Helen Lehndorf

Category: literature

  • somehow, ‘a forager’s life’ is two

    On March 18 my book ‘A Forager’s Life’ turned two!

    The two years since it emerged into the world have been, frankly, mad.

    I’m a person who enjoys a slow, simple life and lots of huge (for me, anyway) and exciting things happened with the book since it’s release. In this space, I’m going to share some of the things that happened…even though they are old news in terms of the pace of the online world. They are still very much with me.

    (Above: I threw a morning tea for the staff at my wonderful local bookshop, Bruce McKenzie Books on the day the books arrived in store, March 2023.)

    I was unkind to myself and, freaking out about money once my book manuscript was delivered, started a new job before the book even came out. At the same time, my younger son who has a disability was finishing high school and in a massive phase of transition into post-school life. I had underestimated how intense of this phase would be for him, resulting in a high-pressured time where I was trying to enjoy the opportunities the book bought my way, learn and hold down a new job and be there for the kid. Oof.

    It was all too much and, coupled with the NZ government’s slashes to disability support last year, I only lasted two years in the job before something had to give and I left it so I could adequately look after my boy.

    Now I’m out the other side of the intense part of the booky fizz, the job debacle, am still navigating the kid’s shaky steps into adulthood (I guess I always will be), plus I’m in the midst of the intense mind/body/spirit shake up that is menopause.

    I’m sitting here, a bit dishevelled, trying to put myself back together. It’s been a very strange time of immense, beautiful highs and difficult, fractious lows. (Then there’s everything going on in the world beyond my front door where the world appears to have gone completely mad.) Therefore, I’m hoping this winter is very boring and nesty so I can read mountains of books beside the fire and journal a lot (on paper and here) and let it all integrate into me at a pace I can cope with.

    So, interspersed with posts about other things, there will be the occasional retrospective post my experiences with ‘Forager’s’.

    I hope it’s interesting for you to read about such things from a writer’s perspective? As writers we are supposed to act very cool and nonchalant about the occasionally great things that can happen if you write something that people respond to…but I have never managed to be cool…I’m an awkward, nerdy, sensitive person who gets overwhelmed easily. I’m not at all nonchalant…I get very revved up about exciting things. In fact I get excited about non-exciting things, like the shape of a dried fennel seed head, finding a particularly niche-to-me second-hand book, or sampling from a pan of sun-ripened then slow roasted cherry tomatoes.

    & I know blogging is long dead but (see above point about not being very cool) however I’m hoping if I write here, the right people will find me, despite claims that blogging and personal websites have been made irrelevant by speedy old social media and peoples’ diminishing attention spans. ‘The right people’ are folks who like reading longer form than an Instagram caption and appreciate the reedy, faint voice of a shaky woman trying to lure kindred people into giving their precious attention to her personal website rather than further furnishing the pockets of tech billionaires.

    If that’s you, warmest of welcomes aboard.

    (Do leave comments if you feel moved to. I read everything and promise to respond.)

  • black river / peoples’ river

    Last Friday the public collaboration phase of the BLACK RIVER exhibition I’ve been involved with was launched at Te Manawa.

    In support of the exhibition, the poets and artists have their drafts/sketches on display in a cabinet. The idea of this was to share creative process with the public.

    It is a little bit exposing to have my scrawling, messy poem draft on public display, however I believe in the reason behind it (sharing creative process). (It doesn’t help that the other poets seem to have basically ‘cheated’ (I say this jokingly) and submitted fairly polished, finished poems for display so mine looks all the more deranged. Ha ha!) Oh well, all I can say is I STUCK TO THE BRIEF.

    Here is the cabinet with the sketches and poetry ‘drafts’. My mess is on bottom left – notice how much longer it is than the other ‘drafts’? Ahem.

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    On Friday, there were already quite a few public responses. Here are some of my favourites:

    Whoever this person is, they have great handwriting…

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    River as hair + a great sentiment….

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    River is DEEP.

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    LOL, indeed.

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  • KUPU, part two

    Some photos of KUPU, the ‘poetry off the page’ installation which I did in the Palmerston North City Library with fellow local poet, Leonel Alvarado.

    First instalment was back HERE, when they had only installed one poem.

    Here are some photographs of the other poems.

    Glimpses of Leonel’s poems (his were harder to photograph in their entirety than mine):

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    And the other two of mine…

    kupu_5 kupu_3 kupu_2 KUPU_1

  • 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.

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    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.

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

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    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.)

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    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.

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

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    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:

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

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    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!

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  • Review of ‘A Forager’s Treasury’ by Johanna Knox

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    A Forager’s Treasury

    By Johanna Knox

    Allen & Unwin, $36.95

    I’m late in writing this review – I’ve had the book for some weeks now and I was supposed to post a review last week, but it’s taken me a long time to gather my thoughts about it because, quite simply, I’m completely overwhelmed by how much I love this book and I couldn’t write the review sooner because it would have just been GUSH GUSH RAVE RAVE MAD WOMAN SPLUTTERINGS…

    I can’t promise much better today, but I will try! This book is a must for anyone interested in foraging (obviously), but also herbal healing, Rongoa, bushcraft, nutrition, ecological principles of sustainability and conservation, folk wisdom and so much more! The book is rich in it’s content, it’s so much more than a mere guidebook, the author is a terrific writer and her sparkling prose and dry wit infuse the text with life. She is funny, self-effacing, humble and also extremely intelligent – it’s a beguiling combination.

    The book is thoroughly researched and wonderfully New Zealand-specific (although there is plenty in here for overseas readers, also!) The writer brings her own direct experiences (and experiments!) into the text, which makes giving foraging a go seem so much more appealing. She is honest about her failures, her predilections and her biases, too. The book is not impartial and is all the richer for it! All through the text are small boxes of ‘extra for experts’ style gems of historical information and interesting stories relating to the text.

    As well as all the botanical and culinary details necessary for foraging, Johanna goes beyond the basics to provide a feast of recipe ideas, she covers cooking, tisanes, syrups,  oils, freezing, pickling and so much more. The most special thing about the book for me, though, is that Johanna’s enthusiasm for plants and foraging makes it seem exciting, vital and fun. I have no doubt that the book will turn many foraging-newbies in to keen plant spotters and pickers. I also love the way Johanna captures the romantic aspect of foraging, the sheer joy of knowing a wild plant’s name and what it’s good for – the final section of the book ‘Wild Ways’ celebrates the foraging ‘lifestyle’ with ideas for bodycare, medicine, picnics and a look at the language of flowers. In case you are worried the recipes will all be for green weedy salads, fear not – there are recipes for all kinds of desserts, cakes, rich sauces – the gourmand will be satisfied as much as the health nut.

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    My favourite recipe (again, appealing to the romantic part of me) is for ‘Lady Lindsay’s Feral Tea Sandwiches’ (I love the word ‘feral’ – it makes me want to dance around a blazing bonfire on a winter’s night!). I have copied Johanna’s description of these sandwiches for your entertainment:

    “Tea sandwiches are dainty…..I named this collection of ideas for Joan, Lady Lindsay who is best known for her haunting novel ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ …an evocative and primal exploration of Antipodean settler unease and awe for the land. With her highly privileged background, creative eccentricity and fascination for the land’s dangers and mysteries, I think Joan Lindsay would have liked these sandwiches. I fancy they are like her, with their refined exteriors and wild insides.” 

    There follows a long recipe full of endless possibilities for a truly wild picnic!

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    My only criticism of the book is the lack of an index, which makes looking up plants tricky if you aren’t sure of their parent plant family….but I anticipate somewhere in the next dozen reprints of this book, sure to become a bible of plant lore in New Zealand, the publishers will eventually put an index in.

    I have already bought copies of this book for my father (keen bushman who likes to extend his bush-craft skills) and friends who love to garden and forage. It makes a wonderful gift for the green-minded, but first, buy a copy for yourself – even if you are new to foraging you are sure to catch the bug, and you will be amazed at what you can ‘forage’ even in your own backyard! (The chickweed and dandelion in the photographs came from my backyard, I chopped both finely and added to a pasta sauce.)

    Thank you, Johanna for your gift of this very special book.

    Don’t forget there is a website which accompanies the book HERE. I will share a foraging recipe which Johanna sent me with you sometime soon (I just need to cook it first so I can report on it’s flavour!)

     

     

  • 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.

     

  • art will eat itself

    I am working on two writing projects at the moment (around the day job, the kids, the endless house-keeping and cooking)…

    One is my next collection of poems and the other is less simple – a project involving over a decade of journals. I am scanning a whole lot of journal pages from 1999-2012…it will be a very visual book. This project is tricky – I haven’t quite found my way with it yet. It’s like it isn’t sure what it wants to be….I don’t want it to be a ‘how to’ about journaling, because I don’t find those books especially helpful myself…plus I don’t think I have much to add to that canon….however it may have elements of that. I am writing some prose pieces to sit amongst the scanned journal pages, but I’m not sure they are right in tone. It’s like I am putting together a book that is almost devouring itself – like the OUROBOROS.

    I’m both sharing parts of my journals and yet critiquing them and journaling and the creative process all at once.  It’s all very messy and more than a little scary, however I’m going to keep chipping away at it and trust that as I work the shape of the book will become clear. Basically, I am trying to write the sort of book I would be excited to find in a bookshop….full of images, honesty, ruminations on creative process, thoughtful mess.

    In the meantime, I take comfort from writers who have gone before me.

    ‘Any writer who knows what he is doing isn’t doing very much.’

    -Nelson Algren

    &

    ‘The furtherest out you can go is the best place to be.’

    -Stanley Elkin’

  • the next step

    ‘Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.’ -Chuck Close

    Halfway through last year I started work on my second book. The first book was out of my hands while  it was being edited, laid out and designed.

    I had some notion of what I wanted the second book to be all about. Books begin with opening a new document on a word-processing package, so I opened one, gave it a working title and got started.

    I have written about a third of it. It is not going where I want it to go. It is not the book I had in my head when I opened that new document. This is a common experience.

    ‘A poem that doesn’t get out of hand isn’t a poem.’ -John Hollander

    The writing has been lurching off into strange side-alleys and cul-de-sacs – uncomfortable places.

    I don’t want to write the book that the book wants to become.

    ‘She’s lost control again’ -Joy Division

    Last week I hit a bit of a wall with it and thought I should give up writing. The writing life is hard, harder than you might think if you are outside looking in. I feel vulnerable and tired. I get sick of getting rejection letters 70% of the time, of missing out on funding. Keeping writing going in my life is a fight. Fighting takes a lot of energy.

    The new book is telling me this: Drag it out into the light. That is this book’s imperative.

    This post sounds a bit mental – like I’m hearing voices. What can I say? This is how I experience my writing self, my writing life.

    I feel like I’m fighting with myself. It is a violent fight. People are getting hurt.

    Everything I write lately is tangential, difficult and odd.

    ‘Sentimentality – that’s what we call the sentiment we don’t share.’ -Graham Greene

    A friend told me to ‘stop second-guessing yourself.’ Whenever anyone tells me to stop doing anything  it makes me do it more. The elephant is in the room. The emperor is naked.

    It is good advice.

    I feel extremely confused about who I am as a writer right now.

    ‘Find out who you are and do it on purpose.’ -Dolly Parton

    My friend Pip once interviewed David Vann and he told her that tragedy is when a protagonist is forced to make a choice and whichever way he chooses, he loses half of himself.

    I love imperatives and maxims and bold assertions because I feel so unsure of anything lately. Experiencing life as all nuance, all complexity, all ambivalence, all sensate and half-truth and murmur and roar and silence and spiritual nihilism and nothing that ends with an ‘ism’ makes certainty so attractive.

    I’m so hot for other people’s certainty.

    ‘Poetry springs from something deeper, it is beyond intelligence. It may not even be linked with wisdom.’ -Jorge Luis Borges

    I am going to keep writing. I feel as weak as a new-born kitten as I type that.

    I get more courage from THESE PEOPLE than from anyone who ever taught me writing.

    ‘Writing 101: moral courage is seldom the subject, but it is often the prerequisite.’ -D.A.Powell

  • ‘The Comforter’ launches (2)

    Launch one:

    The first launch was in Palmerston North at the City Library.

    The speakers were Helen Rickerby, my editor, Thom Conroy, friend and creative writing professor at Massey University, and Natasha Allan did a beautiful blessing of the book.

    This one felt like a slightly more formal, ‘family, colleagues, local community’ (and friends, of course) one.  People bought books, I had my first experience of signing books, like a proper writer and it felt weird and really wonderful all at once. I tried to write something meaningful in each book I signed, so by the end of the launch my hand was really sore.

    Launch two: 

    Launch two was the next day in Wellington at my friend Emma Barnes’s house in Aro Valley. Wellington turned on the sunshine for us and it was a stunning day. This one was at 3pm in the afternoon and because of the perfect weather and all the women who obliged my request for floral frocks – it felt like a luscious garden party, (Emma McCleary said it felt to her like a wedding!).

    There was good food, plentiful wine, The Comforter cocktail, Simon (Emma B’s partner) played live banjo, which was just beautiful. The guests were many different kinds of lovely!

    For the ‘formal’ bit at this launch, Helen spoke again, then Pip Adam and Maria McMillan spoke about my writing and said extremely humbling things, then I read poems and all that, and then Natasha Allan did a closing blessing, which set me off crying a lot.

    (Oh and there was a notable earthquake.)

    Both launches went without a hitch and were just (as far as I’m concerned) perfect. I really couldn’t be any happier. Sometimes dreams come true. Check out this cheesy grin:

    If you want to see more photographs, I made a set on Flickr HERE.

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    NEWS! My poem ‘Garlic Planting Time’ is the Tuesday Poem on the Booksellers Blog today, HERE.

    & I’m also the Tuesday Poet, on Winged Ink, Helen Rickerby’s blog, HERE. & Helen wrote a little bit about the launches on the Seraph Press site HERE.

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  • ‘The Comforter’ launches (1)

    It’s early Monday morning and I just said to my editor, Helen Rickerby ‘Isn’t love the best drug? because I am still high from all the love at the launches!’.

    Helen and I did two launches, in two cities in two days! They were both really beautiful and special in their own ways.

    For a taster of the Wellington launch, Emma McCleary has written a post about it HERE.

    I held it together pretty well through both launches, but at the blessing part of the Wellington launch, (the very end of the formal bit) I lost it completely and cried like a baby, which was a little embarrassing, but then my friend Ben said: ‘Don’t worry. It just made it more ‘Helen’.’ Interpret that however you like.