Red Mole & the Romance of Alan Brunton

Martin Edmond: Bus Stops on the Moon (2020)

This morning (16/7/23), the Stuff news site posted an article listing three "unmissable Kiwi docos" at this year's New Zealand International Film Festival. One of the three is award-winning documentarist Annie Goldson's latest film Red Mole: A Romance, which will be premiered there:

Red Mole: A Romance explores the origins, performances, personalities and fate of Red Mole, an experimental theatre troupe that took young NZ by storm in the 1970s. Red Mole was founded by poet Alan Brunton, ex-University of Auckland English Department, along with Sally Rodwell his partner in art and life. The two assembled a talented group of performers and musicians around them. An indefinable genre of poetry, dance, mask, fire-eating and rock music, Red Mole appeared everywhere from camping grounds to the Opera House. The troupe reached heights with its satirical cabaret at Carmen’s Balcony and the apocalyptic performances based on Brunton’s poetic scripts. Red Mole left Aotearoa for New York City at their peak where they received some acclaim until the demands of the city led to its core fragmenting. Red Mole: A Romance is both a social history and a poignant personal story told in part by Ruby Brunton, Alan and Sally’s daughter, herself a talented poet and performer. It draws on an extraordinary archive of scripts, videos, music, photographs, posters and more.

You can find a full list of Festival venues here, and - for those of us based in Tāmaki Makaurau - a full list of the films which will be on offer locally.

Joe Bleakley: Red Mole at Coney Island

Red Mole was, I must confess, rather before my time. My own acquaintance with the mercurial Alan Brunton came later on, when he'd returned to Wellington and was busy with his publishing imprint Bumper Books. I've written more about that here.

Alan Brunton (1946-2002)

This new film seems very apposite, then, coming as it does hard on the heels of Martin Edmond's fascinating Red Mole memoir Bus Stops on the Moon (2020), pictured above.

I have watched the film of Red Mole's production of City of Night, Brunton's wildly eccentric adaptation of Aeschylus's Oresteia, though, so I do have some idea of what they were capable of!

Lord Galaxy's Travelling Players (1970s)

For anyone interested in NZ poetry or theatre, it would clearly be crazy to miss this film.

brief #28: Alan Brunton (October 2003)

Scrolling back through my own archives, I find that I've reviewed three of Alan Brunton's books over the years: Fq (2003); Grooves of Glory (2005); and his selected poems Beyond the Ohlala Mountains (2013), as well as editing a special Brunton issue of the alt lit journal brief (#28, 2003).

Ave atque vale, Alan & Sally - you're both still sorely missed.

Michele Leggott & Martin Edmond, ed.: Beyond the Ohlala Mountains (2013)

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Alan Brunton (26/10/2002)

Alan Brunton
(1946-2002)

Select Bibliography
[from my collection]

Poetry:


1. Black and White Anthology. Taylors Mistake: Hawk Press, 1976.
2. [with Sally Rodwell] Day for a Daughter. Wellington: Untold Books, 1989.
3. Slow Passes: 1978-88. Introduction by Peter Simpson. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1991.
4. Romaunt of Glossa: A Saga. Wellington: Bumper Books, 1998.
5. Moonshine. Wellington: Bumper Books, 1998.
6. Ecstasy. Wellington: Bumper Books, 2001.
7. Fq. Wellington: Bumper Books, 2002.
8. Beyond the Ohlala Mountains: Poems 1968-2002. Ed. Michele Leggott & Martin Edmond. Pokeno: Titus Books, 2013.

Performance:


9. A Red Mole Sketch Book. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1989.
10. Grooves of Glory: Three Performance Texts. Wellington: Bumper Books, 2004.

Prose:


11. Years Ago Today: Language & Performance, 1969. New Zealand Cultural Studies. Wellington: Bumper Books, 1997.

Edited:


12. [with Murray Edmond & Michele Leggott] Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960-1975. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2000.
13. The Brian Bell Reader. Wellington: Bumper Books, 2001.

Video:


14. Heaven’s Cloudy Smile: Two Poets Go for a Walk, dir. Sally Rodwell – with Alan Brunton & Michele Leggott. Wellington: GG Films / Red Mole, 1998. Video Cassette.
15. Red Mole’s City of Night, dir. Alan Brunton & Sally Rodwell. Wellington: Red Mole, 2000. Video cassette.

Secondary:


16. Alan Brunton: Author Page. Auckland: nzepc, 2004.
17. brief #28 (Oct 2003): Alan Brunton. Ed. Jack Ross. Auckland: The Writers Group, 2003.
18. Celebrating Alan Brunton: A Concert and Book Launch for Fq. Auckland: Friday 6 December, 2002.
19. Edmond, Martin. Bus Stops on the Moon: Red Mole Days 1974-1980. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2020.
20. Howard, David, & Michele Leggott, ed. "'When You Give So Much’: Some Recollections of Alan Brunton." Auckland: nzepc, 2002.

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David Howard & Michele Leggott, ed.: 'When You Give So Much' (2002)

Under which king?

[Stephen King: 11/22/63 (due out November 2011)]

Under which king, Bezonian?
Speak, or die ...

So the ranting, bombastic soldier Pistol to poor Justice Shallow in Henry IV, Part Two. I don't want to put you on the spot to quite the same extent, but the other day, when I found myself pre-ordering various novels online, I began to wonder when and how it is that an author crosses over from a subject in which one takes a general interest to an indispensable, habit-forming drug.

I realised that had happened with Stephen King when I ceased to be able to wait for his books to appear in paperback (let alone in second-hand shops) before I bought and devoured them. I think that happened somewhere around the time of Needful Things (1991), a good twenty years ago. I have to say that the Master has seldom disappointed, though there have undoubtedly been some ups and downs along the way.

So it's not surprising that I would want to guarantee my copy of his latest tome well ahead of the crowds (and, given what appears to be the imminent demise of High Street bookselling as we know it, that I should end up doing so online).

What did surprise me was the discovery that there were some other writers who had imperceptibly slipped into the same status for me. I find him a bit frustrating at times, but there's just something so very congenial about the literary territory of kooky occultism and historical conspiracy theories Umberto Eco inhabits, that I found I couldn't resist the lure of his latest:

[Umberto Eco: The Prague Cemetery (due out November 2011)]

I mean, seriously: Prague? A cemetery in Prague? Nineteenth-century craziness instead of his usual medieval and renaissance craziness? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Umberto Eco? What's not to like?

That one went on the list, too. As did:

[Haruki Murakami: IQ84 (due out October 2011)]

Again, I have slightly mixed feelings about Haruki Murakami. The fact remains that I appear to have collected all of his books. I've seldom bought one new before, but the prospect of a 1,000-odd-page epic did rather attract me, I must confess. Even though I don't profess to understand him, I find myself compulsively reading and rereading him almost against my will. I do have my theories about what it's all about, mind you, but I seem to be happy to keep on reading in a state almost of suspended animation -- a little like the heroine of Sputnik Sweetheart, perhaps ...

An American, a European, and a Japanese: all novelists, each putting out another big fat tome later this year - more or less in time for my birthday and the beginning of summer vacation ... I can almost taste the suspense.

It did make me think, though. Who else is on my list? Well, just to continue the rollcall of global regions, there's my favourite Latin-American novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa:

[Mario Vargas Llosa: The Dream of the Celt (due out 2012)]

This latest novel of his hasn't been translated yet, and so it won't actually appear till next year. I did use to try and force myself through each of his new books in the original, but now I'm content to wait for the English version. This one is all about Roger Casement and his adventures in the Congo and on the Amazon, I gather, so I don't want to miss any of the niceties through my rough-and-ready Spanish.

I know that Mario has a lot of critics who find him a bit dubious politically, but I do think he thoroughly deserved that Nobel Prize they finally awarded him last year. The sheer scale of his achievement is pretty impressive, and it's hard to think of any of his contemporaries (Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Carlos Fuentes? certainly not Isabel Allende ...), who's still writing at the same level of intensity and commitment.

What about the Antipodes? Of course I have many favourite New Zealand authors whose work I follow. When it comes to snapping up each book the moment it appears, though, I guess the one who springs to mind is Martin Edmond. I talked in the previous post about his latest, Dark Night Walking with McCahon (2011). Here's one from last year, though. This is the second of two books of poetic prose he's put out (so far) through Dunedin's Kilmog Press:

[Martin Edmond: Hypnogeography (2010)]

Nor is it just novelists and prose-writers I follow. Here's the new book from one of my favourite poets, Canadian classical scholar (and all-around extremist) Anne Carson:

[Anne Carson: NOX (2010)]

The book's appearance - a long, corrugated, paper scroll in a hard cardboard case - is almost as eccentric as its contents. She's long since become an indispensable writer for me.

Who else? Here's another poet I find it impossible to ignore, British "laureate of grot" Peter Reading:

[Peter Reading: Vendage Tardive (2010)]

Reading has shifted his principal target somewhat from bourgeois complacency and greed to an even more extreme set of Philippics against environmental destruction. He's a very angry man. Long may he prosper.

Of course there are far more names I could mention, but I've tried to confine myself to those for whom there's no question that I'm going to get the latest book. I'm possibly even keener on Paul Muldoon than on Peter Reading, but I don't find myself rushing out to buy every one of the former's publications. An element of selectivity (as is only right!) enters into my relations with most authors, I'm happy to say.

Nor (while I'm on the subject) do I buy each new critical book of critical prose that appears by Umberto Eco or Mario Vargas Llosa. I do find I have to get each of their novels, though ... whether I like it or not.

Late Poetry Day Event at Titirangi

Lopdell House Gallery
[Photograph: The Woods B & B]

I guess the idea of these posts is more to advertise things in advance than to conduct subsequent post-mortems, but I can't help wanting to spread the word about the lovely little publications associated with these Lopdell House readings.

This is the third year in a row that Lesley Smith at the Gallery has been printing handmade covers for chapbooks of poems by the various readers at their Poetry Day celebrations (albeit a week late on this occasion). The contents are selected by her and MC Ila Selwyn, and sold at the bargain price of $10 each - $20 for a package of three at the reading on Friday (29th July).

And here they are, in reverse order of publication:

• Selwyn, Ila, & Lesley Smith, ed. the winding stair: Poems by Rosetta Allan, Murray Edmond, Siobhan Harvey, Alice Hooton, Michele Leggott, Judith McNeil, Bob Orr, Alistair Paterson, John Pule, Jack Ross, Ila Selwyn, Penny Somervaille, Robert Sullivan & Denys Trussell. Limited edition of 80 copies. Titirangi: Lopdell House Gallery, 2011.






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• Selwyn, Ila, & Lesley Smith, ed. Red Tendrils: Poems by Selina Tusitala Marsh, Kevin Ireland, Janet Charman, Courtney Meredith, Daniel Larsen, Mark Pirie, Ross Brighton, Raewyn Alexander, Doug Poole & Ila Selwyn. Limited edition of 110 copies. Titirangi: Lopdell House Gallery, 2010.






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• Selwyn, Ila, & Lesley Smith, ed. elusive but daring and strong: Poems by C. K. Stead, Glenn Colquhoun, Michael Stevens, Gus Simonovic, Tim Heath, Riemke Ensing, Karlo Mila, Genevieve Maclean, Renee Liang & Ila Selwyn. Limited edition of 150 copies. Titirangi: Lopdell House Gallery, 2009.

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Bronwyn and I drove out there with Michele Leggott, who was also billed to read, and we spent a most pleasant late afternoon in a nice little restaurant called Takahe across the street, until it was time to climb the winding stair to the venue for the kick-off at 7 pm. My brother Ken, who is visiting from Edinburgh, also came along to sample this strange thing called a "Poetry Reading," and professed himself much pleased with the experience.

I can't speak for myself, of course, but everyone else seemed to be in fine form. Michele has a new way of reading which involves recording her poems in advance and then playing them back to herself through an earpiece as she performs them, as she can no longer make out the largest type on even the best illuminated page. She recited her poem peri poietikes (which you can find here), and there was something absolutely magical - I thought - about the effect she produced: something Mediterranean, classical almost.

Much of our talk, earlier in the evening, had been about Martin Edmond's latest book, Dark Night Walking with McCahon, which we'd both been reading. It was a dark night, and a rainy one, and the fact that we were actually in one of Colin McCahon's old stamping grounds out west somehow added to the atmosphere of the whole event.

Edmond, Martin. Dark Night: Walking with McCahon. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2011.

For the record, I think it's a wonderful book, constructed out of St John of the Cross's "Dark Night of the Soul" poem in much the same way as Michele's essay is constructed out of her meditations on those criss-crossing Cretan bees in her own poem.

We had to leave early, unfortunately, after only ten of the fourteen poets had read. Apologies for that, but one isn't always a free agent when acting as chauffeur as well. I would happily have stayed to the end, but it wasn't to be.

I had been anticipating it as a bit of an ordeal, I must confess: so many different tasks to fulfil, agendas to anticipate, all in the one evening. As it is, though, it seemed to fall into place in the most natural and harmonious way. Thanks once more to Ila (and Lesley) for organising the reading - and the chapbook, too.

Having some experience with such matters myself, I can imagine just how much invisible work had to go on behind the scenes for the whole thing to come off. Thanks, too, to the friendly and enthusiastic Titirangi audience who make driving out there to read such a pleasure.

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M. Edmond & the Marti-verse

[Martin Edmond: The Supply Party (2009)]

You know how it is with some writers - as time goes by, and you read more and more of their books, something in them begins to add up to more than the sum of their parts? It's as if the worlds of their imagination have undergone some kind of Hegelian change into a universe - even, in certain select cases, a multi-verse (to borrow a bit of phraseology from DC comics).

I guess that's what's started to happen to me with Martin Edmond. One of the most entertaining aspects of being a magazine editor for me - first brief (2002-5), then my guest issue of Landfall (2007) - has been the chance to see (& publish) new pieces of work by Martin.

Extracts from both Chronicle of the Unsung (issues 21 (2001): 69-74 & 22 (2001): 82-88) and Luca Antara (issues 29 (2004): 33-41 & 30 (2004): 21-26) appeared in brief long before the two of them came out as books.

More to the point, though, I was privileged to include a piece from Martin's as-yet-unpublished short novel Terminus Motel in brief 27 (2003): 32-36; extracts from his White City: The Autobiography of Ernest Lalor Malley first saw the light of day in Landfall 214 - "Open House" (2007): 54-66; and Tina Shaw and I included Martin's short story 'The Temple of Baal' in our anthology of new fiction Myth of the 21st Century (Reed, 2006).

Here's a quick rundown of his work to date (or the pieces I've come across, at any rate):

Bibliography:

[Martin Edmond: The Big O Revisited (2008)]

Poetry:

• Streets of Music (1980) - winner, Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry
• Houses, Days, Skies (1988)
• The Big O revisited b/w Providence (Auckland: Soapbox Press, 2008)

[Leon Narbey, dir: Illustrious Energy (1988)]

Screenplays:

• Illustrious Energy (1988) [feature]
• The Footstep Man (1992) [feature]
• Philosophy (1997) - winner, Best Short Film, New Zealand Film Awards 1999
• Terra Nova (1998) [feature] - winner, best first film at the Montreal World Film Festival, 1998
• Earth Angel (2002) - winner, Best Screenplay at the Breakfast Film and Music Festival, 2003

[Martin Edmond: The Evolution of Mirrors (2008)]

Prose:

• The Autobiography of My Father (AUP, 1992)
• Chemical Evolution: Drugs & Art Production 1970-80 (Bumper Books, 1997)
• The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont (AUP, 1999) - finalist in the 2000 Montana Book Awards
• Fenua Imi: the Pacific in History & Imaginary (Bumper Books, 2002)
• Chronicle of the Unsung (AUP, 2004) - winner, biography category in the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards
• Ghost Who Writes. Montana Estates Essay Series. (Four Winds Press, 2004)
• Luca Antara: Passages in search of Australia (East Street Publications, 2006)
• Waimarino County & other excursions (AUP, 2007)
• The Evolution of Mirrors (Otoliths Press, 2008)

I guess the easiest way for me to summarise my views on Martin's oeuvre is simply to reprint the review I did of Waimarino County in Landfall 214:

[Martin Edmond: Waimarino County (2007)]

At the Revival Meeting

• Martin Edmond, Waimarino County and Other Excursions. Auckland: AUP, 2007. ISBN 978 1 86940 391, 240 pages, RRP $40.

I first met Martin Edmond in Devonport, on the night of Alan Brunton’s memorial concert in December 2002. A group of us were booked to do a cabaret-style performance at a café as part of the Massey Gothic Conference (also on that weekend). We were planning to speed on over the bridge afterwards to catch the dying minutes of the concert. As it turned out, the venue we’d been booked to perform in had – quite unexpectedly – gone out of business, so we ended up being able to attend the whole of that baroque, extraordinary, farewell celebration.

From the moment we met, I felt as if I’d known Martin for years. It’s true that we’d been corresponding for a while – over his contributions to brief magazine, which I was then editing, and also various matters to do with Brunton’s Bumper Books, the publishing arm of Red Mole. Meeting people you feel you know through letters is not always entirely satisfactory, though. All sorts of things you hardly notice on paper can suddenly rear up when print converts to flesh.

Which is a rather roundabout way of saying that we got on well, and have continued to get on well. What’s more, the manner of our meeting was a characteristic serendipity. I’ve never had a conversation with Martin Edmond which hasn’t involved him filling me in on some piece of arcane lore about a little-known writer, or place, or iconic event.

In one sense, then, I’m the ideal reader for Martin’s collection of essays, Waimarino County & Other Excursions. Leafing through it is a lot like the experience of meeting the man himself. Witty, urbane, well-informed – but not in the distant, old-world way that those words would appear to imply. No, Martin’s writing never eschews emotional involvement with the matters he is describing. There’s hardly an essay here which sounds as if it was constructed to order. The subject matter is always close to his heart.

I guess, for me, the most striking example is “The Hallelujah Chorus.” At the centre of this essay there’s a terrifying account of his visit to a revival meeting:

And as these sinners declared themselves, the chanting in the theatre rose in pitch and fervour and intensity until there came above the thunderous chorus a weird, high ululation from the stalls on the front left-hand side. I had never heard people speaking in tongues before. Glossolalia sounds like someone yodelling so hard their uvula goes into spasm. It reminded me of a time I heard a flock of sheep mustering at dusk on a Lands and Survey block out the back of Stratford ... [20]

I was there! Not at that particular meeting, of course, but many similar ones (Billy Graham, the Church of Christ, the Assembly of God). The only difference is that I would have been part of that flock yodelling strangely as the spirit of Pentecost came down on us …

Praise the Lord the Holy Ghost has descended upon us in Tongues of Flame! the Preacher screeched above the clamour of the Believers, doubling and redoubling their efforts. Then he began to call particular people out of the crowd. Suddenly I heard him say: There is a young man of sixteen or seventeen years (I had just turned seventeen) and he is sitting on the right-hand side of the cinema (I was) two thirds of the way towards the back (exactly!) and be is wondering whether to come forward now and give his soul to Jesus (I wasn’t, but, hell …). Let us all now raise our voices to the heavens and ask the Lord to give strength to this young man so that be may come and join us...

That’s precisely it. He’s put his finger on the mastery of it, the curious effectiveness of those techniques of mass persuasion. How many times have I sat fidgeting in the middle row, sure that I was the one who was being singled out for attention, sure that this was it, that tonight was the only chance I would ever have to escape perdition?

And I did feel a powerful force calling me. I was young and uncertain and the exorcism of possible demons from the chaos of my awakening mind did for a moment seem desirable, even seductive. Surely there was no harm in it? It was certainly impressive to see old people getting out of their wheelchairs and tottering forward to lean on the edge of the stage.

An opportune bit of squabbling saves Martin in the nick of time – “Any chance I would go forward to be saved blew away in that poor kid’s outraged, helpless sobbing” [21]. What impresses me, though, is that he is prepared to admit that the opportunity was there, that he might have given in.

Mind you, I doubt it would have taken. Martin Edmond was born to be a flâneur, a Baudelairean dandy exploring the byways of the metropolis (whether it be Auckland, Wellington or Sydney). There’s another part of him that is in deadly earnest, though. The strength of his writing is that he is able to give equal weight to both sides.

Richard Ellmann’s biography of Oscar Wilde named the two warring impulses within his hero after the two dominant intellectual influences of that time, the late nineteenth century: on the one hand, the amoral aestheticism of Walter Pater, on the other, the moral earnestness of John Ruskin. In Martin’s case I’d be tempted to call the two Ohakune and Alan Brunton.

Does that sound frivolous? It isn’t meant to. The Martin Edmond of Autobiography of My Father, of the childhood portions of Chronicle of the Unsung, of the “Autobiographies” section of the book we’re examining here, is a man profoundly, wistfully in love with his own past – with the complex intensities of youth and adolescence in that little town on the Grand Trunk Line. He’s the poet of that region, in fact – more alert to its contradictions and diversities even than that near neighbour of his, the Gothic novelist Ronald Hugh Morriesson.

And yet there’s also the Martin who ran away – almost literally – to join the circus, who followed the mercurial Alan Brunton on tour with Red Mole, abandoning the academic gravy train of Victoria University to do so. This is the Martin who writes so lovingly about Cavafy and Pessoa, who understands the attraction of that shifting signifier of international modernism, the heteronym.

Why are Martin’s books so challenging in form? Why does he resist easy genre identification, that secure place in the bookshop racks? It’s cost him, that’s for sure. Anyone straddling the uneasy frontiers of fiction and non-fiction, whose work might equally well be shelved under autobiography, travel writing or cultural commentary is liable to the suspicion of lazy readers. Praise, yes – there’s been a lot of praise of the originality of Martin’s work., but it’s usually (paradoxically) coupled with the name of some other writer whose example he is implied to be imitating: W. G. Sebald is the most obvious example, but recently Thomas de Quincey has been cited as a strong precedent (this despite the fact that Martin assures me that he has only the most tangential familiarity even with the original Opium Eater essays).

It’s hard for me to imagine any reader not finding something to their liking in the four sections of this book: ‘Autobiographies’; ‘Meditations’ (on subjects ranging from the Rosetta Stone to Alan Brunton); ‘Illusions’ (prose poems and dreams, mostly from his online blog); and ‘Voices’, published previously under the title Ghost Who Writes in Lloyd Jones’s excellent little Montana essay Series. Nor do I think I’m unique in finding virtually all of it to my liking. In fact, I can’t think of a book which has beguiled me as much since I first picked up Borges’ Labyrinths when I was a teenager.

The idea of the blog, the online diary, is another important component of Martin’s collection. He began (as I understand it) with the idea of starting a new blog for each new book project, but they appear to have evolved into a more complex symmetry.

There’s Luca Antara (“... who knows what other travellers might not have set out with a wild surmise for these shores? Looking perhaps for Luca Antara; perhaps just for the day after tomorrow”), described as being the work of a “schizoid antipodean.” That one has been running since 2004.

Then there’s dérives (started in 2005), which began with prose poems and reflections, but has now settled down to a portrait of the seedier side of cab driving in Sydney.

White City (begun in 2006), now a compendium of dreams and dream essays, was presumably intended to accompany Martin’s Ern Malley memoir / novel (accessible, so far, only in extracts such as the one included in this issue of Landfall).

No doubt Martin foresees a date at which he can move over to the new blog, Fetchers (started in July 2007) At present it’s confined to the single optimistic statement: “It’s a happy day today,” but there’s no doubt a lot more to come.

[The funny thing for me about this particular paragraph from the review is that "Fetchers" turned out to be the name of an imaginary dog, whose adventures in various parts of the world are being charted online by Martin's kids. I did think at the time the tone of some of the entries was a little outré even for him ...]

Raw material for the books? Undoubtedly. But the mere fact of being able to make your random jottings available online within minutes of writing them has an inevitable influence of the nature of that writing. It’s hard to see how writers can continue to ignore the possibilities of instantaneous communication – the barrage of comments and cross-references possible through hypertext.

In the present case, it’s fascinating to see how they’ve stolen into the texture of Martin’s book, along with more considered pieces from the nzepc, brief, and various other anthologies and projects, to give us the closest thing to an anatomy of the life of a twenty-first century writer I can readily imagine.

So I guess the reason I’d really advise to buy this book is not simply as an entry pass to the world of Martin Edmond, but also as a cartography of where we are, right now, at the bottom of the world, in the complex of world culture.

[Landfall 214 (2007): 187-90.]

Now there's a new addition to the canon, and thus to the labyrinthine complexities - already, one would have thought, quite sufficiently baroque and strange - of what I'd like to refer to from now on as the "Marti-verse."

Martin's new book The Supply Party, which has just appeared from East Street Publications, the publishers of Luca Antara, charts the adventures of the German scholar and naturalist Ludwig Becker, whose twin careers - as a contributor to Shakespeare iconography, and official artist on the ill-fated Burke & Wills expedition - have never really been clearly juxtaposed before.

I'm looking forward to reading it just the moment I can lay my hands on a copy. Now that Philip K. Dick is well and truly dead, and there doesn't seem much hope of more posthumous books to flesh out his bizarre, prolific cosmos, who else is left to feed my addiction to the strange new worlds of cold hard print?

Martin Edmond at Massey Albany (27/8)

Atrium Building
level 3 common room
Massey Albany

Wednesday 27th August
3 to 4 pm

We’ve invited Martin Edmond to come and give a reading / q & a session on campus as part of our regular seminar series.

Entrance free. Please do come along if you're curious to hear him. It's mid-semester break, so there should be plenty of parking.

Martin Edmond’s latest books Waimarino County and Other Excursions (AUP, 2007) and Luca Antara: Passages in Search of Australia (Adelaide: East Street, 2006) were both nominated for Montana awards, a prize he won in 2004 with Chronicle of the Unsung.

His work in the genre of (so-called) “Creative Non-fiction” is taught in our Massey Life Writing and Travel Writing courses, but he’s also an award-winning poet and fiction-writer. He’ll be reading from his latest book, The Evolution of Mirrors (Otoliths Press, 2008). For further details on that book, please go here.



The other dates in his NZ tour are:

Thursday 21 August, 6pm, Wellington
Writers Read: Martin Edmond
Level D, Room 16, Block 5
Entrance A, (access through "The Pyramid")
Massey University Wellington Campus
Wallace Street
Chair: Ingrid Horrocks.
RSVP: to Jo Fink (j.w.fink@massey.ac.nz or 04 801 5799 x 6696) by Wednesday 20 August.

Friday 22 August, 7pm, Palmerston North
Massey University's Writer Read series
Guest Writer: Martin Edmond
Free entry
Palmerston North City Library
4 The Square

Thursday 28 August, 2.30pm, Auckland
Mollie: On the Track of the Ohakune Elephant 1957-2008
Michele Leggott, Martine Edmond, Mandy Harper, Mary Sewall conduct an afternoon of talks and readings about Mollie, the circus elephant whose death in 1957 drew the attention of zoologist and curator Barney McGregor at Auckland University College. For more information contact Mary Sewall, m.sewall@auckland.ac.nz or 373 7599 x 83758.
Old Biology Building (McGregor 1 Seminar Rm)
University of Auckland

Thursday 28 August, 5.30pm, Auckland
Book Launch
Jack Ross launches Martin Edmond's The Big O Revisited (Soapbox Press). Register attendance with Laurel Walker, i.walker@auckland.ac.nz
Main Foyer
Old Biology Building
University of Auckland

Obviously the last of those dates is of most interest to me. I'll be launching Martin's first book of poems in almost twenty years (Streets of Music won the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 1980, and was followed by Houses, Days, Skies (1988). Michael Steven has done a wonderful job as publisher and designer of this deluxe book of travel poems.

It's a limited edition, though, so be sure to get in quick to buy a copy. I've been scouring the second-hand bookshops for years for those two early poetry collections of Martin's.

Ways of Getting to Work

[Jason Mecier, Patricia Highsmith]

Her favourite technique to ease herself into the right frame of mind for work was to sit on her bed surrounded by cigarettes, ashtray, matches, a mug of coffee, a doughnut and an accompanying saucer of sugar. She had to avoid any sense of discipline and make the act of writing as pleasurable as possible. Her position, she noted, would be almost foetal and, indeed, her intention was to create, she said, 'a womb of her own.'

Andrew Wilson, Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. 2003 (London: Bloomsbury, 2004) p. 123.

My brother insists that no-one addresses him first thing in the morning, for fear of destroying his carefully-fostered aesthetic dream-state.

I don't go quite that far, but I do find that a lot of undisciplined playing around on the computer is required before I can really get down to doing anything. It's very important not to identify it as "work," I find.

What about the rest of you?



NB: This is in response to an interesting post of Martin Edmond's at Luca Antara.

This is what you do:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people: (soon ...)