Three Cool Launches

Thérèse Lloyd: Other Animals (Wellington: VUP, 2013)
[Image: "Ursus Arctos," by Jane Dodd]

So Bronwyn and I flew down to Wellington last week for the long-awaited launch of her sister Thérèse Lloyd's first full-length book of poems, Other Animals - published by Victoria University Press, and launched by her long-time friend and mentor, poet Bernadette Hall.

[Thérèse & Bernadette waiting to speak]

One of the very first publications from Pania Press, back in 2006, was a chapbook of Thérèse's poems entitled many things happened, so I think it's safe to say that we've been supporters of her work for quite a long time now.

[VUP managing director Fergus Barrowman introduces the book]

There's a dark, haunting quality to her poetry which seems to me quite inimitable. I will admit that it scares me at times, but never in a gratuitous, "Gothic" kind of way - the things that preoccupy Thérèse are the things that should be worrying all of us: environmental catastrophe, social collapse, the chaos and alienation of modern life.

[The crowd in Unity Books]

So, while this was an very joyful occasion - so many friends and well-wishers grouped in one venue I've seldom seen before, while the book positively flew off the shelves! - the poems we were celebrating are anything but "safe." In fact, as she read, I suddenly felt as if a kind of ventriloquism was taking place: the poems sounded as if they had been crafted in some other language, by Rilke or Paul Celan, then somehow transmuted back into English. It was quite uncanny.

[Thérèse signing books]

I really recommend this book. Judging by the audience reaction on the night, it seems to have hit a nerve. Nor do I believe that there's anything flash-in-the-pan about Thérèse's poetry. She's taken the trouble to think it through and arrange the contents with consummate care, and I think you'll agree that it's been worth the effort. We couldn't be happier with her success.

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Tessa Laird: Chupacabra Candelabra
[Auckland: Melanie Rogers Gallery (13 Feb-9 March, 2013)]

About a month ago now, we drove over to Ponsonby one fine evening to attend the opening of Tessa Laird's new show in the window of Melanie Rogers Gallery (you can see the trees of Jervois Road reflected in the glass in the picture above). Pania Press is intending to publish a catalogue of the exhibition at some point in the near future, so it was with a certain trepidation that we awaited our first sight of Tessa's strange new set of works.

[Chupacabra Candelabra (1)]

The show is called "Chupacabra Candelabra," and consists of a set of ceramic "books" arranged in alternation with various brightly coloured candlesticks, on five beautiful pink cloud-shaped shelves. Tessa's a writer as well as an artist, and the works she's created for this show build on her wonderful 2012 Objectspace exhibition Reading Room, with Peter Lange.

[Chupacabra Candelabra (2)]

This time the books are mostly South and Central American in inspiration. There are Mayan and Mexican and Aztec motifs all jumbled together in syncretist profusion. I say "profusion" rather than "confusion" because there's a underlying spirit of joyous intensity which seems to combine all these various directions in her work into one colourful whole.

[Pyramid]

And it's perhaps worth remembering, when you look at this magnificent pyramid of clay books, that the Maya themselves used Toltec motifs in some of their art - and in the post-classic period, even Aztec influences began to appear in the few surviving works of art (mostly codices) from that era ...

Kirstin Carlin / Tessa Laird / Ruth Thomas-Edmond
[Auckland: Melanie Rogers Gallery (13 Feb-9 March, 2013)]

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Renee Bevan: The World is a Giant Pearl
(Photograph: Caryline Boreham)

Last (but not least), a few days before we attended the opening of Tessa's show, we went to Renee Bevan's artist talk - with curator Karl Chitham - for her new show "Stream of Thoughts" at the Gus Fisher Gallery, on Saturday 9th February.

I guess what interested me most about it - and what made me think that it might make a nice triad with Thérèse and Tessa - was the largely conceptual nature of the whole show. Renee is a jeweller, but her jewellery practice is beginning to intersect with an almost Duchampian playfulness and wit.

Renee Bevan: A Whole Year's Work
(Photograph: Caryline Boreham)

This image, for instance, takes its significance from the fact that the powder being poured over Renee's head consists, in fact, of the ashes of a whole series of her own visual diaries which she's discarded and burnt.

Renee Bevan: Parting Breath (2012)
(Photograph: Caryline Boreham)

This one, "parting breath," was originally intended to preserve the remnants of her own breath in a collapsed balloon. The first attempt broke while it was being electroplated, though, so this substitute is coloured black in mourning for its lost progenitor.

Renee Bevan: Wearing Myself as a Bracelet (2012)
(Photograph: Caryline Boreham)

This last one, "wearing myself," is perhaps the one which best expresses the spirit of the whole show. Draping herself around her partner as a human necklace, or making a velcro brooch which literally "attaches" you to other people, goes a bit beyond satirical celebration of the ephemeral nature of things. Renee's art is all about emotion, connection, cherishing. The subtlety and humour in her show shouldn't be allowed to distract you from the depth of her convictions on the matter.

I suppose, finally, that the reason I like these three shows so much is that they seem to me to be saying many of the same things in their very different ways. It's not so much hope they offer us as companionship. "There never really was much hope," as Gandalf tells Pippin when things are at their worst in the middle film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy: "Just a fool's hope."

Even a fool's hope is better than none, though. Renee, Tessa and Thérèse may not be able to set things right for us once and for all - the crooked made straight, the rough places smooth (Luke 3: 5) - but the wit and compassion they show in these three bodies of work at least show us that they're not going to allow us to give in to despair too easily.

They've given us three gifts, and I for one would like to express my gratitude to all of them.

[Pyramid]

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Postscript (Friday, 15th March):

We've just heard that Tazey's book has entered the official Nielsen Weekly Bestsellers List (for the week ending 9th March) at Number One! There are three categories: NZ Fiction for Adults; NZ Non-fiction for Adults & NZ Children & Teens (as well as international listings for each). Other Animals is at the top of the first list, ahead of titles by Janet Frame, Witi Ihimaera and Fiona Kidman. Fantastic! It sure must have hit a nerve ...

Nielsen Weekly Bestsellers List: week ending 9 March 2013

[14 Mar 2013]

The Bestseller Charts represent the bestselling books in New Zealand for the week up to the date given. The Bestseller Charts are compiled by Nielsen BookScan and comprise data supplied from the New Zealand panel of participating booksellers. Please note these charts are subject to copyright and may not be reproduced. Books are categorised according to country of publication.

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& check out Hamesh Wyatt's review in the Otago Daily Times Online:

Therese Lloyd's poems have appeared in a number of places. Other Animals is her debut collection of poems. Lloyd certainly has spark. Like Smither, her poems are simple, spare and beautiful. But rather than hitting on the soft things, Lloyd develops a lyrical pathway through some thorny issues.

She uses everyday lives in her poems. People rummage through rubbish and compost. Mice, rats and flies make regular appearances in these 38 short poems.

'Proof'': ...You trapped the mouse in the wall by nailing a
square over the hole. For days afterwards I thought I heard
it desperately scraping, its claws worn down to stumps. As we
slept cramp seized your leg. You leapt out of bed clutching
your thigh. You looked enormous in the strange morning half-
light. The way things morph - shapes forming imagined shapes
- I thought I saw the mouse squeezing through a gap and you
reaching down to carefully, slowly, crush him in your hands.

It is impossible not to enjoy this new work from the get-go. Lloyd adds bile, bite and a few surprise twists. She tells us what is on her mind. Other Animals will intoxicate the reader.

... She has produced a little book that is watchful, armed with warning and observations of people who are sometimes totally out of their depth. I like how this is new and exciting.

Cool bikkies, eh?

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& now there's another great review (by Siobhan Harvey) on Beattie's Book Blog (2/4/13) ...

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Fun with Fracking

Josh Fox: Gasland (2010)

Every now and then you have to stand up and be counted, no matter how politically powerless you may feel.

The other day Bronwyn and I finally nerved ourselves up to get out that documentary Gasland which had been staring at us from the shelves of our local video shop for the past year or so. A friend of ours had said that she couldn't sleep after watching it, and that it made her so mad that she wasn't sure whether she wanted to cry or kill someone.

Sounds like a real hoot, doesn't it? And so it proved. As the film made its quiet, understated way across vast devastated prairies of natural gas containers, through the kitchens of shell-shocked ranchers who could literally light their drinking water on fire (as they proceeded to demonstrate) - some of whom were already dying from the carcinogens that had been introduced into their water without any warning - down devastated streams festooned with dead animals, we felt as though the end of the world might have come at last.

Light 'em up

And - guess what? - it's all perfectly legal! The Bush government passed a bill in 2004 which stated that fracking (short for "hydraulic fracturing") is not subject to clean air and clean water legislation. And why not? Because it wouldn't be tolerated for a moment it it was! Because it's so desperately harmful to the environment - and human health - that if the burden of proof to show that it's safe were ever to be shifted to the industrial giants who use it, they'd all be out of business immediately (not to mention immured in court for the rest of their natural lives). So a very necessary piece of legislation, that one. Dick Cheney's idea. Good ol' Dick.

What's more, these myriad companies, with their innumerable different fracking "recipes", are not required to tell anyone exactly which bizarre and inimical chemicals they've been pumping into rock-seams, because it could be deemed "commercially sensitive information." So if you happen to be dying of cancer from the chemicals from a nearby Natural Gas installation, it's up to you to commission an independent study to find out exactly what they've been releasing into the air and the water near you. They don't have to tell you. Or anyone else.

Then, once you've actually started your lawsuit, chances are they'll settle out of court for an undisclosed sum - plus a commitment on your part never to communicate any details of the case to anyone. Only in America, huh? Free enterprise run mad: the right to poison and kill other people in the pursuit of profit ...

Welcome to the House of Fun

"We've got to make sure that it never happens here," said Bronwyn. "I mean it, Jack. We have to start a petition."

"Are you joking?" I said. "We're already doing it." (Though I didn't know, as I spoke, that it had been going on here for over twenty years).

A couple of nights later, we saw on the television news the present Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, remark with a chuckle that - since she had such a small office - she hadn't yet got around to completing the large-scale report on the matter which she undertook last year.

What she has said so far, though, in advance of the full report, is that she sees no need for a moratorium but instead recommends "tighter controls" on the practice. With environmental watchdogs like that, who needs corporate lawyers? She certainly couldn't be accused of staying up nights worrying about it.

Oh, she did also comment, in passing, that "she couldn't rule out the possibility fracking could cause large earthquakes, like the series of tremors that destroyed much of Christchurch over 2010 and 2011."

Dr. Jan Wright

Correct me if I'm wrong - as I often am - but doesn't that seem rather a casual tone to take on a matter of such seriousness? "Whether fracking is acceptable in a given location will depend on a number of variables, including the location characteristics, the competency of the explorer, the way wastewater is disposed of and whether there is potential for aquifer contamination," states Gary Taylor of the Environmental Defence Society.

Quite so. But if no-one's actually investigating those things at all seriously (and who would, in a John-Key-led administration?), and if there's even a minuscule risk that the practice might have unforeseen long-term effects on the environment, such as seismic instability, as well as all the already well-known side-effects such as watertable contamination, air pollution, compromised health, etc. etc., wouldn't it be quite a good idea to check it out sometime soon? Just why is Jan Wright's office so small, anyway? And shouldn't there be a few other studies going on somewhere else, as well?

Now I do understand that fracking is not the only environmental nightmare that besets us. I also understand that proponents of even more obscene affronts to human existence such as nuclear fission can use opposition to fracking to argue for their own filthy ends. Nor am I blind to the fact that everyone who uses energy (as I'm doing right now by typing on this keyboard) has to get it from somewhere, from some large-scale industrial process which is bound to be ecologically disruptive at least some of the time.

As I watched Josh Fox's film, though, and saw the squad of fakes who'd been flown in to a Congressional Committee hearing on the subject all testifying one after the other that there was no evidence of adverse effects from fracking, and that all the cases to date which had been reported over the many states that allow it had already been investigated and found to be without substance, I was reminded of those Big Tobacco executives who used to testify routinely to the lack of evidence for adverse health effects from smoking cigarettes (as shown memorably in that old Al Pacino / Russell Crowe movie The Insider). Their lies were cut from the same cloth: not even intended to be believed by anyone, but simply stated in order to put them on the record for the purpose of kickstarting future avalanches of bureaucratic delay and confusion.

Michael Mann, dir.: The Insider (1999)

If there's ever a Nuremberg trial for crimes against the environment, I fear that these guys and their bosses may find that simple obedience to orders is not an acceptable excuse. And can anyone seriously doubt that these industrialists - together with the chemists and lawyers and politicians they employ - are all equally culpable of conniving at the systematic degradation of the air and water all of us depend on for life?

Personally , I don't want to see any more laughing and kidding around at press conferences on the subject in future. It's not particularly funny that no resources are being put into investigating it here, just as virtually none have been allotted to checking up on it in the USA.

Since our present government apparently regards any enquiry into their activities which doesn't actually convict them of criminal misconduct and recommend immediate prosecution as a clear green light (the Sky City Convention Centre affair, for example - not exactly a whitewash for the National party, but that's how they took it - or the slew of court cases over the Maori Council's attempts to delay their asset-sales: again, not exactly adding up to a clean bill of health), I'd suggest that perhaps the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment might need to consider resignation if the point of the job is really to rubberstamp pre-formulated business decisions. Even she says our present government have "dropped the ball" on the environment ...

Oh, and by the way, the industrialists involved have informed us that there are "many errors" in the Gasland film:

Energy in Depth (EiD), launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, has created a web page with a list of claimed factual inaccuracies in the documentary, and produced an associated film titled TruthLand. In response to the EID's list of claimed factual inaccuracies, the Gasland website offers a rebuttal.

As so often on these occasions, it's the Defence position that causes more genuine disquiet than the Prosecution. All they appear to have been able to come up with is the statement that gas leaks from deposits hundreds of feet below couldn't possible have made their way up through so many impermeable strata to contaminate ground water - a claim now denied by a "2011 study by Duke University." Oh, and an extended rigmarole about the precise "distinction between biogenic and thermogenic gas." The film, it seems, confuses the two. However:

Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, D. C. Baum Professor of Engineering at Cornell University ... has said that drilling and hydraulic fracturing can liberate biogenic natural gas into a fresh water aquifer. That is, just because gas is biogenic does not necessarily indicate that it reached a well by natural means.

Obviously I can't venture any opinion on such technical matters, but if that's really the best they've got, against the compelling moonscapes of devastated horror exhibited by the film, then I have to conclude that we really are in trouble here.

So, sorry, our present inertia and tacit tolerance of fracking as somehow superior to stripmining or offshore oil drilling is no longer an acceptable position. This is actually something we might still be able to do something about. Writing to your MP (unless it's John Key), or - better still - to Dr. Jan Wright might be a good start, though.

So what if Straterra says that "fracking in New Zealand is nothing like how this technology is portrayed in Gasland"? What's next - an endorsement from Ken Ring? Don't you "industry spokespeople" understand that it simply isn't enough to say that the film hasn't proved every one of its devastating claims? The point is that if any of them are true, then it's time to stop.

This is not just our future, but our children's children's children's future. Some of the damage done now can never be undone. We have to know that it's safe before it's allowed to proceed. And - guess what? - I suspect that even our own "clean green" variety is going to turn out to be a colossal can of worms before we're through.

Why not Frack Farmland?

Ashes to Ashes: Geoffrey Ashe

[Geoffrey Ashe: All About King Arthur (1969 / 1973)]

One of the first books I ever bought off my own bat was Geoffrey Ashe's All About King Arthur (London: Carousel Books, 1973). The other titles in the series included such gems as "All About Football," "All About Money" and "All About Weather," so you can see that it already stood out as a bit of an anomaly. I must have been about eleven or twelve at the time, and I see from the back that it must have cost 95 cents - not an inconsiderable sum for me back then.

While I suppose that there's no really direct connection with strangely lyrical writer of erotica Aran Ashe, whom I blogged about in a post about different modes of narrative construction last year, one could perhaps argue that both Ashes inhabit a conceptual no-man's-land: in Aran's case, between abnormal psychology and straight pornography; in Geoffrey's, between no-nonsense archaeology and New Age claptrap.

There's no doubt, though, that Geoffrey is the easier to recommend of the two. His books are immensely entertaining, and even quite well written (especially the earlier ones). Nor is there any doubting his basic seriousness when it comes to weighing up stray pieces of evidence bearing on his own King Charles's head: the possible historicity of certain aspects of the Arthurian legend.

For a while after reading that book, King Arthur and the Arthurian Legend was everything to me: T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Mary Stewart's "Merlin" trilogy - you name it, if it had anything to do with King Arthur, I was for it.

The obsession abated after a while, but it left me with an abiding taste for the works of Geoffrey Ashe, author (as I gradually became aware) a whole slew of other titles on King Arthur and kindred subjects. In fact, so many have there come to be, that All About King Arthur has dropped off most of his bibliography lists.

Fair enough, really. It is, in retrospect, little more than a précis of parts of the argument of more "grown-up" books such as King Arthur’s Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury (1957) and From Caesar to Arthur (1960), not to mention the book of essays The Quest for Arthur’s Britain Ashe edited, with contributions by himself, Leslie Alcock, C. A Ralegh Radford, & Philip Rahtz (1968).

For me at the time, though, it was the door to a strange world of history-cum-romance, a realm bordering on full-on New Age works such as John Michell's The View over Atlantis (first published in that same year, 1969); but also with a strong dose of the dry-as-dust archaeological precision of Leslie Alcock's Arthur’s Britain: History and Archaeology, AD 367-634 (1971).

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Finger and the Moon (1973 / 2004)]

Even then it was a difficult path to tread, but - as I've continued to follow Ashe's career and publications over the years - it's one he's persevered in ever since: continuing to flirt with fringe history and even occultism, but still retaining a solid reputation for his more carefully researched historical works.

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Hell-Fire Clubs (2005)]

Here's a brief list of the Geoffrey Ashe books in my collection. It's more representative than comprehensive, but I think it will give you some idea of the breadth of his interests, and the somewhat disconcerting places those tastes have taken him at times:

[Geoffrey Ashe (1995)]

Geoffrey Ashe (1923- ):
Bibliography

1. King Arthur’s Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury. 1957. Fontana Books. London: Collins, 1973.


2. From Caesar to Arthur. London: Collins, 1960.


3. Land to the West: St Brendan’s Voyage to America. London: Collins, 1962.


4. [Ed., with Leslie Alcock, C. A Ralegh Radford, & Philip Rahtz]. The Quest for Arthur’s Britain. 1968. London: Paladin, 1973.


5. All About King Arthur. 1969. London: Carousel Books, 1973.


6. Camelot and the Vision of Albion. 1971. St. Albans, Herts: Panther, 1975.


7. The Finger and the Moon. 1973. St. Albans, Herts: Panther, 1975.


8. The Virgin. 1976. Paladin. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1977.


9. The Ancient Wisdom. 1977. Abacus. London: Sphere Books, 1979.


10. Avalonian Quest. 1982. London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1984.


11. [in association with Debrett’s Peerage]. The Discovery of King Arthur. London: Guild Publishing, 1985.


12. The Landscape of King Arthur. With Photographs by Simon McBride. London: Webb & Bower (Publishers) Limited, in association with Michael Joseph Limited, 1987.


13. Mythology of the British Isles. 1990. London: Methuen London, 1992.


14. Atlantis: Lost Lands, Ancient Wisdom. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992.

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Discovery of King Arthur (1985)]

I suppose, on the most basic level, an author has to make a living, and some subjects command better sales than others: notably, in the period in question, books of alternate history in what might be described as the Erich von Däniken mode. Ashe is certainly no von Däniken, but then he's not really a Simon Schama either.

All three could (loosely) be described as popular historians, but - while Geofrrey Ashe is clearly acquainted with archival research and the laws of evidence in a way that von Däniken and his ilk will never be - it's hard to imagine him being made welcome in a modern Academic History department, either. It depends on which university it's in, I suppose.

Books such as The Ancient Wisdom (1977) and Atlantis: Lost Lands, Ancient Wisdom (1992) were therefore a little disconcerting to me. He's always careful to hedge his bets, though: and New Age philosophies, particularly the genealogies they construct for certain of their trains of thought, are certainly a legitimate topic of research. At times the line between researcher and apologist seemed a trifle blurry, though.

Then there was his "discovery" of the identity of the "real" King Arthur, outlined in the appropriately named Discovery of King Arthur (1985). All one can say about this is that, though argued passionately and even quit convincingly by Ashe, it doesn't appear to have persuaded the majority of scholars of this period. I guess the jury is still out on that one.

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Mythology of the British Isles (1990)]

Where I think Ashe is at his best is in books such as his Mythology of the British Isles. This beautifully illustrated attempt to apply the layout and approach of Robert Graves's Greek Myths to a British context gives him scope to develop his idiosyncratic approach to the European Dark Ages. In an era whose records are (by turns) unreliable or non-existent, a more creative approach is needed to get anywhere near the approximate mind-set of - say - a fifth-century Briton. This Ashe can provide, and the book remains the perfect pendant to his more celebrated books about Glastonbury and the excavations at Cadbury Castle / Camelot.

Do I think that more people should read Geoffrey Ashe? Well, yes, absolutely. I don't say that you should swallow everything he argues, but the fact that he does argue for his hypotheses: carefully, and with close attention to what written and archaeological record there is puts him in a completely different category from other best-selling "alternative historians" such as the equally entertaining (but far less trustworthy) Graham Hancock.

[Geoffrey Ashe: Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002)]

Somehow, in books such as Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002), the ruins turn out never to be accessible that day - whether it be a recent storm, or difficult tides, the dive has to be postponed, the evidence is not quite ready to hand. His books - cogently written thought some parts of them undoubtedly are - do not stand up to scrutiny. They tease rather than reveal.

Geoffrey Ashe is not like that. He means what he says, and he won't go beyond the borders of his evidence, however hard he strains at the leash sometimes. What's more, he has the gift of conveying something of the magic of the unknown, the conjectural ... I think I made a better choice than I knew that day back in the early 70s, when I bought that unassuming little book from that newly opened bookshop in Mairangi Bay.

[Ashes to Ashes (1980)]