Crossroads

[The Cassandra Pages]

It's almost exactly two years since I started up this blog. I was trying to explain what I hope to accomplish with it the other day to my Massey colleagues at the School of Social and Cultural Studies, but since we were all going round in a big circle spending five minutes each talking about our current research projects, it wasn't possible to go into much detail.

Just as well, really. I could see their eyes glazing over even after that much discussion.

I suppose the normal convention for an author's homepage is to have an entry point with hyperlinks to a comprehensive bibliography, critical comments, a portrait gallery and various works-in-progress. Sometimes there's a blog linked to it as well.

That was my original plan, also. However, since I started my experiments with free blog space, I've realised that a lot can be accomplished with the internet equivalent of a pair of old hedgeclippers and a bottle of glue:


Bibliography sites [10]

Writing sites [14]

X

Research sites [10]

Teaching sites [13]

Let's take them in order:


Bibliography sites [10]:

1. A Gentle Madness [2009- ] (1/6/09-4/7/10)
A catalogue of my Book Collection: Geographical by Locations & Indexed by Categories.


2. Pania Press [2006- ]:
   
   • Pania Press (Blog) (25/9/06- )
     bijou publisher of original literary & artistic works, in small editions.
   • Pania Press (Business) (14/11/12- )
     A catalogue of the publications of this small press, from 2006 to the present day.
   
   
3. Paper Table [2017- ] (19/9/17- )
A catalogue of the publications of this small press, dedicated to publishing contemporary New Zealand fiction, particularly novellas.


4. Perdrix Press [1997- ] (16/4/11- )
A catalogue of the publications of this small press, dedicated to publishing artistic and poetic collaborations of various kinds, with various people, from 1997 to the present day.


5. Poetry NZ [2014-2020]:
   
   • Poetry NZ Blog (2/6/14- )
     Views, Reviews, Interviews & Other News ...
   • Poetry NZ Index (1/1/14-17/2/16)
     An International Journal of Poetry and Poetics.
   • Poetry NZ Review (20/9/17- )
     Local Poetry Books in Review.
   
   
6. Works & Days [1981- ] (18/10/07- )
Curriculum Vitae: Biography - Bibliography - Chronology - Papers - Performances & Reviews.


7. Jack Ross: Showcase [2016- ] (2/12/16- )
Selected publications, print and online.

Writing sites [14]:

1. Jack Ross: Poems [1981- ] (27/5/23- )
Collected Poetry, published in books, chapbooks, periodicals and online.


2. Jack Ross: Opinions [1987- ] (18/8/13- )
Published Essays, Interviews, Introductions & Reviews.


3. Jack Ross: Stories [1996- ] (2/6/22-29/10/23)
Collected short fiction and novellas.


4. The R.E.M. [Random Excess Memory] Trilogy [1997-2008]:
   
   1. Nights with Giordano Bruno [2000] (19-30/1/08)
      A Novel + Game for One Player.
   2. The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis [2006]:
      
      • Who am I? (20/1-13/2/08)
        Automatic writing.
      • Where am I? (20/1-13/2/08)
        Cuttings.
   3. E M O [2008] (27/11/23-2/5/24)
      
      • EVA AVE (15/8/06-3/9/07)
        Inheritor of silence / shall I be? / Black mass below us / above us / only sky …
      • Moons of Mars (16/8/06-3/9/07)
        Welcome / to the new reality / Nothing’s stranger / than the will / to survive …
      • Ovid in Otherworld (15/8/06-3/9/07)
        Wild geese draw lines / across an amber sky / fish bask / in frozen rivers / generators die …
      • R.E.M. Trilogy interviews [2008] (30/11 & 21/12/08)
        In conversation with Gabriel White (YouTube).


5. Coursebook found in a Warzone [from Kingdom of Alt (2010)]:
   • Banned Books [2009] (19/10-13/12/08)
     Censored & Restricted 20th-Century Fiction: Administration - Assignments - Author Pages - Lecture Notes - Forum for Discussion (English 2: 666).
   • Crisis Diaries [2009] (19/10/08-3/1/09)
     Chronicles of Heartbreak, Illness, Madness, Plague & Civil War: Special Topic in Comparative Literature - School of Society & Culture - Radial Campus - Semester One.


6. Papyri [2007- ] (3/10/06- )
Love-poems & fragments from Sappho & elsewhere.


7. Tree Worship [2011-12] (6/1/11-14/8/12)
Poems & fragments.

Gateway site:

• The Imaginary Museum [2006- ] (14/6/06- )
Adventures in Writing, Publishing, Book Collecting & Other Pursuits.

Research sites [10]:

1. John Masefield [1984-1985] (14/4-22/8/09)
The Early Novels, 1908-1911. MA Thesis (University of Auckland, 1986).


2. Versions of South America [1986-1990] (14/4-22/7/09)
An Elusive Identity: Versions of South America in English Literature from Aphra Behn to the Present Day. PhD Thesis (University of Edinburgh, 1990).


3. Scheherazade's Web [1991-1995] (22/8/06-26/9/07)
The Thousand and One Nights and Comparative Literature.


4. An index to brief magazine [1995- ] (11/12/07- )
Listings & Statistics for the Magazine formerly known as A Brief Description of The Whole World / ABDOTWW / Description / Abdotww / Ab.Ww / Brief. &c.


5. Aotearoa NZ Poetry Sound Archive [2002-2004] (6/11-3/12/07)
Bibliographical Aids for the Use of Those Consulting the Waiata Archive (1974) and AoNZPSA (2002-2004) – Audio Recordings available in Special Collections, University of Auckland Library and in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.


6. Social and Cultural Studies [2009- ] (27/8/09- )
Monograph Series – School of Social and Cultural Studies – Albany Campus – Massey University.


7. Leicester Kyle [2011]:
   
   • Leicester Kyle (17/2-14/3/11)
     An Index to the Collected Poems of Leicester Hugo Kyle (1937-2006).
   • Leicester Kyle: Texts (18/2-14/3/11)
     The Collected Poetry Books of Leicester Hugo Kyle (1937-2006).


8. NZSF [2018-2020] (1/1/18-4/9/20)
The Psychogeography of New Zealand Speculative Fiction.


9. Michele 2021 [2021] (19/1-18/10/21)
A Birthday Festschrift for Michele Joy Leggott.

Teaching sites [13]:

1. Creative Writing [2009- ] (14/4/08- )
   139.123 – College of Humanities and Social Sciences – School of English and Media Studies – Albany Campus – Massey University.
   
   • Creative Writing Anthology [2008- ] (21/9/08- )
     An anthology of student writing from Massey University Albany.


2. Life Writing [2008- ] (14/4/08- )
   139.226 – College of Humanities and Social Sciences – School of English and Media Studies – Albany Campus – Massey University.
   
   • Life Writing Anthology [2008- ] (21/9/08- )
     An anthology of student writing from Massey University Albany.


3. Advanced Fiction Writing [2017- ] (25/2/15- )
   139.329 – College of Humanities and Social Sciences – School of English and Media Studies – Massey University.
   
   • Advanced Fiction Writing Anthology [2017- ] (11/6/17- )
     An anthology of student writing from Massey University.


4. Travel Writing [2009- ] (14/4/08- )
   139.326 – College of Humanities and Social Sciences – School of English and Media Studies – Albany Campus – Massey University.
   
   • Travel Writing Anthology [2008- ] (21/9/08- )
     An anthology of student writing from Massey University Albany.


5. Contemporary NZ Writers in an International Context [2010- ] (28/3/09- )
   139.750 – College of Humanities and Social Sciences – School of English and Media Studies – Albany Campus – Massey University.
   
   • Contemporary NZ Writers Anthology [2009- ] (28/3/09- )
     An anthology of student writing from Massey University Albany.


6. Lectures [2011- ] (1/4/11- )
College of Humanities and Social Sciences – School of English and Media Studies – Albany Campus – Massey University: Miscellaneous Guest Lectures.


7. Writers Read Series [2011- ] (27/6/12- )
College of Humanities and Social Sciences – School of English and Media Studies – Albany Campus – Massey University: Guest Readers.


8. Novels since 1900 [2008] (12/4-11/10/08)
English 220 / 356 (University of Auckland): Lecture Notes – Assignments – Author Pages – Forum for Discussion.

No doubt further refinements on this set-up will be added over time, but for the moment, that's the system.

Books about Stella Benson

[Stella Benson (1933)]


from Bronwyn Lloyd's Collection



Phyliis Bottome, Stella Benson (San Francisco: Albert M. Bender, 1934):





R. Ellis Roberts, Portrait of Stella Benson (London: Macmillan, 1939):





Some Letters of Stella Benson, 1928-1933, edited by Cecil Clarabut (Hong Kong: Libra Press, 1978):





Joy Grant, Stella Benson: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1987):

Books by Stella Benson

[Stella Benson (1931)]


from Bronwyn Lloyd's Collection



I Pose (London: Macmillan, 1915)






This is the End (London: Macmillan, 1917)






Twenty (London: Macmillan, 1918)






Living Alone (London: Macmillan, 1919)




The Poor Man (London: Macmillan, 1922)





Pipers and a Dancer (London: Macmillan, 1924)




The Little World (London: Macmillan, 1925)






The Awakening (San Francisco: The Lantern Press, 1925)






Goodbye, Stranger (London: Macmillan, 1926)




(ed.) Come to Eleuthera, or New Lands for Old (N.p. [Bahama?]. n.d. [c.1926?])






Worlds Within Worlds (London: Macmillan, 1928)






The Man Who Missed the Bus (London: Elkin Mathews & Marrot, 1928)






Tobit Transplanted (London: Macmillan, 1931)
[first published as The Far-Away Bride (New York: Harper, 1930)]






Hope Against Hope and Other Stories (London: Macmillan, 1931)






Christmas Formula and Other Stories (London: Jackson, 1932)






Pull Devil, Pull Baker (London: Macmillan, 1933)






Mundos (London: Macmillan, 1935)




Poems (London: Macmillan, 1935)

brief note

"Your industriousness is a little frightening," says Brett.

Yes, well, I'm just trying to get a lot of things tied away and sorted out before the end of the year. Next year I'm planning to spend a lot more time pursuing my own projects, and a lot less time on editing and bureaucracy generally.

So with that in mind, I've put up a companion to the Poetry Archive website. This one serves a similar indexing function for brief magazine (originally A Brief Description of the Whole World), which I edited between 2002 and 2005.

The longevity of brief is becoming a bit of a phenomenon in itself. It was founded by Alan Loney in December 1995, so with the latest issue, #35 (edited by Brett Cross), it's now reached its twelfth anniversary. (I tried to embed that information in the "profile" page of the new blog, but they informed me that you have to be over thirteen years old to use blogger, so I'll have to wait till next year before fessing up to the magazine's true age.)

I put out a brief index in 2003, shortly after taking over the editorship from John Geraets, and then a short supplementary index in 2005, before handing responsibility for the journal over to Scott Hamilton. So it wasn't all that much trouble to update it, since all that information was still floating around on my computer.

I've put in links to various of the articles which have been reprinted online, notably in the three feature issues - Smithymania (2003), Alan Brunton (2003) and Joanna Margaret Paul (2005) - published as joint ventures with the nzepc, but also to the brief section of the Titus Books website. Other than that, though, the site is really just a big hyperlinked contents list to the issues and authors published by the magazine to date.

Check it out., Hopefully it'll be useful to someone, at any rate.

*

Oh, and by the by, I'm tendering a bit of an apology to the New Zealand Herald. I was extremely scornful about them in my last post, so I was pleasantly surprised when they named Louise Nicholas as their New Zealander of the year for 2007.

I've just been reading her book, and I have to agree that there doesn't seem to be much serious doubt that the cops she describes did indeed regard themselves as above the law when it came to pressuring young girls into having sex with them (for more thoughts on the whole subject of what constitutes "Consent," see Tracey Slaughter's story of that title. It appears as the opening salvo of my "Open House" issue of Landfall.) The sooner that kind of crap goes out the window, the better. Apparently it was more or less up to individual policemen what "moral standards" they wished to apply in such circumstances. Cops have too much power in the community generally not to be subject to the same rules as teachers and doctors in that respect, I think myself.

So good on you, New Zealand Herald. Maybe you're not so subhuman after all. Though I still think you could break an intellectual sweat from time to time without completely alienating your fan-base, I have to admit that the choice of Louise Nicholas runs precisely that risk, so I do think you deserve hearty congratulations on this one.

With a single bound Jack was free ...

New Zealand Poets Read Their Work (1974). [Image: Pat Hanly]

You all know the story. The hack who usually wrote each instalment of the weekly magazine's adventure serial was off on holiday, but at the end of the previous episode he'd provided a true cliffhanger: his hero was bound to the stake, surrounded by hostile tribesmen, with a fire being kindled under his feet, dozens of rifles trained on him, and an erupting volcano in the background.

Nobody in the office could think of any conceivable way of getting him out of this tight fix, so they had to summon the writer back from his vacation with the lure of extra cash in order to extricate them from this embarrassment.

He walked in, sat down at the desk, took a look at the last page he'd written - and then scrawled: "With a single bound Jack was free."

You may have noticed I haven't been doing a whole lot of blogging on this site lately. It's not been through idleness, I assure you - nosiree. "With a single bound Jack was free." Or at any rate that was the plan.

Jan Kemp & Jack Ross (2004)

The thing I was trying to get shot of was the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive. For those of you who don't know, this is a collection of recordings of 171 New Zealand poets, on 40 audio CDs (with two CDs of texts and bio/bibliographical information) which was compiled between 2002 and 2004.

As you can imagine, there's a certain amount of staff work involved in setting up recordings in the four major centres (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin), and then at least as much again in tidying up all the tapes, and texts, and photos and other impedimenta.

Jan Kemp & Alan Smythe (1974)

It started off as the brainchild of Jan Kemp and Alan Smythe, who'd collaborated on a similar venture in 1974 (resulting in a set of 3 LP records: New Zealand Poets Read Their Work). Smythe was then (2002) the head of SCAPA, the Performing Arts centre at the University of Auckland, so he seemed well-placed to facilitate the collection of materials. When he left that position in 2003, the archive shifted to Special Collections in the University Library, with the help of funds from Creative New Zealand and from the University of Auckland English Department (then headed by Ken Larsen).

Jan Kemp & Alan Smythe (2004)

There were many, many other people involved, though, and I was one of them. My particular responsibility was getting all the texts in order. When I say that this involved sorting out more than 2,000 tracks on over 3,000 pages of A4, I think you may get some idea of the scope of the project.

For various copyright reasons, the eventual electronic archive can - at present - only be accessed in two places: University of Auckland's Special Collections (which also has all the raw data from which the 42 Cds were distilled); and the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.

So what's actually in the archive? Well, a list of the 171 poets, together with sample tracks from 12 of them, has been available as a feature at the nzepc since 2004. But up until now it wasn't actually possible to know which tracks had actually been recorded by each one of them unless you visited one of the two institutions mentioned above, and sat down in front of a monitor with the CDs.

I thought that was a shame. It seems foolish to go to all that trouble, and then end up with an artefact no-one can really use. And some of the poets involved let me know as much in no uncertain terms.

(And while we're on the subject, d'you feel like modifying your tone a bit when you send me emails out of the blue, guys? I mean, I don't actually spend my life plotting ways to derail your literary career ... There is in fact a certain amount of idealism involved in putting together these huge compilations - and that applies not just to me and Jan (and Mark King, who made order out of the chaos of all the different recordings), but also to the people who organised the recordings in the four centres. Elizabeth Alley in Wellington, David Howard & Morrin Rout in Christchurch, and Nick Ascroft & Richard Reeve in Dunedin did a great deal of work for a not conspicuous amount of reward).

So what I've been doing over the past month is compiling an index to the whole kit and kaboodle. It takes the form of an immense interconnected and hyperlinked blog, because that was the only way I could think of to do it which didn't involve further requests for funding from the various agencies who've already sunk so much into this project. You'll find a link to it at the side of this page.

It includes:

* an alphabetical index of all 171 poets included in the 2002-2004 AoNZPSA (Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive), with a list of the poems they recorded, a picture (where one was avaialble), biographical and bibliographical information.

* an alphabetical index of all 52 poets included in the Waiata Archive of recordings compiled for the 3 1974 LPs. I've included photos and bio / bibliographical information with these where it was readily available, but should note that collecting such details was not part of the original brief 30 years ago. I don't even have dates of birth for some of the poets included.

* Contents lists for all four publications which have come from these two archives: the 3-LP set New Zealand Poets Read Their Work and New Zealand Poets Read Their Work for Children (Waiata Records, 1974); and the set of three chronological audio / text anthologies Classic, Contemporary and New New Zealand Poets in Performance (Auckland University Press, 2006-8) edited by myself and Jan.

Useful? I certainly hope so. I should note that it contains no actual copyright materials: no recordings, and no texts of poems. Those are all reserved for the archive itself. I have, however, tried to link to homepages or websites which do include such features.

The selection of poems was, in each case, the poet's responsibility. So, generally, was the format of their bio / bibliography (in the few cases where this was missing, these were compiled by me or by Edmund King). I'm perfectly happy to update them, but to start with I've just posted what we collected in 2002-2004. I'd also like to receive more pictures (jpegs under 50 kb in size are ideal) for those 73 (of 196) poets we don't have photographs of.

To my mind, this puts at least a provisional full stop to the whole project. To my involvement with it, at any rate. If you're interested in a particular poet or poets, you can now easily see which poems of theirs are included in the archive, and then go and listen to them either in Wellington or Auckland (and, yes, I wish the materials were available elsewhere - all I can say is that we tried very hard to arrange it, and will continue to do so).

Beyond that, I can only refer you to the three chronological volumes of recordings (one of which, New NZ Poets in Performance is still in production at present: due out on Poetry Day next year) now available through AUP. I'd rather, myself, that the whole collection could be up on the internet, but that's a project far beyond my resources and technological expertise.

This could be seen as the beginning of such an online digital archive, perhaps, but we aren't quite there yet. Certainly, in the future, the internet will be the place for such extensive collections.

Scheherazade's Web:

The 1001 Nights & Comparative Literature

Between 1991 and 1995, I spent a huge amount of my time reading and collecting different editions and translations of the Arabian Nights.

It's a bit hard to say why, in retrospect. I guess it might have been a reaction against the brain-strain of finishing my dreadful Doctoral thesis - An Elusive Identity: Versions of South America in English Literature from Aphra Behn to the Present Day (University of Edinburgh, 1990). At the end of all that labour I seemed to have lost the ability to take any pleasure at all in reading or writing, so I tried to recover by making a beeline for my ultimate fantasy book, the ubiquitous yet strangely invisible Nights, with all its proliferating texts and versions, all its competing codes and overlapping cultural frames.

The plan was always, eventually, to write a book on the subject. But it soon became obvious to me that I lacked the learning to produce anything really scholarly. I can read a few languages, but Arabic isn't one of them - let alone Persian - and there's no longer all that much room for amateurs in these fields of study.

So I compromised by trying to compose a series of very limited vignettes on particular aspects of the influence of the Nights, within the larger field of Comparative Literature.

After that, though, I shifted my attention out of the academic area altogether, back to fiction and poetry, so the Arabian Nights stuff got sidelined until now.

This set of essays is to be considered as a work-in-progress, then. There are many adjustments still to be made, and the fact that it's been ten years or so since I last looked at most of it means that there's a lot of more recent work in the field which I haven't been able to take account of. For what it's worth, though, here's a set of links to the various sections of my projected critical opus on one of the most fascinating, mysterious and least-understood books in world literature ...

Preface

Scheherazades

Introduction: Redu ‘92

The School for Paradox

Chapter 1: Malory and Scheherazade

Malory

Scheherazade

Chapter 2: Europe, Christianity and the Crusades

Plot Summaries

Chapter 3: Voyage en Orient

Chapter 4: Parodies of the Arabian Nights

Chapter 5: The Poetics of Stasis

J. L. Borges: Metaphors of the 1001 Nights

Bibliography

Chronology

Concordance

A List of the Stories in the 1001 Nights

Textual Notes