Bird Skeleton

Bronwyn Lloyd: Voodoo Bird (23/4/17)

A couple of weeks ago Bronwyn found this little chap nestled on the doorstep of her studio (which used to be my father's surgery), beside the house.

But who left it there? Was it a cat? The lawnmower man? Someone laying a hex?

Certainly it seems to be missing a head. It did remind me a bit of an old poem of mine, from my first book City of Strange Brunettes (1998):

•

First Love

We built a man of slates, and after years,
revisited, the rock had grown a face.

(... The lake dissects bird-craniums;
tree-roots wrestle midden-stones for space.)

We counted on the winter to preserve us.
Spring runoff leaves no craquelure to trace.

Jack Ross: City of Strange Brunettes (1998)

•

Palabras Prestadas / Given Words

Darrell Ward: R.I.P.

Ever since Ice Road Truckers star Darrell Ward died in a planecrash at the early age of 52 - the first casualty among their core cast of daredevils - it's been a bit difficult to keep up our enthusiasm for the TV reality series.

This morning, however, I received the exciting news that expatriate Kiwi poet Charles Olsen had completed his translation of my poem "Ice Road Trucker" into Spanish, and posted it on his "Palabras Prestadas" website.

Charles Olsen

I have to say that I'm quite thrilled to see my words transformed into another language (especially one I can read) - just as I was when Dieter Riemenschneider included a couple of my poems in his 2010 bilingual German-English anthology Wildes Licht: Gedichte aus Aotearoa Neuseeland [Wild Light: Poems from Aotearoa New Zealand].

So far as I can judge, Charles has done a bang-up job. I do wonder, though, if I can repurpose his work here as some kind of witness to the immense pleasure I've got out of watching this series over the years? In particular, as a tribute to Darrell Ward himself, who strikes me as the most man of anyone I've ever seen.

That time when he managed to drag another truck out of the ditch single-handedly, by driving them both at the same time (I know that doesn't sound physically possible, but he did somehow accomplish it) had to be seen to be believed.

Anyway, here's the poem, in translation (you can read the original English version here, if you like). And what better date to have it appear online than the Cinco de Mayo?

•

Jack Ross ha publicado varios libros de poesía, entre ellos City of Strange Brunettes (1998), Chantal's Book (2002), To Terezín (2007), Celanie (2012) y A Clearer View of the Hinterland (2014), además de cuatro novelas y dos libros de relatos cortos. Es director y editor de la revista Poetry NZ, y ha editado diversas revistas literarias y antologías. Tiene un doctorado en Inglés y Literatura Comparativa de la Universidad de Edimburgo y actualmente es Catedrático en Escritura Creativa en Massey University.

mairangibay.blogspot.co.nz
New Zealand Book Council – Jack Ross

Camionero sobre hielo

El motor se detuvo
a medio bajada por la rampa de salida

justo cuando cambió el semáforo a verde
para con cuidado en el arcén

y enciende
la luces de emergencia

decía Bronwyn
fuimos a buscar ayuda

me dejó en la estación de servicio
cuando llegué al coche

había un policía
un autobús había golpeado un vehículo utilitario

calle abajo
Necesitaba esto como un tiro en la cabeza

decía
el de la grúa era un viejo fibroso

que levantó el coche
sin esfuerzo

mientras dábamos saltos
en la cabina de su camión

pensé
ya sé qué se siente

al conducir un gran camión
sobre los campos de hielo

mi álter ego
radio frequencia en mano

abierta la botella de Jim Beam
entre las piernas

el horizonte gris de peltre

(Traducción del poema Ice Road Trucker de Jack Ross – traducido por Charles Olsen)

Battle of Puebla (5 May 1862)

•

[19th August 2017]:

As part of his 'Poems on the Terrace' series of commentaries on New Zealand poems in Spanish, Charles Olsen posted the following video of "Ice Road Trucker" [Camionero sobre hielo].

Poem on the Terrace – Ice Road Trucker de Jack Ross

'Poem on the Terrace – poetas neozelandeses'. Una serie para dar a conocer la poesía de las antípodas de España. Los neozelandeses, Charles Olsen y Anna Borrie, recitan y comentan un poema en una agradable terraza de Madrid.

En este capítulo leen 'Camionero sobre hielo' de Jack Ross. Pueden leer más sobre el autor, y leer el poema en castellano, en Palabras Prestadas.

We present 'Poem on the Terrace – New Zealand Poets', where we introduce kiwi poets to a Spanish audience. Charles Olsen and Anna Borrie recite and discuss a poem on a relaxed Madrid roof terrace.

In this chapter they read 'Ice Road Trucker' by Jack Ross. Find out more about the author on New Zealand Book Council.

Charles Olsen & Lilián Pallares

Inauguration Day: January 2017

President Donald Trump (Rolling Stone: 20/1/17)

Trump said

... and the Republic summons Ike,
the mausoleum in her heart.

– Robert Lowell, "Inauguration Day: January 1953"

that he could stand
in the middle of Fifth Avenue
and shoot someone
and not lose any voters

it’s, like, incredible!
what he was touching on
was the phenomenon
of fandom

and it was no mirage
there really were
sufficient boneheads
dumb enough to vote

for that buffoon
no matter how outrageously
he talked
how stupid his ideas

we used to laugh
at countries where soap opera stars
could win a seat in parliament
because they loved them so

who’s laughing now?

•

Or, for a rather different take on the event, you could try "Pibroch of the Domhnall", composed by "celebrated" American poet Joseph Charles McKenzie of the (self-styled) "rhyming, rhythmic, and rapturous" Society of Classical Poets ...

•


Trump mocks disabled reporter (26/11/15)

The President of the Philippines

President Rodrigo Duterte (the two-way: 28/10/16)

The President of the Philippines


told us his vision
last night
on the evening news
he was in a plane

flying back from Japan
when he heard a voice
who are you?
he said

it was God
I want you to stop
using bad language
said God

so no more slang
no more cuss words
you could see the reporters
wanted to laugh

at first
but they sobered up fast
that morning ten men
were shot dead in the street

the mayor of a town
and all his staff
involved in the drug trade
they said

no cuss words now
the doors are open
something that used to live
out in the cold

is shouldering in

•

New York Times (28/10/16)

Something to Say: i.m. John O'Connor

John O'Connor (d. 12 May, 2015)

all down the Jewish lane children are falling. it’s a game called autumn, a pastiche of drifting leaves and gathering. yet one stays out, has not joined her companions in what they suppose is a fine tumble, quick in the wind, now still.

just one moved towards the vents. a photograph shows them piled in a corner, naked and shaved, almost as if stacked up. yet one figure is in front of the group — as if she had something important to say.

This is the prose-poem "Something to Say," By John O'Connor, included in David Howard's anthology Complete with Instructions. It's always been a favourite of mine - among the very many poems of his I liked.

David Howard, ed.: Complete with Instructions (2001)

It was David Howard who introduced the two of us, in fact. I was going down to Christchurch to teach a weekend writing course, and David suggested that I take the opportunity to interview a bunch of the local poets down there for a possible feature in his new magazine Firebrand (which eventually, after many vicissitudes, turned into the anthology pictured above).

I was happy enough to do it, and had a fascinating time driving round the city and talking to the likes of Julia Allen, John Allison, Kenneth Fea, David Gregory, Rob Jackaman, Graham Lindsay, Mike Minehan, and - John O'Connor (you can find complete texts of the various interviews, which I ended up calling "Imaginary Toads in Real Gardens," on my Opinions blog here.

John O'Connor had recently helped to set up Sudden Valley Press, and was active in the Canterbury Poets Collective, and seemed in many ways a natural organiser. It was quite a surprise to me to find out just how delicate and subtle his poetry could be. He wrote in many voices, some of which appealed to me more than others, but in every one of his many books there was always the chance of turning the page and finding something quite extraordinary - something like that haunting prose-poem I've reprinted above.

Here's a list of his books, as accurate as I can make it from my own notes and reviews of his work over the years. There could well be some missing. These are the main ones, though:

John O’Connor: haiku

1. Laying Autumn’s Dust: Poems and Verse 1974-1983. Concept Publishing, 1983.


2. Citizen of No Mean City: Poems and Verse 1983-1985. Concept Publishing, 1985.


3. [with Bernard Gadd]. Too Right Mate. Hallard Press, 1996.


4. As It Is: Poems 1981-1996. Christchurch: Sudden Valley Press, 1997.


5. A Particular Context. Christchurch: Sudden Valley Press, 1999.


6. [with Eric Mould]. Working Voices. Auckland: Hallard Press, 2003.


7. Home River. Auckland: Hallard Press, 2003.


8. Bright the Harvest Moon. Wellington: HeadworX, 2004.


9. Parts of the Moon: Selected Haiku & Senryu 1988-2007. Teneriffe: Post Pressed, 2007.


10. Cornelius & Co: Collected Working-Class Verse, 1996-2009. Teneriffe, Queensland: Post Pressed, 2009.


11. Aspects of Reality. Wellington: HeadworX, 2013.


12. Whistling in the Dark. Wellington: HeadworX, 2014.

John O’Connor: Whistling in the Dark (2014)

There's a brief bio / bibliography up at the Aotearoa NZ Poetry Sound Archive, but it dates from 2004, over a decade ago, so is pretty out-of-date. He'd done a great deal since then:

John O’Connor is a past winner of the New Zealand Poetry Society’s International Prize, founding editor of the poetry journal plainwraps and has edited various issues of Takahe, Spin, and the NZPS annual anthology. With David Gregory he founded Poets Group and also Sudden Valley Press of which he is managing editor. John’s haiku have been internationally anthologised on a number of occasions, translated into 6 languages and were recently chosen as “best of issue” in Frogpond International, a special issue of the leading US haiku periodical, Frogpond, featuring haiku from 26 countries. His criticism and non-haiku poetry have been widely published in New Zealand and overseas, and his work has been anthologised by Lauris Edmond and Bill Sewell in Essential New Zealand Poems. His last book, A Particular Context, was chosen by members of the Poetry Society as one of the 5 best books of New Zealand poetry of the 1990s.

John O’Connor: A Particular Context (1999)

I guess one of my own fondest memories of John is the roadtrip we did together out to Banks Peninsula in 2003. The ostensible reason for the jaunt was to look for the grave of D'Arcy Cresswell - in which attempt we were singularly unsuccessful (though we did find the grave of a Douglas Cresswell), but actually it was really just to explore a bit. We ended up at Port Levy, as I recall, and John did a good deal of quoting from Denis Glover's Towards Banks Peninsula along the way - not to mention his own poem "At Port Levy."

I wrote a poem about our trip, in fact: probably too allusive to make much sense without the context of that day out in the hills, but I give it here as a little tribute to that good man and good poet John O'Connor - "A red libation to your good memory, friend":

Towards Banks Peninsula
i.m. John O'Connor (d. 12/5/15)

1 - The Summons

Feed, propagate, be fed on; please someone; die.
– Kendrick Smithyman

Mahogany desk
crybaby
goodness sake

a gobfull
that’s disgusting
sorry

didn’t mean to
sampling
set for

landing
sun breaks through
the clouds

2 - Searching for the Original

DRINK
D R I V E
– road-sign

Dog gobbles up flies
from the floor of the church

Not D’Arcy
Douglas Cresswell

dug in
with his wife

Look up at the hills
stone plugs

the fairies lived there
girl could tell you more

John O’Connor & Eric Mould: Working Voices (2003)

I'm glad I was able to include two beautiful translations by John in the last issue of Poetry NZ, together with a notice of his latest book. I didn't then fully understand the significance of its title, Whistling in the Dark.

John O'Connor is a man who will be sorely missed, and I'm sorry that there won't be any more of his wonderful books to leaf through, with curious surprises lurking behind the most unobtrusive pages.

John O'Connor: As It Is (1997)

Famous Seamus: Lament for a Maker

i.m. Seamus Heaney


Bobbie Hanvey: Seamus Heaney

born County Derry, Northern Ireland
13 April 1939
died Dublin, Eire
30 August 2013

I went to a talk by the distinguished Irish writer Dermot Healy recently, while I was at a conference in Singapore. As well as plays, screenplays, and fiction - most famously his haunting and terrifying novel A Goat's Song (1994) - Healy has also published a number of books of poetry. He's a pretty unpretentious sort (in fact, when I last saw him, at the conference dinner, he was trying to imitate Tibetan throat music to an increasingly unenthusiastic throng). One of his quips was that he was getting used to people coming up to him and saying how much his poems meant to them, then producing a copy of Death of a Naturalist for his signature ...

Dermot Healy / Seamus Heaney - the names are not really that similar, but he claimed that he got mistaken for the more famous Seamus on a regular basis, and had in fact taken to signing some of his books simply in order to avoid further explanations.

Famous Seamus - that was his nickname in Ireland, another Irish friend told me. Virtually from the beginning of his career, in the mid-sixties, it was apparent that his was a talent on a different scale from most of his contemporaries. As Gavin Ewart put it, wryly: "I think I'm Auden, he thinks he's Yeats." That was the competition - not the other poets he knew, or (increasingly) that he'd taught at Queen's University in Belfast.

I wrote a fairly long piece about Heaney and his sense of poetic genealogy for a guest lecture I gave to Jo Emeney's somewhat bemused English students at Kristin School in 2010. Not just Yeats, but Homer, Shakespeare - above all, Dante, who inspired his wonderful dream vision Station Island of 1984, and whom he translated piecemeal in various collections throughout his career.

He bore his burden of fame (the Nobel Prize, the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford) with grace, I think. It can't have been easy at times, when each of his pronouncements was taken so seriously, weighed up with such scrupulous attention - particularly as the Troubles dragged on, and he had somehow become the voice of Catholic Northern Ireland itself.

His was a fate rather like Dante's - and Yeats's - then: a partisan political as well as a poetic role to play in the tragi-comedy of late twentieth-century history.

Now all that's over and we can go back to the poetry. A few years ago I bought the recordings he'd made of his entire body of work to date: a 15-CD set which I've listened to a couple of times since then. It's a very different experience from reading the books (I have all of them, as well: the 12 collections, at any rate). His shaping and patterning is so clear on the page. When spoken aloud, the poems become more genial and anecdotal, more like the fragments of a complex life story they were always, I imagine, meant to be.

It seems rather fitting that it was Jo Emeney who sent me a link to an obituary by Colm Tóibín, and thus informed me indirectly of his death yesterday. I don't know quite what to think, actually. He was one of the major shapers of poetry in our time. It seems rather unfair that we should have to part with him so soon. I suppose the true breadth of his work will come into focus now, though - that journey he started on almost fifty years ago.

I'll quote a part of his translation of Canto 1 of Dante's Inferno. It seems to say so much more than I can find to say at this moment:

How I got into it I cannot clearly say
for I was moving like a sleepwalker
the moment I stepped out of the right way,

But when I came to the bottom of a hill
standing off at the far end of that valley
where a great terror had disheartened me

I looked up, and saw how its shoulders glowed
already in the rays of the planet
which leads and keeps men straight on every road.

Then I sensed a quiet influence settling
into those depths in me that had been rocked
and pitifully troubled all night long

And as a survivor gasping on the sand
turns his head back to study in a daze
the dangerous combers, so my mind

Turned back, although it was reeling forward,
back to inspect a pass that had proved fatal
heretofore to everyone who entered.

- from Dante's Inferno: Translations by 20 Contemporary Poets, edited by Daniel Halpern (New York: Ecco Press, 1993)

What more can one say? It comes to us all in the end, that "pass that had proved fatal/ heretofore to everyone who entered" - in Seamus Heaney it took away one of the best and the brightest ... Perhaps one might conclude, instead, with some lines from Dunbar's "Lament for the Makaris":

I se that makaris amang the laif
Playis heir ther pageant, syne gois to graif;
Sparit is nocht ther faculte;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

[I see that makers among the rest
play here their pageant, then go to grief;
their faculty is not exempt;
The fear of death obsesses me].

Seamus Heaney: Collected Poems (2009)

Seamus Justin Heaney
(1939-2013)

Poetry collections:


1. Death of a Naturalist (1966)
   • Death of a Naturalist. 1966. London: Faber, 1969.
2. Door into the Dark (1969)
   • Door into the Dark. 1969. London: Faber, 1985.
3. Wintering Out (1972)
   • Wintering Out. 1972. London: Faber, 1993.
4. North (1975)
   • North. 1975. London: Faber, 1992.
5. Field Work (1979)
   • Field Work. London: Faber, 1979.
6. Station Island (1984)
   • Station Island. 1984. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986.
7. The Haw Lantern (1987)
   • The Haw Lantern. London: Faber, 1987.
8. Seeing Things (1991)
   • Seeing Things. London: Faber, 1991.
9. The Spirit Level (1996)
   • The Spirit Level. London: Faber, 1998.
10. Electric Light (2001)
    • Electric Light. London: Faber, 2001.
11. District and Circle (2006)
    • District and Circle. London: Faber, 2006.
12. Human Chain (2010)
    • Human Chain. London: Faber, 2010.

Selected editions:


13. Selected Poems 1965–1975 (1980)
    • Selected Poems 1965-1975. London: Faber, 1980.
14. New Selected Poems 1966–1987 (1990)
    • New Selected Poems 1966-1987. London: Faber, 1990.
15. Opened Ground: Poems 1966–1996 (1998)
    • Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996. London: Faber, 1998.
16. New Selected Poems 1988–2013 (2014)
    • New Selected Poems 1988-2013. London: Faber, 2014.
17. 100 Poems (2018)

Prose collections:


18. Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978 (1980)
19. The Government of the Tongue (1988)
20. The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures (1995)
    • The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures. 1995. London: Faber, 1996.
21. Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001 (2002)
    • Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001. 2002. London: Faber, 2003.

Plays:


22. The Cure at Troy: A version of Sophocles' Philoctetes (1990)
    • The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes. London: Faber, in association with Field Day Theatre Company, Derry, 1990.
23. The Burial at Thebes: A version of Sophocles' Antigone (2004)
    • The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone. 2004. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.

Translations:


24. Sweeney Astray: A version from the Irish (1983)
    • Sweeney Astray. 1983. London: Faber, 1984.
25. Sweeney's Flight. Photographs by Rachel Giese (1992)
26. The Midnight Verdict: Translations from the Irish of Brian Merriman and from the Metamorphoses of Ovid (1993)
27. [with Stanisław Barańczak] Laments, a cycle of Polish Renaissance elegies by Jan Kochanowski (1995)
28. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (1999)
    • Beowulf: A Verse Translation. 2000. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Daniel Donghue. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.
29. Diary of One Who Vanished, a song cycle by Leoš Janáček of poems by Ozef Kalda (1999)
    • Diary of One Who Vanished: A Song cycle by Leos Janacek / Poems by Ozef Kalda. London: Faber, 1999.
30. The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables (2009)
31. Aeneid: Book VI (2016)

Chapbooks & Limited editions:


32. Eleven Poems (1965)
33. The Island People (1968)
34. Room to Rhyme (1968)
35. A Lough Neagh Sequence (1969)
36. Night Drive (1970)
37. A Boy Driving His Father to Confession (1970)
38. Explorations (1973)
39. Stations (1975)
40. Bog Poems (1975)
41. The Fire i' the Flint (1975)
42. Four Poems (1976)
43. Glanmore Sonnets (1977)
44. In Their Element (1977)
45. Robert Lowell: A Memorial Address and an Elegy (1978)
46. The Makings of a Music (1978)
47. After Summer (1978)
48. Hedge School (1979)
49. Ugolino (1979)
50. Gravities (1979)
51. A Family Album (1979)
52. Toome (1980)
53. Sweeney Praises the Trees (1981)
54. A Personal Selection (1982)
55. Poems and a Memoir (1982)
56. An Open Letter (1983)
57. Among Schoolchildren (1983)
58. Verses for a Fordham Commencement (1984)
59. Hailstones (1984)
60. From the Republic of Conscience (1985)
61. Place and Displacement (1985)
62. Towards a Collaboration (1985)
63. Clearances (1986)
64. Readings in Contemporary Poetry (1988)
65. The Sounds of Rain (1988)
66. The Dark Wood (1988)
67. An Upstairs Outlook (1989)
68. The Place of Writing (1989)
69. The Tree Clock (1990)
70. Squarings (1991)
71. Dylan the Durable (1992)
72. The Gravel Walks (1992)
73. The Golden Bough (1992)
74. Keeping Going (1993)
75. Joy or Night (1993)
76. Extending the Alphabet (1994)
77. Speranza in Reading (1994)
78. Oscar Wilde Dedication (1995)
79. Charles Montgomery Monteith (1995)
80. Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture (1995)
81. Commencement Address (1996)
82. Poet to Blacksmith (1997)
83. An After Dinner Speech (1997)
84. Audenesque (1998)
85. The Light of the Leaves (1999)
86. Ballynahinch Lake (1999)
87. Something to Write Home About (2001)
88. Towers, Trees, Terrors (2001)
89. The Whole Thing: on the Good of Poetry (2002)
90. Hope and History (2002)
91. A Keen for the Coins (2002)
92. Hallaig (2002)
93. Arion, a poem by Alexander Pushkin, translated from the Russian, with a note by Olga Carlisle (2002)
94. Eclogues in Extremis (2003)
95. Squarings (2003)
96. Anything can Happen (2004)
97. Room to Rhyme (2004)
98. The Testament of Cresseid (2004)
99. Columcille The Scribe (2004)
100. A Tribute to Michael McLaverty (2005)
101. The Door Stands Open (2005)
102. A Shiver (2005)
103. The Riverbank Field (2007)
104. Articulations (2008)
105. One on a Side (2008)
106. Spelling It Out (2009)
107. Writer & Righter (2010)
108. Stone From Delphi (2012)
109. The Last Walk (2013)
110. My Yeats (2019)

Edited:


111. [with Ted Hughes] The Rattle Bag (1982)
     • [with Ted Hughes] The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry. 1982. London: Faber, 1985.
112. [with Ted Hughes] The School Bag (1997)
     • [with Ted Hughes] The School Bag. London: Faber, 1997.

Recordings:


113. Collected Poems (2009)
     • Collected Poems: Death of a Naturalist (1966); Door into the Dark (1969); Wintering Out (1972); North (1975); Field Work (1979); Station Island (1984); The Haw Lantern (1987); Seeing Things (1991); The Spirit Level (1998); Electric Light (2001); District and Circle (2006). Read by the Author. Set of 15 CDs. Dublin: RTE / Lannan, 2009.

Secondary:


114. O'Driscoll, Dennis. Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney. London: Faber, 2008.

Seamus Heaney (2010)

•

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]

•

[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]

•

[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

•

[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]

•

[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]

•

[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]

•

[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]

•

Jackette

[Jacket 2]

Jacket, the Australian online journal edited by John Tranter and (latterly) Pam Brown, is generally regarded as one of the most influential poetry magazines of the past two decades (you can access its entire forty-issue back catalogue, 1997-2010, from either the link above or the one below).

It's now succeeded by Jacket2, a website including Articles, Features, Reviews, Interviews, Commentaries, Reissues & Podcasts, all centred on contemporary poetry and poetics. The site is based in the US, but retains strong links with the Antipodes.

As proof of that, when I was at the Poetry & the Contemporary symposium in Melbourne in July, Pam Brown approached me about editing a New Zealand poetry feature for the site to parallel the one that she was doing on Australian poetry.

Both features are now up online. You can check out Pam's (which is pretty comprehensive: it's planned to include - eventually - 51 contemporary Australian poets) here, and my more modest selection of a dozen Kiwi poets here.

Once before I went through an exercise of this kind -- in 2004, seven years ago, when I co-edited 12 Taonga from the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive with Jan Kemp for the nzepc, at the end of our work on that 40-odd-CD-long, 171-poet-strong compilation of recordings and back-up materials.

Interestingly enough, there are two overlaps with the Jacket2 feature: Apirana Taylor and Richard von Sturmer. Besides that, though, I've tried to keep to the same principle of unearthing overlooked treasures in this new international showcase. Once again, it came down to 12 poets (though a number of those I asked were unable to participate for one reason or another -- I'd originally planned on including 15 or so: still well short of Pam's 50 -- we are only a quarter of the size, though: in population, at any rate ...)

The number rises to a neat Baker's dozen when you add in the strong, strikingly colourful images of local artist Emma Smith, which I attached to each page to give a kind of consistency of tone to these otherwise wildly various materials.

[Emma Smith:
"Even though you have lost your horse, don't pursue it"
[oil on canvas] (2011)]

•

So what's in the feature? It's entitled "Look and look again: 12 New Zealand poets," and the twelve poets in question are (in alphabetical order):

[Bio: John Adams]


1. John Adams:
   
   
   
   • Fishing, off Kawau
   • Did you hear the snicker/ of that piwakawaka?/ In which fold/ is the artist squeezed?
   • Out the window there was a round goldfish pond with netting to keep the birds out and an aviary to keep their birds in



[Bio: Raewyn Alexander]


2. Raewyn Alexander:
   
   
   
   • 'aged famous rockers tour the world'
   • girls soft as new grass
   • India - early 20th Century and other Tales



[Bio: Jen Crawford]


3. Jen Crawford:
   
   
   
   • promontories
   • The Black Valley



[Bio: Scott Hamilton]


4. Scott Hamilton:
   
   
   
   • Elegy for a survivor of the war on Afghanistan
   • Walking to the Dendroglyphs on Christmas Eve (a dream)



[Bio: Leicester Kyle]


5. Leicester Kyle:
   
   
   
   • Happy Valley: A Lament for a landscape about to be mined (3 pp.) [31/10/03]
   • I Like It When The Sun Doesn’t Shine [12/9/03]



[Bio: Aleksandra Lane]


6. Aleksandra Lane:
   
   
   
   • Card games
   • Three cheers for liberation
   • Easter



[Bio: Thérèse Lloyd]


7. Thérèse Lloyd:
   
   
   
   • The Nail I
   • We’re All Here Buried
   • Takaka



[Bio: Richard Reeve]


8. Richard Reeve:
   
   
   
   • Uptake
   • Meeting in a Field
   • Croak



[Bio: Michael Steven]


9. Michael Steven:
   
   
   
   • Dunedin Fives

     o The Octagon
     o Raven Books
     o Spring Broadcast
     o The Excelsior Cafe
     o Meridian
     o Le Punk
     o Dented Moon

   • Elegy



[Bio: Apirana Taylor]


10. Apirana Taylor:
    
    
    
    • fighting with words
    • dame Margot on the line
    • rat a tat tat



[Bio: Richard Taylor]


11. Richard Taylor:
    
    
    
    • In the Silence Museum

      o again)
      o again) (2)
      o again) (3a)
      o again) (4)




[Bio: Richard von Sturmer]


12. Richard Von Sturmer:
    
    
    
    • Book of Equanimity Verses

      o 58.
      o 59.
      o 60.
      o 61,
      o 62.
      o 63.





•
[Bio: Jack Ross]


13. Jack Ross:
    
    
    
    • Look and look again: Twelve New Zealand poets




[Bio: Emma Smith]


14. Emma Smith

•

So obviously I think that each of these poets has something interesting to say to us right now. Check them out and see if you agree. It's an idiosyncratic selection, no doubt, but not one that I've put together without thinking about it quite a lot: a kind of personal anti-canon, perhaps - but one that's intended to intrigue you rather than provoke your wrath.

The "Jackette" pun was Jen Crawford's, in the first place, but it does seem rather appropriate to what I've tried to do here, so I've gratefully adopted it ... Enjoy.

Emma Smith:
"Hecate"
[mixed media on paper]
(2010)]