Yesterday

Yesterday, I did not climb a mountain or wrestle a bear. I did not wake up in a log cabin and eat porcupines for breakfast. There was no snow outside my window.

Nobody gave me flowers; nobody wished me a Happy Easter; nobody invited me to stay in a villa in Tuscany over summer. I did not drink a bottle of champagne.

I was not asked to audition for a Broadway musical; I did not put the finishing touches to my best-selling novel; I did not fly through the air on a trapeze. I found no diamonds under my pillow. My eyebrows did not turn blue. I did not faint.

I didn’t spend the day digging up petunias from the Botanical Gardens and replanting them along the motorway. No-one sculpted a life-sized statue of Elvis for my front lawn. The circus did not come to town.

I did not send Christmas cards to everyone in the phone book whose surname begins with ‘V’. I neither walked across the Nullabor nor swam with crocodiles.

I did not dine at the Ritz. I was not compelled to abseil from the top of the Eiffel Tower. I was not chased by a swarm of killer bees or a great white shark. I was not in a coach that was held up by a highwayman.

I did not head south for winter or eat butterflies.

But I did go up in a balloon.

© Janis Freegard

Voyagers

http://www.radionz.co.nz/__data/assets/audio_item/0011/1970633/art-20090607-1445-Chapter_and_Verse_Voyagers,_sci-fi_poetry-m048.asx
Mark Pirie & Tim Jones talk to Lynn Freeman on Radio NZ about Voyagers, the new NZ science fiction poetry collection.

I may be biased – having a poem in the collection myself – but I’m finding it a great assortment of established and new poets with a wide range of poetic styles and interpretation of what science fiction poetry actually is.

Books books books!

There is a new book out, about New Zealanders who were involved in the Spanish Civil War. My personal knowledge of the Spanish Civil War begins and ends with The Clash’s Spanish Bombs – which is probably my all-time favourite Clash song (and that’s saying something). Personally, my main interest in war is to try to stop it, but I appreciate remembrances for those who fought/ died/ nursed etc. This is an important new work, telling the personal stories of New Zealanders who were involved. Mark Derby is the editor.

Peter Clayworth (my partner) has two articles in it and it will be launched in Wellington at Unity Books on 28 May (Budget Day)

More here

Kiwi Companeros

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0905/S00142.htm

http://c20c.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/kiwi-companeros-new-zealand-and-the-spanish-civil-war/

http://books.scoop.co.nz/2009/05/09/homage-to-aotearoas-anti-fascists/

brief

…and I have a poem/prose poem/piece in the latest brief

http://sydreef.blogspot.com/2009/04/issue-37-april-2009.html

On the benefit of constraints

Poetic forms have a particular advantage. Using the restrictions imposed by a sonnet (14 lines, using a particular rhyming scheme if you like) or a sestina (6 stanzas of six lines + 1 of three with a set pattern to the end words in each line) can make a good poem better.

It makes me think of Gerard Manly Hopkins’ poem, Windhover, about a falcon (or perhaps a kestrel), where he says: “AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!” There are many ways of interpreting this, but the one I remember from school is that it referred to the falcon as a trained hunting bird, under the control of a falconer. The ‘chevalier’ also represented Hopkins’ Christ – made lovelier by his sacrifice. Hopkins himself, as a Jesuit priest, was under the control of his religion, which, while repressing him in some ways, perhaps gave him freedom in others.  (For the record, I am suspicious of organised religion and think it has a lot to answer for, but that’s another story).

This is only one interpretation of the poem (and it’s just my recollection of it), but the point remains. By using the constraints of a poetic form, we can bring an extra dimension to poetry. And it’s fun, like working out a crossword puzzle. The challenge is for the form to fit the poem and not to try to force words into fitting the form. It works best when you can read a poem through, enjoy it, and only then notice that it’s a sonnet or has a set number of syllables to each line or that there is some subtle rhyming scheme at work.

Another way of looking at it, is discipline – the forces of order and control vs the forces of wildness. If you can get both into some sort of balance, it’s better than one or the other – to write, you need both wild inspiration and the discipline of sitting down and capturing it on paper/ flashdisk.

More on poetic forms here: poetic forms

The masters and mistresses of constraints are perhaps the Oulipo poets (“Ouvroir de littérature potentielle”), who use mathematical formulae in poetry or extreme constraints such as Georges Perec’s novel, La disparition, written without using the letter “e”. The wonderful Christian Bök, a Canadian poet who was here for the last Writers & Readers Festival in Wellington, uses some amazing constraints – his book Eunoia comprises five poem sequences, each using only one of the vowels. And speaking of discipline – the book took seven years to write.

Do try this at home.

Science Fiction poetry anthology

‘Voyagers’ is coming your way soon. It’s a science fiction poetry anthology edited by Mark Pirie and Tim Jones and I’m very happy to have a poem in it. You can read more about it on Tim’s blog here:

http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/2009/02/voyagers-new-zealand-science-fiction.html

Should be available in New Zealand on 1 June.

There is a mini-site at: http://ipoz.biz/Titles/Voy.htm and an orders page at: http://ipoz.biz/Store/orders.htm

Voyagers

six little things

1. I’m very pleased to have an offering in the latest edition (the Glass Rooster issue) of six little things http://www.sixbrickspress.com/issue_14/page05.html – a wonderful website devoted to prose poems/ very nice paragraphs. I recommend having a browse.

2. I’m also very pleased to have another bird-related poem, Magpie, in the latest Poetry NZ. It’s an interesting issue of PNZ, perhaps a little more experimental and eclectic than usual. Jen Crawford is the feature poet. http://www.poetrynz.net/current-issue/

3. I’ve just got back from a fantastic 10 day holiday – we started in New Plymouth, having a wonderful time at WOMAD, then, over the next week, drove to Te Kuiti, Kawhia, Raglan, Whangarei, Cape Reinga, Spirits Bay, Kohukohu, Auckland and back to Wellies. Weather was fantastic, beaches & harbours were beautiful, New Zealand is a fine place.

4. One of the drawcards of this year’s WOMAD was alt folk group Rachel Unthank & the Winterset. http://www.rachelunthank.com/ Rachel & Becky Unthank are from the North-East of England (just like me, only they have the proper accents) and sing traditional songs with beautiful voices and interesting arrangements, backed by fine musicians & singers. Spellbinding.

5. Another drawcard was the chanting Gyuto monks – in exile from Tibet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKzQavkLc1w – recording from WOMAD 2007).

6. Te Rerenga Wairua / Cape Reinga – northernmost point of NZ, where spirits jump off

Work & Life

Someone said to me recently (and I’ve often said it myself): ‘You spend so much of your life at work…’ (not me, specifically, especially now I’ve gone down to a 32 hour week).   Anyway, I’ve worked it out.

Let’s assume there are about 700,800 hours in a lifetime (24 hours a day x 365 days a year x let’s say 80 years, give or take – given that your life expectancy increases with age and by the time you’ve got past those troublesome childhood years, you can expect to exceed the average lifespan).

Of those hours, you spend 8 hours a day x roundabout 220 days a year (allowing for weekends off, annual leave, statutory leave, sick leave & that day you just sat and looked out of the window) x 45 years (assuming you start at 20 and work full-time until you’re 65 – sure there’ll be unders and overs and anyway who retires at 65 any more?) = 79,200 hours at work.

As a percentage of your total lifetime hours, that’s about 11%. How about that then?   You’ll spend three times that sleeping.

AUP New Poets 3 launch photos

are now on Flickr!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34987572@N08/sets/72157613216592966/

Takahe review

 

There’s a review of AUP New Poets 3 by Cy Mathews in the latest Takahe.  Having failed miserably to upload a copy, here are a couple of quotes:

 ”Wellington’s Janis Freegard stands out with the easy musicality of her poems and prose poems, amongst which are moments of quirky brilliance…”

“At times these narratives risk becoming a little cutesy in their quirky, mannered eccentricity, but for the most part they are very enjoyable…”

“…”The Continuing Adventures of Alice Spider” is an especially interesting experiment in serial prose poetry, for the most part realistic, but veering now and then into more surrealistic flights of fancy…”

New Year’s Revolutions

Where a new year starts and ends is always a little arbitrary.  I’m very happy to celebrate anyone’s idea of where that point is – be it Matariki, Chinese New Year, one’s own birthday or whenever.  And it does give a great opportunity to reflect on what’s happened over the past twelve months and think about what we want out of the next.

 

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions so much as compile a sort of “Statement of Intent” ie a (fairly short and simple) plan for the year with a set of realistic goals.  Things like “finish third draft of novel” or “spend more time playing the ukulele*”.  The key I think is to give yourself something to aim for – a challenge – without making it too unlikely (“win Booker prize” is only going lead to disappointment…)

 

Goals are, of course, reviewable over the year as circumstances change.  And I like to have longer term plans: three year or five year plans, that can be a bit more aspirational (“learn to play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on ukulele” perhaps.  Or perhaps not.)

 

I love to make lists (not shopping lists, though – I don’t like to feel constrained at the supermarket, preferring the freedom of putting things that take my fancy into the basket and forgetting whatever it was I went in for in the first place).  One of the best things about a list is that sense of achievement and satisfaction you can get from crossing things off when you’ve done them.  This is where I find it helpful to break goals down into small, manageable chunks.  “Finish third draft of novel” can become “read the whole thing out loud to myself again”, “rewrite second half of chapter twelve”, “consider whether I really need character A” and so forth (“learn chords to ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’…”).

 

Friday is (generally) my writing day and usually I will make myself a list during the week so that when I get to Friday, I’m not sitting there wondering what to work on.  It will have things like “finish goldfish poem” and “find a book about amphibians” on it.  If I get to Friday and end up writing something for this blog instead, that’s fine.  My list will still be there for Saturday or can be incorporated into next Friday’s or I can abandon it altogether if I think of something better.  The point is, it’s good to have a plan.  Knowing what you want to achieve is the first step towards achieving it.

 

This is my favourite time of the year: between summer solstice (winter, if you’re in the northern hemisphere) and my birthday in mid January.  It feels like a sort of limbo time, tidying up last year’s leftovers and getting ready for the next great adventure.  It feels full of promise and opportunity.  And satisfaction that I can tick off a considerable portion of what was on last year’s list.  Hey. Ho. Let’s Go!

 

* Peter bought me a new ukulele for Christmas – my old one has been inoperable for some years now, but I’d just like to point out that I was playing it (badly) many years before it became fashionable…