Category: life is beautiful

fresh inspiration

When is an ‘inspiration wall’ not an inspiration wall?

When it’s been up for almost two years and you’ve stopped seeing it anymore…

I have a creative room out in my backyard. Our garage was converted to a sleepout by previous owners and now we’ve set it up so half of it is guest-room (well, guest-nook) and half is my creative space.

The wall beside my desk I put up a montage of inspirational images. It was overdue for a freshen up, so for a couple of months I slipped anything that caught my eye into a folder (magazine cuttings, mail my friends sent me, vintage book pages etc etc) until I had enough material to redo the wall.

Here is the old inspiration wall:

& Here is the new:

February 4, 2014
The Rope Walk is launched!

Before I blather on about the launch of this fine, artisanally-produced book THIS IS WHERE YOU CAN ORDER ONE. GO ON. SUPPORT NZ POETRY AND INDIE-PUBLISHING.

On the weekend, I attended my darling friend Maria McMillan’s (I wrote a bit about Maria HERE) book launch at the Aro Community Hall. This is her first book and it’s with Seraph Press. It was a wonderfully warm-hearted event. The large turn-out and delightful people who attended were testament to Maria’s standing in the community.

TI associate Maria with tea and then another round of tea and then maybe some more tea but perhaps some toast this time, too….more butter please! I think I would like a giant ‘community-hall’ teapot for one-fill afternoon teas with all my mates.

Maria’s partner Joe Buchanan designed and letter-pressed the cover of the book, including the drawing of the ship on the cover. It is indeed a beautiful artefact with great attention played to paper, card, pressing, stitching. Book as objects d’art. But it is not all style over substance….the poems, an invented family history across multiple generations, starting with the first settlers are rich, detailed and poignant. For a chapbook, this collection is dense and satisfying. It has the heft of a full collection in a chapbook size.

Here writer Pip Adam (right) pulls her characteristic making-a-joke face and Maria displays her new shaved undercut…

Given our long writing history together, I felt all puffed up with pride during the launch…getting misty-of-eye during Maria’s speech, and feeling outright joy to see her signing books at the sale-table. This is the moment every writer longs for! (I remember how wonderful and weird it felt for me at my launch.)

There were flowers everywhere – gifts from her friends. These ones on the piano were just a few of the gorgeous bouquets everywhere. Here is Maria giving her speech.

Here is Maria with Kirsten McDougall who launched the book and gave a thoughtful and celebratory speech.

Here is Maria talking while Seraph Press Editor Helen Rickerby looks on…I liked this shot because you can see HR’s trademark stripey tights:

Here is Helen Rickerby again with writer Helen Heath who is doing a bit of unsubtle product placement:

Congratulations, Maria and Helen, on a wonderful book and a delightful launch. x

(Maria blogs HERE. )

Finally, writer Janis Freegard bidding me (and now you!) farewell in her fantastic panda-with-paws hat/mitten ensemble. Janis always has the best accessories!

July 16, 2013
same same, but different

The residency is over. I’m all moved out of the flat and I handed the keys back in. I’ve been feeling a little flat this week – since I found out I got the residency last November, it was the thing I was looking forward to about this year….then suddenly I was there and doing it, and it has been so wonderful, rich, busy, a true gift! Then just as quickly, it’s all done.

Here is the first photograph I took of the All Saint’s steeple I could see from the flat window:

I started taking a photograph of the steeple, not every time I went to the flat, but many times. Same view, different day. Same steeple, different sky.

I got married in that church, so I have a special affection for it. It’s now obsolete because of earthquake risk. I hope it doesn’t get knocked down.

Apart from the writing time (which was amazing) here are some things about the residency:

I loved having a cave up in the sky to hide in. It was like a retreat in many ways. (Admittedly a 9.30-2.30 retreat, with parenting and housework at both ends…but that’s the closest to a retreat I’m likely to get at this stage in my life, so I ain’t complainin’.)

I re-learned focus, and pro-longed attention, and diligence. After a decade of snatching writing time around work and children, it was incredible to have the gift of TIME. It took me about three weeks to sink into it, at first I had major ants-in-my-pants after the first few hours each day…but boy, am I used to it now.

I read 27 challenging, brain-stretching books, from Thoreau to Dillard to Liberty Hyde Bailey to Terry Tempest Williams….

I stayed off the internet during the days. It was peaceful. It was spacious. I sank into the quiet.

I ate a lot of toast and drank a lot of tea.

I enjoyed reading and thinking nearly as much as writing. I was happy to discover how much…that if I never publish another book, I don’t really mind. I’ll always have reading and thinking.

I really like my own company. I always suspected I did, but I haven’t had the space since I had kids to confirm it.

I listened to student radio and discovered lots of new music.

Pigeons roost in the steeple. They fly in late morning and out late afternoon.

I think that’s all I have to say…

This week after moving out of the flat I’ve been working in the public library which is:

a) noisier

b) much warmer

c) full of people with snotty noses and hacking coughs

d) not as good as the flat

e) perfectly fine

I don’t know what the point of this post is. Except I wanted to share some of my steeple photographs, and to mark the end of the residency somehow.

Thank you, All Saints steeple for being my companion through all of the weather this winter. I will miss you! x

July 11, 2013
poetry-nerd-gasm

The Red Cross hold an annual book sale here. It is amazing – two giant halls filled with books, magazines, music. It is so big and so busy it can be more than a little overwhelming! I go every year and always find incredible things.

This year I decided to focus just on vintage children’s books (one of my passions) and I found plenty….but then I couldn’t help myself having a stroll past the poetry table on the way out and I am SO GLAD I did.

Firstly I found these beauties – the Plath is a recent edition and looks in mint condition – like no one ever read it (shame on you, previous owner). I love the mushrooms on the cover. I was excited to find this early James K Baxter (pre-beard!) and someone had sellotaped a cutting out of the newspaper about his death in the back cover with a rather depressing photograph of him dead in his coffin.

Then I found the Lowell and Ashberry and was very happy. I had nothing by either poet in my collection so they fill a substantial gap.

But then…..THEN…>>>>>>

I found a copy of Turtle Island by Gary Snyder! A book I’ve been hunting for for years.

I was so excited I yelped ‘OH MY GOD!’ out very loud and clutched it to my chest in a possessive manner.

A man standing next to me looked at me with some amusement and said ‘What? WHAT??’

so I held up the book so he could see the cover.

He pulled a face conveying how unimpressed he was and shrugged….proving that one person’s poetry-nerd-gasm is another’s ‘whatevs’.

I love Gary Snyder is an irrational, gushing kind of way. His books are hard to find. (If anyone has any Snyder they feel ambivalent about….contact me, maybe we could swap or I can buy them off you!)

There is a wonderful photograph on the back of the book of him with his wee son Kai. I guess he was in his 30s here:

In my studio, I have a photograph of him in his late 70s, with Alan Ginsberg which I snipped out of a New Yorker and framed. I love how happy he looks and how typically lugubrious Ginsberg looks. When I’m feeling blah about poetry, I just need to look at this picture and it makes me feel a bit better. It reminds me that a) poetry is for life and therefore I (hopefully!) have a long time to write, to improve, to grow in my work…and b) friendship, especially friendship with other writers is how you keep going through the poetry life:

Here it is in all it’s beauty:

Best Red Cross book sale find EVER.

June 17, 2012
Graft is launched

I went to a lovely poetry event in Paekakariki last Saturday – the launch of Lynn Davidson’s ‘Common Land’ (VUP) and a local celebration of the recently launched ‘Graft’ by Helen Heath (VUP). Both poets were interviewed by Paekakariki poet, Dinah Hawken. It was a lovely laid-back affair with mood-lighting, a traditional ‘hall supper’, wine, tea and live music after the poetry. Quite relaxed and wonderful!

Here are Dinah Hawken, Lynn Davidson and Helen Heath:

Here are two of my dear friends, whom I love very much and who will probably kill me for putting a photograph of them on the internet:

Here is a random shot of some people enjoying the night – I wanted to show you the beautiful rose-lamp! :

Congratulations, Helen, on all the ‘graft’ that went into this terrific book. It has certainly paid off – what a great achievement!

‘Graft’ is rich and carefully-crafted book. There are affecting and emotional poems about the terroire of motherhood and grief. There are sad/funny/sad poems about a composite character from the Hutt Vally called ‘Justine’. There are playful and moving poems about science and scientists. In short, there is a lot going on in this slim volume and it is a dense, satisfying read.

Here’s to charmed evenings in little town halls, with moody lighting, poetry, live music and home-made lamingtons! I could do that every Saturday…

May 10, 2012
there is no cure for curiosity

A friend sent me a little card with this quotation on it:

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

-Dorothy Parker

I am an eternally curious (nosey?) person. I often follow the path of curious things, which sometimes leads to adventures and happy accidents…and sometimes to wasted time and dead ends.

Here are some things I saw out walking recently:

A boat called ‘Romance’…

A bear-face in a beam – do you see it, too?

Never forget to look UP! Look what I saw on a cafe ceiling, recently…wheat and coloured discs…

And, in my idea of heaven…a tiny secret garden in the middle of a big city…bursting with vegetables and herbs…

How do I know it was a secret garden? Well, firstly because it was tucked away in a corner you are unlikely to stumble on…and secondly, because the sign said so:

I hope you find some interesting things out walking this week. X

May 8, 2012
i am back in town – do you hear me

The new chair sits next to the older chair and it looks like they are having a conversation. (Maybe I have been reading THIS book too much?)

*

I find this slid under my door. How intriguing!

Except it isn’t. It turns out to be from a religious zealot, just letting me know if I don’t confess my sins I will burn in hell forever.

How much more interesting if it had been from an old friend who wanted my attention….or a musician who really, really wanted me to come to his gig….or anything else, really. Still, great title!

*

When I took the kids to the museum, I experienced what I would look like with skinny legs in the hall of mirrors. I stood lookiing at my illusory skinny legs for far too long:

*

Then I became a giant on the new Museum carpet:

*

Finally, with the colder weather – the monsters return for hibernation. They leave their feet at our back door:

April 27, 2012
the last

I write about the seasons a lot, don’t I? I can’t help it. I grew up in a small town in the middle of farmland – my Dad was (still is) a hunter and fisherman and so we ate with the seasons and the seasons were meaningful in a way they may not be for city-folks. Most of my friends lived on farms, so the drying off of cows marked the start of winter, new lambs heralded spring. Because I do write about the seasons so much, the editor of The Comforter, Helen Rickerby, organised the book into seasonal parts. I still can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to do that – but that’s why you need a good editor, right? To show you things which are right under your nose but you can’t see because you are over-exposed to your own work.

Anyhow, of all the seasons, autumn is my favourite. The harvest, the golden days with cold edges, the sense of melancholy. Garden fires, washing the woolens which have been in storage since September, quinces, feijoas, walnuts…picking apples – we have two apple trees at our place:

In my book, there is a poem about the beginning of autumn, the final day of daylight saving. There is a point at the end of summer/early autumn, if you are a gardener and eat seasonally, like we do, where you know it is likely to be the ‘last’ time you taste that particular thing for some time. That final meal has autumnal melancholy all over it – it’s a farewell to summer. In the poem, ‘the last’ has a deeper resonance – because of my beliefs about the environment, I feel that anything could be our ‘last’ time, because our existence on this ailing earth is so precarious right now, and growing more so.

Late summer this year, we ate corn for a good eight weeks, thanks to the 60 corn plants I grew – & no, I didn’t tire of it, like I do with some gluts. With the last of our fresh corn, I made a bean succotash which also contained the last of our tomatoes:

Also, ‘last’ for the season – I made a ‘pistou’ or paste with the last of our bush basil, some pine-nuts, garlic, olive oil and salt. It’s always a sad day when the last of the basil goes. We ate it on pasta. I like to grind such things up in my big mortar and pestle, rather than blitzing with an electronic device. It’s calming and meditative to hand-grind.

(A Wellington friend who has never visited me at home was surprised to learn that I don’t live on a farm – he thought I did from reading my blog. I don’t know if it was just him, or if others have that impression as well – but just to be clear, I live on a very average not-quite quarter-acre section right in the heart of Palmerston North. You can take a girl out of the country, but she’ll bring her small-town/country ways to the city!)

Anyway, here’s that poem I mentioned, from The Comforter:

FALL BACK

Insects everywhere – dead bees in the garden, moths

stud the bathroom ceiling like dusty ornaments, praying

mantises crawl out of the compost bucket. The flies.

The last day of daylight saving. Everyone

tired and wistful on Sunday. That feeling

like you lost something all day.

The last-day-of-summer pasta sauce – made with the last aubergines,

last cherry tomatoes, the last zucchini. The garden now

full of fledgling winter vegetables: spindles of cabbage, arrowheads of spinach.

Manawatu gothic. Even these bright days are tinged

with a kind of violence. There is a black velvet ribbon

threaded through your head, collecting debris.

The last dinner on the dehydrated lawn.

*

April 18, 2012
leaf water stone sky

I visited the creek.

The stones hosted the leaves.

The leaves bathed in the water.

The water held the sky.

February 27, 2012
The David Merritt Experience

I met David Merritt late last year when a colleague introduced us. We had a coffee and talked poetry and chickens and politics and I was very impressed by his dry, self-effacing humour and sharp-as-a-tack brain. When you talk to David it isn’t like the tennis of usual conversation: my turn, your turn, my turn, your turn, in measured thwoks….it’s more like chasing a snake through the grass – sometime he is right there, present and gleaming and you’re close – so close! and then he slips off into some elusive (but usually hilarious) tangent and you’ve lost him again.

He’s a poet – a unique one, in that he makes small books out of the waste of other books (usually Reader’s Digest Condensed Classics which he rescues by the box-load from Dump shops because they don’t sell.) He tours the country, sitting on the street, making books, talking to people and selling his books out of a little wooden drawer ‘for the price of a good cup of coffee’.

Last night he ended his latest tour of the country in Palmerston North (he lives kind of near by in Mangamahu) so I went along and it was a grand evening out.

His performance is more ‘experience’ than typical reading, because he shuffles around the room, interacting with people so there is no illusion of the line between poet and audience, taking requests, talking and poking fun, laughing at himself and generally filling the space with his gentle, delightful presence and aroha.

The night reminded me of a parlour performance I attended by the incredible actor Warwick Broadhead – there was the same invitation to people (not literally, but invoked) to engage, to be more present in their lives, to challenge what they are being offered and turn it into something better.

The local ‘support’ act was Rob Thorne who does amazing things with Nga Taonga Puoru and effects pedals. Then David was accompanied by Chris Heazlewood (formerly of King Loser) on guitar playing incidental music between and behind the poems. The guitar playing was subtle and interesting and enhanced the poetry very well.

There is no doubt from his poetry that David is a romantic – nature is beautiful and pure, jobs are for sell-outs, the disenfranchised are heroic, relationships with women are either high-romance or hate – however, I am entirely susceptible to this manner of romance, so heartily enjoyed it and found myself crying at one of David’s ‘barbaric yawp’-style poems exhorting the reader to shoot him if he finds himself in a litany of deadening situations – the kind that probably most of the audience dwell – suburban housing, day jobs etc.

I had a great night and went home fizzy with ideas and inspiration. If the David Merritt Experience passes through your town – I reckon you should definitely make the effort go. It is entertaining, involving, funny, moving and much, much better than anything on the TV.

February 24, 2012