Orange Roughy Sold Out!

Yes, that's right - in under two weeks we've managed to sell nearly 150 books (not counting contributors' copies, National Libary copies, and a few other sundries). Only one shop stocks it (as far as we know) - Parson's Bookshop in Wellesley Street - but I suspect that their copies have already been sold on to libraries and special collections by now.

So I'm sorry if any of you particularly wanted a copy and were just waiting for payday. That is the way the cookie crumbles, though. I mean, how often do you get a line-up of authors like that, with a hand-screenprinted, individually coloured dustjacket, all for the bargain price of $25?

Never, that's when.

You can find further details about the launch on the Pania website here.

We're very happy - and very grateful to everyone who's helped with the project: our contributors (of course), my parents for volunteering their garden for the launch, Bronwyn's parents for selling so many copies, and all the rest of our intrepid sales-team (Greg, Sheryl and Fiona, I mean you ...)

This is Culture-Power at its best, I think.

[Michele Leggott launching Orange Roughy]


[Bronwyn reading out a message from Therese]


[Bronwyn & me outside the bach]


[A few of the "Orange Roughians"(l-r):
Emma Smith, Greg Lloyd, Anna Tozer, Mike & Margot Lloyd ...]


[Michael Steven in festive mood - Raewyn Alexander & June Ross behind him ...]

[photographs 1, 3 & 4 by June Ross / 2 & 5 by Greg Lloyd]

Booklaunch on Sunday 9th March!

[Thérèse Lloyd - photograph by Greg Lloyd (July 2007)]

You are all most cordially invited to Pania Press's very first

BOOKLAUNCH

in the spacious back garden of

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

from 2 to 4 pm
on Sunday 9th March

All of you, that is, who wish to buy one or more copies of a sumptuous anthology of poems, pageworks & stories at the bargain price of $25, and (in the process) make a substantial donation to a very good cause.

The book is called:

Orange Roughy: Poems & Stories for Tazey

& includes contributions by the following writers and artists:

Martin Edmond
Graham Fletcher
Bernadette Hall
Michele Leggott
Bronwyn Lloyd
Thérèse Lloyd
Bill Manhire
Emma Neale
Susannah Poole
Tessa Rain
Richard Reeve
Jack Ross
Tracey Slaughter
Michael Steven
Damien Wilkins

I should stress that nobody involved in this project has taken a cent from it - all the proceeds, not just all the profits - are going to Thérèse in Iowa, so that's why we're anxious to sell as many of these fine books as possible.

If you can't make it to the launch, send money or a cheque to Pania HQ and we'll be happy to dispatch as many copies as you like of the book, post-free within NZ, for exactly the same price.

Orders can be made through the Pania website, either as a comment left on the site, or directly via our email address:

paniapress@hotmail.com

For further information, please follow the links above. Hope to see you on Sunday!

Pania Press and the quality known as "wu"

... Here is a piece of metal which has been melted until it has become shapeless. It represents nothing. Nor does it have design, of any intentional sort. It is merely amorphous. One might say, it is mere content, deprived of form.’

Childan nodded.

‘Yet,’ Paul said, ‘I have for several days now inspected it, and for no logical reason I feel a certain emotional fondness. Why is that? I may ask. I do not even now project into this blob, as in psychological German tests, my own psyche. I still see no shapes or forms. But it somehow partakes of Tao. You see?’ He motioned Childan over. ‘It is balanced. The forces within this piece are stabilized. At rest. So to speak, this object has made its peace with the universe. It has separated from it and hence has managed to come to homeostasis.’

Childan nodded, studied the piece. But Paul had lost him.

‘It does not have wabi,’ Paul said, ‘nor could it ever. But—’ He touched the pin with his nail. ‘Robert, this object has wu.’

‘I believe you are right,’ Childan said, trying to recall what wu was; it was not a Japanese word — it was Chinese. Wisdom, he decided. Or comprehension. Anyhow, it was highly good.

‘The hands of the artificer,’ Paul said, ‘had wu, and allowed that wu to flow into this piece. Possibly he himself knows only that this piece satisfies. It is complete, Robert. By contemplating it, we gain more wu ourselves. We experience the tranquillity associated not with art but with holy things. I recall a shrine in Hiroshima wherein a shinbone of medieval saint could be examined. However, this is an artifact and that was a relic. This is alive in the now, whereas that merely remained. By this meditation, conducted by myself at great length since you were last here, I have come to identify the value which this has in opposition to historicity. I. am deeply moved, as you may see.’

‘Yes,’ Childan said ...

[Philip K. Dick. The Man in the High Castle. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965. 161-62.]

The quality known as wu. Pania Press books partake of that feeling also, I believe. They, too, are handcrafted from what might otherwise seem insignificant materials – a few pieces of thread, some sheets of paper – and yet each one is unique, with a unique and individual cover design.

Philip K. Dick’s Japanese businessman goes on to explain to the American Childan that ‘it is a fact that wu is customarily found in least imposing places, as in the Christian aphorism, “stones rejected by the builder.’” (The context gives this dialogue particular poignancy, but if you haven’t yet read his 1962 classic, where he imagines a world where German and Japan won the second World War, I’ll have to leave that up to your imagination).

Anyway, this post is just to signal that Pania Press’s first two commercial publications are now available for purchase. You can read more about them, and read sample poems, at the Pania Press blogsite, but I’ll just say here that:

many things happened, by Thérèse Lloyd, is a delightful and moving first collection of ten lyrics by a poet who will soon be jetting off to Iowa on a scholarship set up by Bill Manhire’s International Institute of Modern Letters.



Love in Wartime, by yours truly, is -- for me –- an unusually direct sequence of poems about love and loss. It seems a rather timely subject for meditation just now. Enjoy.

Pania Press

The very lovely Bronwyn Lloyd and I have started a small press together. It's called Pania Press, and will specialise in small limited editions of original texts by local poets and artists, with individual handcrafted covers.

The first three books (slated to go on sale next year) are:

1/ Jack Ross, Love in Wartime
(a sequence of poems with illustrations and accompanying texts)

2/ Therese Lloyd, many things happened
(a debut poetry collection from this promising young writer, who recently completed her Masters in Creative Writing at Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters)

3/ Michele Leggott, hello and goodbye
(a new sequence of poems by one of New Zealand's brightest poetic luminaries)

Future titles will be announced as they become available, but the point of this post is just to direct you to the Pania Press blogsite we've set up to advertise (and sell!) our wares. Get in quick -- there won't be many copies of each one to go around ...