklaunch for Tracey Slaughter's latest, the novella The Longest Drink in Town, published by Pania Press, together with my latest, the poetry collection A Clearer View of the Hinterland, publlished by HeadworX of Wellington.

Here are the details of the event:


Joint Launch of



Cover image: Bronwyn Lloyd / Cover design: Ellen Portch & Brett Cross

The Longest Drink in Town
By Tracey Slaughter
(Auckland: Pania Press, 2015)

&



Cover image: Graham Fletcher / Cover design: Ellen Portch & Brett Cross

A Clearer View of the Hinterland:
Poems & Sequences 1981-2014
By Jack Ross
(Wellington: HeadworX, 2014)

Monday 25th May at 6.30 pm

At the Art Fusion Gallery
Waikato University
003 Student Centre (Next to the hairstylists)
Gate 5, Hillcrest Road, Hamilton


The event is co-organised by Mayhem literary journal. You can find further details here.


Jack Ross


See you there!




Monday, January 02, 2012

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].

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Strange Coincidences


[Jan Potocki: The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. 1989.
Trans. Ian Maclean. 1995 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1996)]


Yesterday I went into town to return a few library books and meet up with some literary cronies. The bus was a bit late, though, so I had time to duck into the local Opportunity Shop. If you've read the post below, you'll understand how surprised I was to find this book, which cost me all of two dollars.

Yes, there it is, Goya's Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (though I notice that the translation on the back cover gives it as the "dream" of reason - an equally valid translation).




But there was something else waiting for me in that op shop - this:


[Jack Ross: Requiem. Hutchinson (London: Random House, 2008)]

I know I've made rather a song and dance in the past about doubles and doppelgängers and other such appurtenances of the Gothic (in fact, you may not have noticed, but in the sidebar to this blog I've got a little collection of "Jack Rosses": the Aboriginal Artist, the Alabama Treasurer, the Bearded Muser, the Brooklyn Copperhead, the Chartered Accountant, the Footballer, the Spoonerist, the Thriller Writer, and the Australian WW1 Veteran ...). This one was the Scottish thriller-writer.

So far so good. That's not the end of it, though. You see, I have a bit of a history with this Manuscript found at Saragossa novel. The reason I didn't already have a copy of this - very handsome - Penguin edition was that I bought the book in French when it first appeared in 1989, on the strength of a long and laudatory review in the TLS, which made it sound like the literary discovery of the decade.


[Jean Potocki: Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse. Ed. René Radrizzani (Paris: José Corti, 1989)]

It's hard to separate fact from legend where this bizarre book is concerned, but it appears to have been written in French by the Polish Nobleman Count Jan Potocki sometime between the years 1805 and 1815 (when he committed suicide, allegedly with a silver bullet which he'd had blessed by his parish priest in advance). He published a few extracts from it in his lifetime - first in Saint Petersburg, in Russian, and then in Paris, in the original French. The complete manuscript is, however, lost, and while four-fifths of the text survives in something approaching Potocki's final text, the other portions had to be retranslated into French from a Polish translation made in 1847). This is probably what delayed the first complete edition of his book until 1989.

I bought my copy in Brussels, hot off the press, and promptly started to read it (I guess what attracted me was the pattern of nested stories within a complex frame, so like the Oulipo-ian fictions of Georges Perec, whose Life, A User's Manual (1978) I'd also recently discovered). There was, however, an error in my copy - a missing line (or lines) on p.403.

I had to wait till the second edition of the French text, in 1991, before I was able to fill it in. It turned out to consist of just one word: "parts".


[Potocki: Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse (1989): 403]

The passage (spoken by the Wandering Jew, one of the innumerable storytellers in the book) translates more or less as follows:

At this time, the Essenes had already formed their bizarre association. They had no wives, and their goods were held in common: on all sides, one could see nothing but new religions, mixtures of Judaism and Zoroastrianism, mixtures of Sabianism and Platonism, and above all lots of astrology. The ancient religions built themselves up with pieces from everywhere.

The missing word comes on p.403 of a book written almost two centuries before the appearance of its first edition. Four and three make seven (just that weekend I'd been discussing the mystic associations of the number seven with a group of students, à propos of the seven gates of the Underworld traversed by the goddess Ishtar).

The passage comes from the 36th day of a story which extends over 66 days (allegedly written down by its narrator, Alphonse van Worden, in 1769, thirty years after the events described, and then sealed in an iron box form which it is extracted by a French soldier at the siege of Saragossa in 1809). 3 and 6 make nine, another number of mystic efficacy (three trinities, etc. etc.)

Hard to say what it all means (if anything), but suffice it to say that mysteries are all around us ... I hope all these omens promise good fortune and not bad. Not for nothing did I put down my religion as "irrational superstition" in the last census!