Michele 2021

Michele Leggott with Olive

Wikipedia informs me that there's now a specific term for a Festschrift compiled and published by electronic means on the internet. It's called a Webfestschrift.

They also state that this German word has been naturalised so thoroughly into English that it no longer requires italics. But what exactly does it mean? I've defined it, in context, as a "write of celebration" - a series of essays or (as in this case) poems and short memoirs designed to mark the retirement of a great writer or scholar.

Since January I've been working - with the help of many friends and contributors - on a Festschrift to celebrate the life and work of New Zealand poet Michele Leggott on the occasion of her retirement from the University of Auckland. That site went live yesterday, on Michele's birthday.

Here's a link to it, along with a table of contents:

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Michele Leggott: DIA (1994)

Michele 2021
A Birthday Festschrift for Michele Joy Leggott

(January 19 - October 18, 2021)

Jack Ross: Preface: October 18, 2021
About Michele


1. John Adams: Michele, reading
2. Rachel Blau DuPlessis: Dateline: Michele, in eight moments
3. Pam Brown: mezzo cento
4. Ruby Brunton: And Still the Earth is Round - Poem for Michele
5. Janet Charman: haiku
6. Lynley Edmeades: Listening In
7. Frances Edmond: For Michele’s festschrift
8. Martin Edmond: Michele Leggott
9. Murray Edmond: After Gilgamesh: for michele
10. Sue Fitchett: Homage to Michele Leggott who cured a comma addiction
11. Paula Green: out of the dark
12. Bernadette Hall: on adding up the loves of our lives
13. David Howard: VIEW FINDER
14. Bronwyn Lloyd: Adventures in the Archives
15. Therese Lloyd: Regift
16. Cilla McQueen: Poet-to-Poet
17. John Newton: Big Projects for Poetry (& Criticism)
18. Tim Page: Michele Festschrift
19. Mary Paul: Rā whānau ki a koe, Michele
20. Chris Price: Works and Days
21. Jack Ross: The Gulf
22. Lisa Samuels: Joy Division
23. Tracey Slaughter: is there a goddess for this?
24. Penny Somervaille: Dear Michele
25. Helen Sword: Walking with Michele
26. Fredrika van Elburg: Working with Michele
27. Ann Vickery: Floating Largesse
28. Susannah Whaley: Festschrift
29. Michael Whittaker: My path to Michele
30. Joanne Wilkes: Michele Leggott

Michele Leggott: Heartland (2014)

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It's been great fun working on this project. By its very nature it had to be hush-hush, and I was very happy to learn from Michele yesterday that we had indeed succeeded in keeping it secret. Even people she was in touch with every day had managed to avoid dropping any hints.

Of course, it contains contributions by only a few of the people who would like to celebrate and remember Michele's influence on them. In that sense it's a start rather than a full-stop to a consideration of her career to date. Now she's retired from Academia, there'll be that much more time to work on her own projects and interests exclusively in future!

I hope you enjoy browsing through the various pieces we've included. The site includes a pictorial breakdown of Michele's publications (both print and online) which may come as quite a surprise to some. She's really had an extraordinary influence on many, many aspects of New Zealand culture over the past three or four decades.

There's certainly space for a more complete listing of her articles and shorter pieces, but I leave that for someone else in the future. This project was intended from the start to be more personal and less academic in focus, and hopefully that will make it more accessible to poetry-lovers everywhere.

Michele Leggott: Mezzaluna: Selected Poems (2020)

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Tara McLeod: 8 Poems by New Zealand Poets (2019)

8 Poems by New Zealand Poets 2019
Designed by Tara McLeod (Auckland: The Pear Tree Press, 2019)

Yesterday I received my two author's copies of Tara McLeod's beautiful new chapbook 8 Poems by New Zealand Poets. It's the fourth in the series, earlier editions having appeared in 2014, 2017 and 2018:

8 Poems 2018

Eight Poems 2017

8 Poems 2014

Each book is billed as containing "8 new poems from contemporary NZ poets." It's quite a stellar list. To date the following poets have appeared in the series:

2014:

1. Riemke Ensing
2. Brian Gregory
3. David Gregory
4. Judith Haswell
5. David Howard
6. Peter Olds
7. Paul Thompson
8. Denys Trussell

2017:

9. Riemke Ensing
10. Brian Gregory
11. Judith Haswell
12. John Mitchell
13. Michael O’Leary
14. Rachel Scott
15. Paul Thompson
16. Denys Trussell

2018:

17. Glenn Colquhoun
18. Riemke Ensing
19. Brian Gregory
20. Rachel McAlpine
21. Daryl McLaren
22. Karl Stead
23. Paul Thompson
24. Richard von Sturmer

Here's my own poem, 'The Oceanic Feeling,' from the latest volume:

And here's a list, in order, of all the poets included:

1. Michele Leggott
2. Elizabeth Brooke-Carr
3. Alan Loney
4. Michael Harlow
5. Linda Gill
6. Jack Ross
7. Gregory O'Brien
8. Paula Green
9. Riemke Ensing

Pretty good company to keep, I'm sure you'll agree!

I guess what's most striking about the books is the inventiveness with which Tara has come up with a different design for every poem: with bold colours and variegated font choices to complement the mood of each of them.

I couldn't be happier with the Pasifika look of the title and layout of my own poem, and I'm sure all the other poets feel the same. When Tara showed me a proof of what he had in mind in his studio in Orewa, I was quite blown away. For someone as addicted as I am to handprinting and poetry posters and all those fascinating surrounds to the classic slim volume of verse, it was manna in the wilderness.

I won't disguise the fact: the books are expensive. If you live near a library with a good rare books or special collections section - and which of us doesn't? - you should be able to get your hands on a copy, though (albeit, probably, with white gloves on).

It's always a thrill to collaborate with a real artist, and it's nice to know that Tara is beginning to get the credit he deserves, with a major new book - Tara McLeod: A Typographer's Journey - on his work as a designer, printer and sculptor due out from Lesley Smith's Katsura Press later this year.

The Pear Tree Press

Oh, and why are there nine poets rather than eight in this particular volume? Through an act of kindness on the artist's part, actually. Elizabeth Brooke-Carr was going to be included in the 2020 volume, but the state of her health made it seem increasingly likely that she'd never live to see it.

Accordingly, Riemke Ensing offered to bow out to give space for Elizabeth in this book instead. Touched by this gesture, Tara decided to include Riemke's poem anyway - there's a note explaining the circumstances beside it.

Elizabeth Brooke-Carr died in her Dunedin home on the 3rd of September, 2019. I don't know if she was able to see her poem in print before she died, but at least the rest of us can.

Entitled 'All that remains is pressed flat,' it's a very moving account of a funeral. Was it Harold Bloom who remarked that elegy was the mode in which poets almost always succeed?

Tara McLeod

Michele Leggott: Vanishing Points Launch

Michele Leggott: Vanishing Points (2017)

It’s an optical amusement, a punctured surface letting light pour through holes cut out of the picture. Moon, army tents and the windows of houses and St Mary’s church glow or flicker with luminance. Between them move women and children as well as soldiers. Steamers, a brig and a schooner ride on the moonlit sea. Part and not part of the scene is the artist’s son, who lies three days buried in the churchyard at the foot of the hill where his father sits sketching the arrival of imperial troops. Now walk away from the painting when it is lit up and see how light falls into the world on this side of the picture surface. Is this what the artist meant by his cut outs? Is this the meaning of every magic lantern slide?.

In all the excitement of Labour weekend, don’t miss the launch of Michele Leggot’s luminous new poetry collection on Tuesday evening!

7–8.30pm, Tuesday 24 October 2017
Devonport Library, 2 Victoria Road, Devonport, Auckland
Koha appreciated.

We had an excellent time on Tuesday night. The Devonport Library Associates once again gave us a rousing welcome: Jan Mason and Paul Beechman gave the opening speeches, and Ian Free presented Michele and myself with some lovely bottles of bubbly. Sam Ellworthy was there to represent Auckland University Press, her publisher, and closed off the evening with a few words.

Tim Page did his usual brilliant job as sound-master, as well as creating a wonderful animation of the book's cover image, Edwin Harris's 1860 painting 'New Plymouth under Siege.' The original has little holes in it which look like twinkling lights when illuminated from the other side. Tim got us as close to that as one can imagine with his screen projection of this strange, haunting, rather Gothic work:

Edwin Harris: ‘New Plymouth under Siege – 40th Regiment, Marsland Hill, Taranaki 1860’ (3 August 1860)

My job was twofold: first to introduce Michele and her book, and secondly to interview her about it. it's always a bit difficult to make these setpiece 'conversations' sound at all spontaneous, but various people told me afterwards that they thought we'd carried it off.

Michele really didn't know what I was going to ask in advance (I hardly did myself), but she certainly had a lot to say in response. My idea was to try and anticipate what questions people might have on looking into the book, and to try to cover as many as possible of those in advance. Here we are in full cry:

photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd

Of course there was also a reading. Michele read four sections from the closing sequence, 'Figures in the Distance,' immediately after my launch speech. Here she is reading, with the help of her ipod:

photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd

I was in two minds whether or not to include the text of my speech. It's hard to recover the spontaneity of a live event, but as long as you bear in mind that it is written to be spoken, not read, I don't suppose there's any harm in it:

Well, needless to say, I felt very flattered when Michele Leggott asked me to launch her latest book of poems, Vanishing Points. Flattered and somewhat terrified. It’s true that I’ve been reading and collecting her work for well over 20 years, and I’ve been teaching it at Massey University for almost a decade now, but I still felt quite a weight of responsibility pressing down on my shoulders!

One thing that Michele’s poetry is not, is simple. It’s hard to take anything in it precisely at face value: what seems like (and is) a beautiful lyrical phrase may be a borrowing from an unsung local poet – a tangle of Latin names can be a reference to an obsolete star-chart with pinpricks for the various constellations.

The first time I reviewed one of her books, as far as I can see, in 1999, I ended by saying “the reading has only begun.” At the time, I suspect I was just looking for a good line to finish on, but there was a truth there I didn’t yet suspect. Certainly, I’ve been reading in that book, and all her others, ever since.

But how should we read this particular book? “Read! Just keep reading. Understanding comes of itself,” was the answer German poet Paul Celan gave to critics who called his work obscure or difficult. With that in mind, I’ve chosen two touchstones from the volume I’m sure you’re all holding in your hands, or (if not) are planning to purchase presently.

The first is a phrase from the American poet Emily Dickinson, referred to in the notes at the back of the book: “If ever you need to say something … tell it slant.” [123] The second is a quote from the great, blind Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges: “I made a decision. I said to myself: since I have lost the beloved world of appearances, I must create something else.” [35]

With these two phrases in mind, I’d like you to look at the cover of Michele’s book. It’s a painting of the just-landed Imperial troops, camped near New Plymouth in August 1860. The wonderful thing about it is the way the light of the campfires shines through the painting: little holes cut in the canvas designed to give the illusion of life and movement.

“War feels to me an oblique place,” wrote the reclusive New England poet Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson in February 1863, at one of the darkest points of the American Civil War. Higginson, a militant Abolitionist, was the Colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first officially authorized black regiment in American history. He was, in short, a very important and admirable man in his own right. Perhaps it’s unfair of posterity to have largely forgotten him except as the recipient of these letters from one of America’s greatest poets.

New Zealand’s Land Wars of the 1860s may have been on a much smaller scale, but they were just as terrifying and devastating for the people of Taranaki – both Māori and Pakeha – in the early 1860s. In her sequence “The Fascicles,” Michele transforms a real distant relative into a poet in the Dickinson tradition. Just as Emily Dickinson left nearly 1800 poems behind her when she died in 1886, many collected in tidy sewn-up booklets or fascicles, so Dorcas (or Dorrie) Carrell “in Lyttelton, daughter of a soldier, wife of a gardener” [75] provides a pretext for “imagining a nineteenth-century woman writing on the outskirts of empire as bitter racial conflict erupts around her.” [123]

There’s an amazing corollary to this attempt to “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” (in Dickinson’s words). Having repurposed one of her family as a war poet, Michele was fortunate enough to discover the traces of a real poet, Emily Harris, the daughter of the Edwin Harris who painted the picture of Taranaki at war on the wall over there, whose collected works so far consist of copious letters and diaries, but also two very interesting poems. “Emily and her Sisters,” the seventh of the sequences collected here, tells certain aspects of that story.

It’s nothing but the strictest truth to say, then (as Michele does at the back of the book), that one should:

walk away from the painting when it is lit up and see how light falls into the world on this side of the picture surface. Is this what the artist meant by his cut-outs? Is this the meaning of every magic lantern slide? [124]

I despair of doing justice to the richness of this new collection of Michele’s – to my mind, her most daring and ambitious work since the NZ Book Award-winning DIA in 1994. There are eight sequences here, with a strong collective focus on the life and love-giving activities which go on alongside what Shakespeare calls in Othello “the big wars”: children, family, eating, painting, swimming. One of my favourites among them is the final sequence, “Figures in the Distance,” which offers a series of insights into the world of Michele’s guide-dog Olive – take a bow, Olive – amongst other family members, many of whom, I’m glad to see, have been able to come along here tonight.

This is a radiant, complex, yet very approachable book. It is, in its own way, I’m quite convinced, a masterpiece. We have a great poet among us. You’d be quite crazy to leave here tonight without a copy of Vanishing Points.

At this point, then, I’d like to hand over to Michele, who will read some pieces from the sequence “Figures in the Distance." After that the two of us will have a short conversation about the book, and I’ll try and ask, on your behalf, some of the questions I think you’d like to have answered about how it all connects and how the various parts of it came about.

photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd

nzepc six pack sound #02

Six Pack Sound

I have to say that I was pretty chuffed to see that the second set of "six pack" recordings was up on the nzepc. Why? Well, because one of them is by me, of course. But no, there are plenty of other reasons to feel excited by this initiative by the unfailingly inventive Michele Leggott, with her able collaborators Tim Page and Brian Flaherty.

Once again, the old jostles with the new, the "established" with the up-and-coming, in this interesting selection of six poets.

Last year it was Murray Edmond, Ya-Wen Ho, Alice Miller, Tessa Priest, Vaughan Rapatahana, and Steven Toussaint.

That is, admittedly, a pretty difficult act to follow, but this year Michele and co. have come up with Stephanie (the artist formerly known as Will) Christie, performance artists Makyla Curtis & Hannah Owen-Wright, Catalyst's Doc Drumheller, Fast-talking P.I. Selina Tusitala Marsh - me - and AUP poet Sam Sampson.

And there's some pretty trippy stuff up there by the various members of the gang. Go on, have a listen - you know you want to.

Jack Ross: Ice Road Trucker, designed by Daniel Fyles (2015)

My own selection is called "Ice Road Trucker," and is (I'm sorry to say) at least to some extent themed around my fascination with said reality show. Sorry about that. After America's Next Top Model, what's next?

Ice Road Truckers

There's lots of other crazy shit there, though, I promise you. Not to mention a few thoughts on mortality inspired by the recent death of my father.

The important point, though, is that I think this is another great idea from the nzepc. A small but instantly accessible selection of audio poems is a very useful thing for a writer to have. In many ways, it's the next step forward from our three Auckland University Press audio / text anthologies of New Zealand Poets in Performance.

NZ Poets in Performance Series (2006-8)

When Love Comes to Town (14 Feb 15)

Brydee Rood: Accumulation (2004)

Well, for anyone who's curious to hear four weird old geeks reading out love poetry of their own composition, fear not & say no more: here's the event for you!

When Love Comes to Town:
Poetry Reading by David Howard, Michele Leggott,
Jack Ross & Fredrika van Elburg

14 February 2015, 1.30pm, Drawing Room

Michele Leggott (Poet Laureate 2008/2009), Jack Ross (editor Poetry New Zealand), and Fredrika van Elburg (Dutch poet) will join the current Otago Wallace Resident David Howard to celebrate St Valentine's Day by reading love poetry.

This event is free to attend however seats are limited, please RSVP to enquiries@wallaceartstrust.org.nz.

For more, and for bios of all the participants, please visit the webpage here.

And if you don't know where the Pah Homestead is, here's the address:

The Pah Homestead, TSB Wallace Arts Centre
72 Hillsborough Rd, Hillsborough, Auckland
Open Tues to Fri, 10am – 3pm
Sat & Sun 10am – 5pm
T 09 639 2010

Midworlder: Pah Homestead (2010)

Looks like the kind of place you could film The Shining, doesn't it? It's certainly a beautiful old building: a great place to give a reading, in fact.

Poetry at Pah (14/2/15)

Celanie Launch Sunday 25th November

[cover design: Ellen Portch / Cover image: Emma Smith]

This is the first Pania Press booklaunch since we put out the Orange Roughy anthology back in 2008.

So, once again, you are all most cordially invited to join us in the spacious back garden of:

No. 6 Hastings Rd,
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City
Auckland

from 2 to 4 pm
on Sunday, 25th November
(refreshments and home baking provided)

The books being launched are:

Celanie: Poems & Drawings after Paul Celan. Poems by Jack Ross & Drawings by Emma Smith. Introduction by Jack Ross. Afterword by Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2012)
[RRP: $30 / special launch price: $25]

&

brief 46: the survival issue. Ed. Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: The Writers Group, 2012)
[RRP: $17 / special launch price: $15]

also

An exhibition of Emma Smith’s “Celanie” series will be on display, and framed drawings will be available for purchase
[special launch price: $250 each]

Once again Michele Leggott has kindly consented to come along and launch them for us.

[Prof. Michele Leggott (2008)]

You can find out more details about the book of Celan poems and drawings here, and more about brief magazine here.

So, just as a little sampler, here's one of my translations (from Celan's "Matière de Bretagne" [13/8/57]), accompanied by one of Emma Smith's beautiful, haunting images from the book:

Matter of Britain


Gorselight, yellow, slopes
against the skyThorn
disinfects your woundsRing
out, it’s eveningNothing
crosses the sea to pray
The bloodred sheet sets sail for you

Arid, dried-out, bed
behind youScar-
invadedStar-
embossedmilky inlets
in the vaseDate
stones underneath, furred blue
tufts of forgetfulness
your memory

(Do you know me
hands? I went
by the forked route you showed
me, my mouth spat pebbles, I walked
through snowdrifts, shadow – do you know me?)

Hands, the thorn-
burnt wound rings out
Hands, nothing, the sea
Hands, in the gorse-light
the bloody sheet
sets sail for you

You
you teach
you teach your hands
you teach your hands, you teach
you teach your hands
to sleep


[first published in brief 41 (2010)]

[Emma Smith: "Youyou teachyou teachyour hands" ]

Pictures from a Symposium

[Shouldn't that be surge-black fissure?
Never mind. It goes with the blue & black of Michele's outfit, anyway ...]

I've just spent two days at a Poetry Symposium at Auckland University. It'd be hard to do justice here to all the myriad impressions and conversations that make up one's experience of such an event, so instead I've decided to put up a selection of the photos that Bronwyn and I took.

Hopefully they'll give you something of the atmosphere of the proceedings. For more impressions, you can visit my commentary site here:

[1] Approaches:

[Old Government House, in the university grounds, is a fantastic setting for a conference].

[Wellesley St Overpass]

[Old Government House]

[On the terrace]

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[2] The Booktable:

[Bronwyn looked after the booktable on the first day, Thursday 29th, Brett Cross on the Friday. Looking through all the books, cds, t-shirts and other things people bring is one of my favourite parts of these events - I doubt if I'm alone in that].

[Setting Up]

[Poets' books]

[Pania Press & Titus Books]

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[3] Participants:

[Some extremely distinguished guests came along. I wish we'd managed to get good photos of more of them, really: Bernadette Hall, Dinah Hawken, John Newton ... so many others.]

[Cilla McQueen]

[Stephanie Christie]

[Robert Sullivan & John Adams

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[4] The Symposium:

[There were 15 papers on the first day, and 6 on the second (mine among them). Everybody finished within their allotted time and there were no over-runs. That's pretty unprecedented - in my experience, at any rate - for  a poetry conference. Thanks to Michele Leggott, Robert Sullivan & Lisa Samuels, the three organisers - and all their fellow-chairs - for this extremely impressive achievement].

[Michele Leggott opens proceedings]

[John Tranter (at right) in conversation]

[Rachel Blau DuPlessis closes proceedings]

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[5] Lunch:

[The conference organisers prepared us a picnic lunch on the first day, and most of us chose to eat it out on the lawn - the weather was amazing on both days].

[Tim Page, Jack Ross, Michele Leggott & Olive the guide-dog]

[More brown-baggers]

[David Howard, Helen Rickerby & friend]

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[6] Waiheke:

On Friday, after Rachel Blau DuPlessis's eloquent summing-up (and Robert and John's spookily effective evocation of Governor George Grey, whose house this once was), most of us went off to Waiheke for the conference after-party: an attempt on the record for the world's longest beach poem].

[on the bus to Oneroa]

[Preparing the ground]

[Marshalling the troops]

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[7] The Beach Poem:

[And this is the beginning & end of what we came up with. You'll have to check on the nzepc if you want to see the rest of the poem, though].

[Begin]

[Anywhere]

[The End]

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