Scott Free

[Ellen Portch, front cover image for brief #34: War]

The Arts journal brief was founded by Alan Loney in 1995 under the title A Brief Description of the Whole World. In those days it was a quarterly, with a certain number of pages reserved for each of a small number of contributors. The first ten issues of the magazine appeared between December 1995 and October 1998 (a double issue: 10/11).

John Geraets revived it in mid-1999. His first issue was a reprint of Leigh Davis's Willy's Gazette (1983), but he went on to edit eleven more issues, taking the magazine through at least three more name changes (ABDOTWW / Ab.WW & AbdotWW) before settling on the more succinct appellation brief which it retains today.

Geraets asked me to take over as editor in 2002, and I edited the magazine for the next three years, from July 2002 until May 2005, approximately nine issues (depending on whether you count the immense #30/31: Kunst-Kultur issue as one or two). In my time brief moved from being a quarterly to appearing three times a year.

I also followed John Geraets' lead in trying to develop brief's publishing arm, the Writers Group, which issued two titles under his editorship and three under mine. They are, in order:

- Alan Loney’s Reading / Saying / Making: Selected Essays (2001)
- Sugu Pillay’s The Chandrasekhar Limit and other stories (2002)
- Jack Ross's A brief Index: 1995-2003 [Supplemental Index: 2003-2005] (2003/2005)
- Kendrick Smithyman’s Campana to Montale: Versions from Italian (2004)
- K. M. Ross’s novel Falling through the Architect (2005)

Throughout the first ten years (and 32 issues) of its existence, brief's format remained relatively consistent: A4 sheets, copied – so far as possible – exactly as their authors wrote them, ordered, bound, then distributed with bio-notes and a cover. The magazine has always had a commitment to publishing technically adventurous literary and graphic work, by acknowledged (and newly discovered) innovators. Pageworks, critical articles, poems and fictional texts were equally prominent in most issues. The Writers Group, and brief, have never received any official funding beyond subscriptions and donations, so all but occasional guest contributors have had to be subscribers.

Scott Hamilton took over as managing editor late in 2005. He now cedes that role to Brett Cross of Titus Books, who will be editing the next issue, no. 35.

What can one say about Scott as editor? An immensely inspiring and stimulating writer, and generous supporter of other people's work, Scott, I think, has done fine things with the two issues of brief he's edited. His intense political consciousness also gave the magazine a new relevance. All of that is on the plus side.

On the minus side, it's true that it's taken a very long time for those two issues to appear, and that in the process our original commitment to producing three issues a year has rather gone by the board. That's the only negative aspect I can see about his incumbency at brief.

Where the magazine goes to from here I'm not really sure. We've had to scale its size down from the original A4 format to A5 mainly for reasons of cost, but there doesn't seem to be any diminution in the quality -- or quantity -- of material in each issue.

Nor do I get any sense of growing indifference to the concept of an avant-garde literary magazine committed to representing the kinds of material which you won't see in the other journals.

Anyway, once again the managing editor is gone, long live the managing editor! Good luck to Brett in his new role. I hope you continue to support him. Maybe, with your help, this most maverick of literary magazines can continue for another decade or so ...

Here's a summary of the issues to date:

A Brief Description of the Whole World
Editor: Alan Loney
No 1, December 1995: 70 pp.
No 2, March 1996: 52 pp.
No 3, June 1996: 67 pp.
No 4, November 1996: 82 pp.
No 5, May 1997: 58 pp.
No 6, July 1997: 56 pp.
No 7, September 1997: 66 pp.
No 8, December 1997: 76 pp.
No 9, April 1998: 55 pp.
Nos 10 & 11, October 1998: 47 pp.
[629 pages overall]

A Brief Description of the Whole World
Editor: John Geraets
No 12, June 1999:
Leigh Davis: Willy’s Gazette (1983) [vii + 111 pp.]
ABDOTWW
No 13, September 1999: 93 pp.
No 14, December 1999: 110 pp.
ABDOTWW / description
No 15, March 2000: 86 pp.
Ab.WW / AbdotWW
No 16, June 2000: 85 pp.
Ab.ww / Loney
No 17, September 2000: 96 pp.
brief.
No 18, December 2000: 100 pp.
No 19, March 2001: 80 pp.
No 20, June 2001: 68 pp.
No 21, September 2001: 93 pp.
No 22, December 2001: 100 pp.
No 23, March 2002: 100 pp.
[1011 pages overall]

brief
Editor: Jack Ross
No 24, July 2002: 84 pp.
No 25, October 2002: 111 pp.
No 26, January 2003: 118 pp.
No 27, June 2003: 104 pp.
No 28, October 2003: 126 pp.
No 29, March 2004: 102 pp.
Nos 30/31, October 2004: 120/120 pp.
No 32, May 2005: 120 pp.
[1005 pages overall]

brief
Editor: Scott Hamilton
No 33, March 2006: 150 pp.
No 34, February 2007: 188 pp.
[338 pages overall]

[Ellen Portch, back cover image for brief #34: War]

Gothic Reviewer review'd

In one of the six “Supplemental” volumes to his infamous ten-volume translation of the Arabian Nights (1885-88), Richard Burton included a section called “The Reviewers Review’d,” in which he heaped scorn and contumely on various imprudent critics who’d thought to question his command of Arabic. It’s very amusing to read, though occasionally a little unedifying (in another part of the same volume he put in a long essay abusing Oxford’s Bodleian Library, who’d dared to deny him their copy of the famous Wortley-Montague ms. of the Nights – he’d had to employ someone to make primitive photocopies, or “sun pictures,” of it instead. If they had agreed to lend it to him, he crowed, he would have felt honour-bound to suppress some of the more explicit passages, but since he’d had to pay for the pages out of his own pocket, he’d felt at liberty to spell out every last unsavoury detail for the delectation of his readers!)

It’s an interesting idea, reviewing reviewers. The usual assumption is that one has to be pretty desperate to care that much about what other people say, but then critics (and sub-editors) do get away with an awful lot of tosh and misinformation because of their control of the means of production. If you write into the Listener, say, complaining about any misrepresentation of your work, your letter is bound to be followed by some bland, authoritative-sounding dismissal by the author of the original piece.

This week’s Listener contains a review of Gothic NZ: The Darker Side of Kiwi Culture (Otago University Press, 2006), a collection edited by my Massey colleagues Jennifer Lawn and Mary Paul together with Misha Kavka of Auckland University, to which I contributed a few poems under the title “Tiger Country.”

The review is by one Andrew Paul Wood. Sadly, the Listener no longer seems to include notes on its reviewers, but a brief consultation of the web reveals that he “lives and writes in Christchurch, New Zealand. He was born in Timaru in 1975. He is a BA(Hons) graduate of Otago University and PGDipMuStud (Massey). He is a writer, poet and art and culture critic.” [Southern Ocean Review 19 (2001] (& MA (merit) Canterbury 2003, as further research discloses).

That detail about “living and writing in Christchurch” one might have deduced from his complaint that Ian Lochhead is “curiously the only South Island voice” in the collection. What about Justin Paton? Or Jenny Lawn, herself an Otago graduate, for that matter? So what, anyway? Do we really have to descend to that kind of parish-pump niggling every time an anthology comes out? (I fear the answer to that last question is ‘yes,’ but I’d much rather it weren’t).

I guess, for the most part, I enjoyed Andrew Wood’s review. There are some awfully nice adjectives scattered about in it – the book (for the most part) he calls “enormous fun,” Martin Edmond’s essay on abandoned houses is “pure gold,” Stephen Turner and Scott Wilson on road-safety ads are “brilliant,” and Elizabeth Hale’s essay on Maurice Gee and Vincent Ward is a “revelatory tour-de-force.”

The poetry contributed to the volume by Olivia “Macassely” (sic. – for Macassey: that’s what I mean about sub-editors; the spelling error is quite likely not by Wood at all …) and myself is, however, described as “overwrought.”

Nice word that – it has a very satisfying air of the hysterical about it which I would certainly not disavow, though I can’t speak for Olivia. He goes on to say that it might have been nice to include Richard Reeve, which I would definitely concur with. Richard did edit the book for Otago University Press, though, so he might have perceived some conflict of interest if he’d been invited to contribute as well.

I guess where I part company with Wood is with his rather “sophomoric” generalizations about the history and antecedents of “the gothic sensibility.” It’s hardly news that Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, and William Beckford were influential Gothic novelists. So were Maturin and Monk Lewis. What difference does it make to his argument that “the melodramatics of gothic were being mercilessly lampooned as early as Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey”?

Why does it “make sense to attribute gothic sensibilities to 19th-century New Zealand colonial society” but not to “the present day”? Wood follows this remark by a series of (alleged) “omissions” from the book:

Art is explored, but only contemporary, and unconvincingly (Saskia Leek and Yvonne Todd, no Ava Seymour), ignoring the great provincial traditions (Don Driver in Taranaki, Laurence Aberhart in Russell, everyone on Banks Peninsula). There’s little discussion of the “Man Alone” idea, no mention of the 1984 film Heart of the Stag, or that whole up-welling of gothic-themed culture in the 1980s brought about by Rogernomics and Ruthenasia. Jennifer Lawn tries to fill some of the many gaps through vigorous box-ticking in her breathless introduction.

“Everyone on Banks Peninsula,” eh? A bit of “vigorous box-ticking” going on there, I’d say. And fair enough, too. Of course the book isn’t complete. It never had any aspirations to be (as I understand it, at any rate). Wood is more on the money when he remarks: “The book reads like what it is: a collection of conference papers – personal enthusiasms in fancy dress to entertain peers, with dubious connections to a theme and a few reprints from elsewhere.”

Yep. And? Your problem is …? True, it certainly is “a mixed bag.” But then it did originate in a conference (organized by Mary and Jenny in 2002). Wood himself concedes that “Gothic NZ is worth it for the good bits,” though he goes on to complain that “all too often [it] is more camp than Gothic.” But hold on, didn’t you yourself mention Jane Austen’s “merciless lampooning” of “Gothic melodrama” in the early nineteenth-century? How can the genre-formerly-known-as-Gothic not include an element of camp almost two centuries later?

And, in any case, if there are so many omissions, how does it make sense to restrict “gothic sensibilities” to “19th-century New Zealand colonial society”? Wood himself seems to detect it everywhere but the kitchen sink in “the present day” (especially on Banks Peninsula). Heart of the Stag may escape extended discussion (though I notice it’s listed in the filmography at the back of the book), but Alison MacLean’s classic 1989 short film Kitchen Sink certainly doesn’t.

As far as the “overwrought” accusation goes, what about the idea of describing Ian Wedde’s piece as a “whirlwind potlatch of eclectic waifs and strays” during which he “congees and salamalecs to the circle with an afterword more gratuitously stuffed with cultural possessions on display than Te Papa”?

“Congees and salamecs” – great stuff! I like it. Very excessive … very Gothic, actually.

All in all, I think Wood does a pretty good job. He’s dismissive and patronizing in parts, and lays on the erudition a bit unconvincingly in his opening (don’t forget that some of us actually know something about Gothic art and writing, and have even – in some cases – read Horace Walpole and the rest of them), but if the basic purpose of a review is to write entertainingly about the book on display, then I’d give him a solid B+ / A-.

The mark would be higher if it weren’t for the internal contradictions in his piece (trying to restrict “the gothic sensibility” to the late eighteenth / early nineteenth century, and then going on to complain about all the contemporary examples which have been left out of the book – you really can’t have it both ways). I also find criticizing a book which began as a series of conference papers for sounding too much like a set of conference papers a little paradoxical.

I take his point, of course. The book is bitty but fun, is what he’s saying. He expresses it more eloquently, but it comes down to that.

Traffic

We all know Auckland traffic is appalling -- and it's getting worse. One of the main reasons for living and working on the Shore (at Massey Albany), in fact, is avoiding this sort of thing: the grind across the bridge. Or at any rate having the opportunity to choose one's moment to take the plunge.

So what do you when you do get stuck in traffic, creeping along behind some bozo whose idea of fun is stopping twenty or so yards behind the car in front and then gradually drifting up on them, leaving you unable even to stop and cogitate in peace?

I guess I tend to wish I was somewhere else -- either snouting around some musty time-soaked secondhand bookshop, or lying supine on a sun-baked beach (Mairangi Bay, for instance ...)



So the question is, how do you get from one to the other: traffic-jam to state of inner peace? Well, the obvious solution is to listen to the radio, but there's only a limited number of times you can hear John Tesh dispensing "wisdom for your life" without wanting to strangle the smug bastard, or to those announcers on the Concert Programme who go on and on about every detail of the composer's life before they actually allow you to listen to any music.

Bringing along your own tapes or CDs, and listening to those, is probably the best idea -- if you're organised to remember to keep the supplies stocked up. But here's my own original extra suggestion for mellow, tension-free motoring ...

[I should probably add at this point that everyone to whom I've so far mentioned this solution has reacted to it a bit like Jim Jones's congregation when they got their first big satisfying slug of Kool-aid ... but you never know, you guys might be an exception. It works okay for me, at any rate ...]

What I do is listen to poetry in the car.

"Gaaah!" I hear you cry. "No, no, have mercy -- anything but that."

But wait a second. Jan Kemp and I have spent an awful amount of time over the past few years collecting soundfiles of NZ poets reading their own work (most of which now reside in the vaults of Auckland University Library and the Turnbull in Wellington). We even put out a text/ sound anthology of Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance through Auckland University Press last year (and very successful it's been, thank you very much).



But when can you actually find time to put a bunch of poets on the CD-player during an average day? I mean really, not just that one dutiful listen you give it before packing it away on a shelf forever .... In my case the answer is: in the car.

Not just our anthology, of course (though I've listened to that an immense number of times -- not to mention its sequel, Contemporary New Zealand Poets in Performance, covering the baby-boomer poets, roughly from Sam Hunt to Michele Leggott, and due out later this year).



I guess my particular favourites for traffic jams or long drives in the country are very long epic poems: The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Aeneid. I have a number of versions of each, and it's agreat way of comparing the different translations.

Too intellectual? Too pretentious. Well, as the immortal Blackadder once put it, there's nothing intellectual about wandering around Italy in a nightshirt trying to get laid. That's pretty much the essence of most of these epics -- sex, sadism, family feuds, and lots of drinking. Life, as Homer sees it, is a grim struggle punctuated with moments of brightness, and it doesn't seem to make much difference whether you're a mortal or a god.

I like listening to other poets too, the Moderns: Ginsberg is great to crank up loud when you're cruising round campus trying to disillusion people with the life of the mind: "Moloch! Moloch!" Auden has a kind of dry charm. I like the mellifluous blarney of Irishmen such as Paul Muldoon or Seamus Heaney. And it's not long before you find yourself getting to know their poems far better than you ever did when they just sat in front of you on a page.

It's depressing to think that I can still sing the jingles of most of the TV ads which were on when I was a kid ("We are the boys from down on the farm / We really know our cheese ..." "They're going to think you're fine / 'Coz you got Lifebuoy ..." "Kiss me Cutex / Kiss me quick ..."). Wouldn't you rather din into your head the immortal cadences of Homer or Beowulf, or find yourself intoning "April is the cruellest month / Mixing memory with desire ..." instead? Okay, maybe not -- but it's got to be better than bitching about the traffic or (worse) listening to talkback.

[Editor's note (May, 2008): And here's the cover of the latest in our series, New New Zealand Poets in Performance, due out from AUP on Poetry Day (July 18) this year]: