The Puppet Oresteia

[Cover Design: William T. Ayton]

Sorry for any of you who've been disappointed by the lack of action on this blog over the past few weeks. I really have not been idle, but there are just so many things to keep up with mid-semester.

The most fun thing I've been doing lately, though, is collaborating with a US-based British artist, Bill Ayton, on an ilustrated version of my Puppet Oresteia play.

[back cover blurb]

The vicissitudes this text has been through since I first came up with the idea a couple of years ago - writings, rewritings, overhauls etc. - are probably not at all surprising for those of you who move in theatrical circles. After a while it became clear to me, though, that the only meaningful existence this text could ever have (for me, at any rate) was as a text - rather than as some kind of viable script for performance.

Bronwyn had made an entire puppet theatre, complete with backdrops and little puppets, in the meantime, though. Never mind. It still looks great in the photographs:

Scene One: a bedroom off the garden
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Young Iphigenia (Gene) is explaining to her brother Orestes (Rusty) exactly why her wedding ceremomy is planned for the harbour at Aulis instead of at the palace at Mycenae as per usual. Is it because her betrothed, Achilles (aka Col. Killer), is anxious to get away to the Trojan war? Or are they cooking up something else for her down there ...

[Scene Two: in front of the jacuzzi (Mycenae)]
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Clytemnestra (Mummy) has rather a hard time acccounting for just what she and her longtime boyfriend Aegisthus (Uncle Al) have been doing to Agamemnon (Daddy) and his new girlfriend Cassandra (Candy) when Rusty stumbles in on them unexpectedly. Is revenge really always a dish best eaten cold?

[Scene Three: in front of the shrine at Tauris]
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Rusty's a junkie, haunted by demons, when he just happens to get shipwrecked by the very same shrine where Gene's been living all this time. But will she recognise him in time? The local custom is to sacrifice all strangers to the angry goddess, after all ...

It's not the most elegant of retellings, really. In fact it's as rough as guts in parts. But then that's kind of the point. The young girl whose puppet play this is is far more interested in her own family dynamics than she is in Ancient Greek tragedy ...

[William T. Ayton: A Strange Nest]

The wonderful thing about working with Bill has been watching a whole new dimension of the text swim into being as his various ink illustrations morphed and evolved. There are now twenty-four of them, accompanying twenty-odd pages of text, so there can be no question of calling this mere "illustration" - on the contrary, this has been a true collaboration.

[William T. Ayton: The Seashore at Tauris]

If you'd like to see what I mean, you'll have to go and check out the whole thing at lulu.com. This is my first venture into listing a book on that site, which has been another very interesting learning experience. I'm afraid that it's not yet on general sale, but I'll put up a link here as soon as it's available.

You can sample some of the choruses (all spoken by Cassandra / Candy) here.

[Update 20 May, 2011: I'm glad to be able to report that the book is now live on lulu: you can find it here, where it can be ordered for the pretty reasonable sum of $US 15 (plus postage).

Alternatively, you can order a copy from me for $NZ 20, and I'll even throw in the postage free (within New Zealand, that is) ...]

4 Poets & Dave

ADAM ART GALLERY
WEDNESDAY 13 APRIL 7 PM

4 POETS
& DAVE

POETRY AND FICTION
FROM THE IOWA WRITERS'
WORKSHOP VIA VICTORIA

ALAN FELSENTHAL
ALICE MILLER
DAVID FLEMING
LEE POSNA
THERESE LLOYD

Unfortunately I'll be stuck up here in Auckland and won't be able to make it, but for any of you who are in Wellington, I'd really recommend this reading.

I understand that Bill Manhire will be kicking off the intros, after which we'll go into the four poets and one fiction writer.

Alice Miller won the Landfall essay competition a couple of years ago, and I believe she's won the Katherine Mansfield short story competition too, which is a pretty impressive achievement. She's clearly as much at home in the realm of prose as that of poetry.

Thérèse Loyd was her successor as the winner of the IIML fellowship in Iowa. She is (in my opinion) a fantastic poet and performer. She's also my sister-in-law, but my admiration for her work did long predate the family involvement, I assure you. Any of you who want to follow up on her work will find a selection in New New Zealand Poets in Performance (AUP, 2008).

Her husband, Lee, also a very fine poet, is one of my favourite people on this planet - a truly gentle and dedicated soul. Lee and Thérèse met at Iowa, and it'd be great to hear them reading together again (I hosted a reading at Massey a couple of years ago with Lee, Thérèse, Sarah Broom, Michael Steven and Jen Crawford - a pretty stellar line-up, in retrospect), so I have some idea what it may be like.

I don't know the other two readers, so I can't comment on their work, but I'm sure they're of equal calibre. Any of you who know more might like to write in and tell us about it.

And, for any of you who don't know, the Adam Art Gallery is right in the quad at Victoria University. Yes, it's that one surrounded by rubble and construction equipment -- still open for business, though.

Good luck to all, then! I'm sure it will be a great occasion (and good on you Bill for continuing to lend your support to such events ...)

Reviews of Alt

Lisa Samuels
[photograph: Tim Page]

Well, it's April Fool's day - and, sure enough, a review of my book of short stories Kingdom of Alt (Titus Books, 2010) has appeared on Landfall's new online site here ...

The review is by Lisa Samuels, who teaches poetry and creative writing at Auckland University, and I think it would have to be described as extremely charitable by any standards.

In fact, as Lisa conducted her forensic enquiry into the inner workings of the various stories in the collection, I did begin to expect some kind of flying boot to appear out of nowhere and crush my impertinence forever. Not so, though. She ends as judiciously as she began - and to anyone who knows Lisa's fierce regard for accuracy and truth in all she says and does, this is quite a tribute.

I also have to register a strong vote in favour of the new Landfall Review Online here, too. it's been very frustrating, for a long time now, to see excellent books appearing here in New Zealand which can't get a decent review for love or money. Quote Unquote, Mark Pirie's mid-period JAAM, the pander - all those journals which aspired to cover the more interesting stuff appearing here have either bitten the dust or changed their formats. Yes, reviews are complicated to organise and expensive to commission. Congratulations to David Eggleton, Landfall's new helmsman, then, for getting this new initiative up and running. Even if my book had been slated (which it wasn't), it'd still great to see some solid discursive critical writing out there, easily accessible on the internet.

That's not to say that I agree with everything Lisa says, mind you ... but how else are you going to find out how your writing means to other people than through a comprehensive discussion of this sort by a careful and honest critic? What you think is perfectly clear may not turn out to be so ...

brief 41 Launch (19/1/11)
[photograph: Michael Arnold]

The other substantive review of Kingdom of Alt which has appeared in the past couple of months was in brief 41 (2010): 103-5, edited by Richard von Sturmer. The reviewer, one Elmar Ludwig, characterised himself in the "notes on Contributors" at the end of the magazine as having:

... sold his second-hand bookshop in Hamburg in December 2007. He then decided to spend the next ten years in ten different countries. In 2008 he lived in Yokohama, Japan; in 2009 in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil; and in 2010 in Auckland, New Zealand. Next year he will relocate to Israel. His choice of countries is based on a mathematical equation. [107-8]

briefers
[photograph: Michael Arnold]

As the immortal Rabbie Burns once observed: "Would the good Lord the gift would gie us / To see ourselves as others see us" (or words to that effect). One of the most interesting things about Elmar Ludwig's review - to me, at any rate - was the fact that virtually everyone seemed convinced that I'd somehow fabricated his very existence in order to review the book myself ...

Even my publisher, the redoubtable Brett Cross, seemed to have a few doubts on the score. It's true that my fiction is a bit on the tricksy side, and I wouldn't swear not to have invented the odd alter-ego from time to time, but to review my own book? No, honestly not.

Mr Ludwig does sound a bit unlikely, on the surface, but anyone who knows Richard von Sturmer knows that he'd be about as likely to endorse George W. Bush for a Nobel Peace Prize as to collaborate in a literary hoax of this sort ...

You can check out parts of the Ludwig review at my bibliography site here. Elmar Ludwig begins by expressing doubts about my knowledge of contemporary Korean fiction. In this he is quite correct, I should say.

Lisa Samuels begins similarly by wondering if I'm ignorant of J. G. Ballard. There I would have to say that she's less justified, however. The obituary I wrote for him on this very site should constitute evidence of my reverence for the Master's works (though it's true that I haven't actually reread The Atrocity Exhibition all that recently ...)

[J. G. Ballard: The Terminal Collection
(Selected Cover Art: 1978-1984)