Blurring the Boundaries

The Christchurch Writers Festival always follows on from the Melbourne Writers Festival. When you're trying to attract writers from the northern hemisphere on a limited budget, it always helps to be able to share the travel costs.

Mark Sarvas who blogs at The Elegant Variation was at both. I followed some of the links in his post about the Melbourne festival, and found this quote:

Lloyd Jones.. gave a delightful reading from Mister Pip and was very adamant that the lines between fiction and truth, history and literature, are and should be blurred

Jones's views are highlighted by an interesting article on a controversy that erupted fifteen years ago with the publication of his travel book/novel/whatever Biografi, which is in the New Zealand Listener this week.
A preview of the article appears here - the full text will be available online on September 27. In the meantime here is a blurb for the book. It sounds intriguing - another to add to my reading list.

Of course it's not just fiction that is fictional. If you had to write your autobiography, how much of it would be true? When one of a married couple tells a story, the other one will inevitably jump in and say "that's not what happened". Joe Bennett's column in the Christchurch Press this morning explains why:
The past is a foreign country, writes LP Hartley. They do things differently there. It isn't. They don't. We've just rewritten it in our heads.

Joe Bennett appeared at the Writers' Festival on the travel writing panel, but he would have made an interesting addition to the panel on memoir. I enjoyed this discussion, not least because the writers on the panel didn't seem to be protecting their territory the way some writers do. It's amazing how often I read of writers suggesting that there are too many people writing, too many people blogging, too many bad poems and bad short stories and bad novels out there. "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly". There are runners who will run a marathon finishing in the Olympic Stadium with ten thousand onlookers cheering them on. There are others who will jog alone for the health benefits, or with a small group of friends for the exercise and the company. Writing should be the same.

I was hearted to find that the panel seemed to agree. As Dame Fiona Kidman said, "Memoir doesn't have to be published work, it doesn't have to be in covers, it is your story and it's unique. It will be of value to someone somewhere."

The Human Cost

Robert Fisk was the most popular author of the weekend. His main session was sold out and a repeat session added to the programme, in which the large room was almost filled for a second time. Besides his solo session, he was also one of the three writers on this panel - "The Human Cost".

Along with Robert Fisk were Chinese writer Xinran, also a big drawcard, and New Zealand nurse Lisa Blaker, whose book "Heart of Darfur" describes her experiences in Darfur with Medecins sans Frontieres (which should have accent marks, but I don't know how to do them in blogger). Xinran was China's first radio talkback host, and she has written books recording the experiences of Chinese people of her parents' generation during the Cultural Revolution. Her comment was "no matter good or bad, past is the roots of our today".

The session was chaired - eventually - by radio journalist Sean Plunket, who arrived a little late, confessing that he had misread the times on his airline ticket! Christopher Moore introduced the panelists while waiting for Sean to arrive.

Sean asked the panellists to discuss their idea of courage. Robert Fisk said that he is not easy with the idea of courage, and that it is easy to identify those who don't have it. He then added that you see courage in people who try to keep you alive as well as themselves.
SP: Do you think you have courage?
RF: No. He added that when you take a risk as a journalist, writer, doctor etc you do it in a very calculated way, judging whether it is worth the risk. Once you decide, you are committed, but it's not courage.

This was the reaction of all the panellists. Lisa had read a section of her book which described an incident shortly after she arrived which would have most of us petrified and unable to move. But in response to the question she replied "I was just doing my job". However she had a lot of praise for the local people who stand tall, have smiles on their faces and have a sense of who they are in the most appalling conditions.

It was a fascinating session and I have a lot of notes. This was one of the sessions which was about the content and background of the books, and not the art of writing. However books did come into it.

Robert Fisk commented that he doesn't like fiction or poetry, but went on to say that the best book on war is Tolstoy's "War and Peace", and that he is moved by the poetry of Christina Rosetti. While in Serbia he re-read Anna Karenina, and he says that for him, Russian novels capture something that no one else does.

Xinran was taken from her parents in the Cultural Revolution, since they were educated people. She was raised by the Red Guard for six and a half years. During this time a kind schoolteacher gave her Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" to read, although she wasn't supposed to be allowed books. It was an eye-opener for her - her reaction was that she was not the only one, and that some other child had a more miserable life than she did.

Political Poetry for Lunch

I probably would have skipped this session if I hadn't been rostered on as an usher. I find myself suspicious of political poetry, in New Zealand, at least. Perhaps it's because I feel we are a little removed from the world's most burning issues, which means that political poetry can become a philosphical rant.

"If you are interested in ideas, you are a philosopher, and if you are interested in language, you are a poet" I was once told. How do you successfully encompass both?

There were six poets on the panel for this session. Four of them were young (or youngish) women of at least part Maori or Polynesian descent. Two were older white males. The focus was on a new anthology, Kaupapa: New Zealand Poets, World Issues. I haven't read the book, but reviews I have seen suggested that the contents were rather uneven - perhaps for the reasons I suggest above.

The four women were somewhat of a revelation to me. Their poems tended to focus on issues of language and identity. I hope I have done them justice because I don't have the book and didn't take notes. One of them, Hinemoana Baker, also read work by two other poets from the book. I'm not sure if "read" is the best word to use for these young women as their readings tended more towards a complete performance than most of the poets in the festival. Tusiata Avia adopted a variety of voices for her poems which included topics such as prostitution and New Zealand's apology to Samoa as delivered by our Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Karlo Mila's poems on the funeral of the King of Tonga and subsequent riots were enhanced by an accompanying slide show
presentation which I found very moving. I'm considering adding some of her published work, which comes with lush illustrations, to my poetry collection.

Hana O'Regan read in English, but her poems were originally written in Maori. Although she read with great passion, I was less impressed by these than by the poems of the other three women. I suspect that they would have been more successful in the original Maori and that they had lost something in translation.

Of the two men, I don't have much to say about Jeffrey Paparoa Holman - I think that I would need to study the text of his poems to fully appreciate them. It was easier to recall James Norcliffe's reading as I have read some of the poems that he read before. His work is more detached and philosophical than that of the women, with a touch of wit. Enjoyable but less passionate.

All in all a very worthwhile session. What interests me is that not only did we have a concentration of Maori/Polynesian writers in one session, but that these are writers we don't generally hear very much of in Christchurch - although Tusiata at least has read here on a number of occasions. It would be good not to have to lean on the "political" label before getting a chance to hear some of them again.

Christchurch Writers Festival Part 4

So, after several more sessions today, none of which was a disappointment, although some were better than others, I finally decided that I wanted to use my book token to buy a copy of Norman Doidge's book, "The Brain that Changes Itself".

I guess quite a few other people had the same idea, because the book store had sold out. However they said they will have more copies in a couple of weeks, so the book token stayed in my bag unused in the meantime.

I almost came down in favour of Robert Fisk. His massive book "The Great War for Civilisation" looked way too weighty to get through in the four weeks that our public library allows. I wondered though if that was my comfortable white middle-class conscience speaking. I do believe that the world needs to know what is going on in such places, but am I personally going to do anything that will make any difference?

Robert Fisk was on a panel today called "The Human Cost" along with two others - Chinese writer Xinran and New Zealand nurse Lisa Blaker who served with Medecins sans Frontieres in Darfur. All amazing people.

However Norman Doidge kept us all fascinated for an hour with his account of neuroplasticity - the idea that the brain can change and adapt a great deal more than used to be thought possible. For instance he described a stroke victim, paralysed on one side of his body, who with a particular type of intensive training for two weeks, was able to regain movement so that he could then play tennis and play the piano again. This despite the fact that it could be proven that he did have cell death in the areas of his brain that previously controlled that side of his body.

The book apparently describes exercises that can keep the brain from deteriorating in old age. With my own old age approaching faster than I care to think, it seemed that this is one book that might be directly personally useful.

Or I could just buy a poetry book. But since I tend to buy the ones I want most as they come out, I already have a fairly good selection of those that were on the book stall.

I missed the panel on blogging in order to listen to Norman Doidge, so I'm hoping that the library blog will give an account of that one. There isn't one up there yet, but maybe they are all as tired as I am. I'll be checking back tomorrow.

Christchurch Writers Festival Part 3

It's not as if I don't have enough books piled up already. But I find myself eyeing up the bookstore at the festival trying to figure out how best to use one lonely $20 book voucher. Should I buy Robert Fisk's massive tome, "The Great War for the Civilisation", or Norman Doidge's fascinating sounding "The Brain that Changes Itself", or a poetry book from one of the dozen or so fine poets I have heard read.

Then again there are the novels, for instance Anya Ulinich's intriguing sounding first novel "Petropolis" from which I heard a little yesterday. And the travel books - Ben Hills "The Island of the Ancients" on Sardinia sounds a fascinating read.

I just can't decide - maybe the book voucher will even stay in my bag unused while I try to make up my mind.

By filling in a survey I was able to go in the draw to win $200 of book vouchers. (This will buy about half the books that it would buy in the US, maybe less, due to currency differences and the much greater price of books here). I have my fingers crossed - but then around five hundred or so others all have hopes of winning, too.

I have notes from a number of sessions and may report in more length later. Right now I am heading for bed. The library staff are giving the festival excellent coverage on their blog, here.

Faded

One day while orienteering in a park on the hills which provide the backdrop to our city, I came across a patch of scrub protected by wire fencing, which was strung with Tibetan prayer flags. It seemd so incongruous, I went back a few months later to check out the scene and take photos. I still don't know what the story is behing them.

I remembered this photo when Carmi announced that his Thematic Photographic topic this week is "faded". The prayer flags left out for the rain and the wind seemed a perfect image for the theme.



Tibetan Prayer Flags in Victoria Park, Christchurch, New Zealand

Writers Festival Part 2

There were several sessions of the writers festival yesterday, but I was at work, and only went to one event in the evening. Today, however, it began in earnest and I had the day off.

After one day I am feeling sated already, and wondering how I'll cope with two more days. The Christchurch Public Library has a whole team to cover events on their blog. Here, there is only me.

I finished the day riding the bus home, pondering on the purpose of Writers' Festivals. Really, from the publishers' point of view, I'd say that it is to sell books. And it is the publishers after all who sponsor most of the writers. The audience of course may hope for something else. But what can be achieved in one hour sessions?

I remember at high school taking part in public speaking contests and thinking that a five to ten minute speech was an awfully long time to fill. Now though I come away wondering what can really be said in an hour - or less for many of the writers, as only the keynote speakers get a whole hour to themselves. The sessions each get a title which suggests that some Big Question will be answered. For instance, sisters Elizabeth and Sarah Knox gave a session entitled Creating Worlds and a blurb that suggested that the discussion would centre around just how fantasy worlds are created. Another panel of writers promoting their first novels had the title "It's Not About Me, Or Is It" and supposedly centred around discussion of the extent to which first novels are or are not autobiographical.

Certainly these topics were touched on - rather fleetingly towards the end, in the case of the second one. In the end though, I think what it comes down to is that each session could be promoted as "a bunch of writers talk about their books", "another bunch of writers talk about their books" and so on.

I intended of course to take lots of notes and wow you all with my brilliant distillation of the wisdom of the writers I listened to. Isn't that what we are all hungry for? As much of the world as we can get, as fast as we can get it. That's why there are titles such as "1000 Books to Read Before You Die". Maybe we would be better off trying to absorb far less quantity, more deeply.

One of the afternoon sessions was with Robert Fisk. He has spent 30 years or so as a journalist in the Middle East. His books on the book stall were massively thick. What could he possibly say to condense that into an hour, and how much of that could I remember and condense here?

As an attempt at convincing the public to buy his books, however, I'm sure it was massively successful. Especially as I have no doubt that in his case the four weeks access I would get by borrowing them from the library is not going to be enough. There were about 300 tickets sold to this session, and it was a spillover from tomorrow's session which was sold out - it looked as if the room would hold about 500 if full, which makes about 800 altogether.

I have more to say - and yes, I will probably even report specifics - but I think I rather need an early night tonight, or I will be exhausted by the end of the weekend.

Politics and Powerpoint

My first event in the Writers Festival was a Powerpoint presentation. Or perhaps it was a theatrical event. Actually, it was a theatrical event disguised as a Powerpoint presentation. Quite the most hilarious Powerpoint presentation that I have ever seen. Actor Arthur Meek, playing writer Richard Meros, gave a rapid fire presentation On the Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking Me as her Young Lover.

This theatrical piece is on a national tour and I highly recommend it. Being a Writers Festival, there were books for sale at the event. The piece is a stage adaptation of Meros's book, published in 2005, when it even rated a mention in The Guardian. However, after flicking through it, I wasn't especially tempted. I think that it would be a bit of a disappointment, even though absurdly satirical, after the stage show, which brought it brilliantly to life.

Christchurch City Libraries are also featuring the Writers festival on their blog. I received a comment yesterday inviting me to add Technorati or Flickr tags to my posts - I have no idea how to do that (and don't have a Flickr account anyway - at least I think I may have one, but I have never used it).

I guess those who are interested will either find me or they won't. If they don't find me, no doubt they will find plenty of others blogging on the festival.

On Not Writing

I noticed that Dana has me linked in her sidebar under "Bloggers Who Write Poems". And Kay has me linked under "NZ Writer Blogs" (along with some very much more well-known literary names). I feel a little guilty, since I haven't been writing much of anything lately.

I thought I might try to post every day in September, so that I'm at least writing something. (I noticed that yesterday's post, which I didn't actually manage to get posted until today due to blogger issues, actually bears the date stamp that matches when I first saved the draft - not the date I actually posted it).

I've been thinking of attempting NaNoWriMo this year. I've never dared to think I could possibly manage a whole novel until now. That's why I write poems, they're short. But then I actually had an idea. The trouble is that I keep thinking of bits of plot, and I'm worried that I'll be bored with the whole idea of it by November. We'll see.

In the meantime I have been reading. I was poking around in the library and by chance picked up a book called "On Trying to Keep Still" by Jenny Diski. I read it at the weekend while lying on my bed in the sunshine, in between trying to sleep off a nasty sinus headache, brought on, I think, by a sudden attack of warm weather. The warmth is wonderful, but it is the northwest wind that brings it, and it always takes me a day or two to adjust.

About the book, though - I was enchanted. It's a strange sort of mixture of memoir and travel book - or more accurately, "anti-travel" book. I went back to the library today for more of her work - she has written three memoir/travel mixes, and a number of novels.

A quote:
After I'd spent just a little time in the country, it seemed less surprising that the people of New Zealand should have embraced rather than resented their reassignment to Middle Earth, because there can't be a population in the world who so consciously feel themselves to be peripheral. My guess is that they would welcome being in Middle Anywhere. Everyone explained, almost by way of saying hello, how far away they are.
'We're so far away,' they kept telling me apologetically.
'Far away from what?' I'd ask, surprised, because they and I were both here, so far as it was ever possible to tell.

Jenny was in New Zealand for the International Writers' Festival (in Wellington).

Our Christchurch version isn't quite so grand, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. When I volunteered to usher (in order to gain free admittance), I thought that there would be such a queue of similar-minded volunteers that I would be assigned to one or two sessions at most. Instead I was asked to usher for four sessions. Then I bought tickets for half a dozen others - my limit given the high prices. By this time, the keynote session with Robert Fisk had sold out. So I was delighted to come home to an e-mail telling me that they had scheduled an extra session with Robert Fisk, and could I usher at that? And would I also like a free ticket to a sort of "theatrical lecture" ( a comedy) - "On the Conditions and Possibilites of Helen Clark Taking Me As Her Young Lover"?

Would I?

So, starting tomorrow evening, three and a half days of literary goodness.

For those not in the know, Helen Clark is our prime minister, soon to seek re-election for (I think) a fifth term.

And for New Zealanders abroad, do you intend to vote? This website, Every Vote Counts, has been set up to encourage you to do so.

About Town

I didn't take photos of the craft stalls at Craft 2.0, but I did take some photos of the area of the city nearby.

This is the building where the event was held - I'm not sure what the building's original purpose was, but it is now an information centre and exhibition area.



A detail of the building:



Robert Falcon Scott watches from the grassy riverside opposite. The statue is by his widow Lady Kathleen Scott. I always think it is quite appropriate that it is of icy white marble.



Spring is coming:



What is going on with blogger? I tried for 12 hours to upload the last image. Finally I quit my web browser, went back into my draft post and was able to upload the image with no problems. Can anyone explain why?

I'm glad I didn't sign up for a post every day in September, I would have been stymied already.

The Problem of Crafts

Besides meeting my daughter at the coffee and quilt shop last week, I also made time on the Saturday (that's the one just over a week ago) to attend Craft 2.0. This is an indie craft event that has been going on in Wellington for a while, every 3 months, but it was the first time it's been held in Christchurch.

I had fun looking at all the stalls. The sock monkeys particularly made me smile. Someone else had the neat idea of using old Mills and Boon books as covers for blank journals. There was handcrafted jewellery and much else. Many of the crafters also sell their work at Felt - just click if you'd like to take a look.

I can't help feeling that there's something fundamentally contradictory about craft shows like this though. I didn't take anything away except a bunch of business cards. There was a stall selling "World Sweet World" magazine which is aimed at The problem is that most of our spending is on essentials - food, transport, power, basic clothing. I love making things. If I make craft items, it is not just to get something unique, but also because I believe more than half the benefit of handcrafting is in the actual process of making - the creativity of the design decisions, the relaxation of handwork (studies show that sewing and knitting lower blood pressure), etc

Once people start to try to make a living from selling handcrafted items, all you have is an invitation to buy highly priced goods (because face it, labour in New Zealand costs a lot more than labour in China), and generally it is stuff that you don't really need. Of course there is room in our lives for a few beautiful things, just for their beauty, but if they are well-crafted and long-lasting, there's a limit to how much we can collect. I think there are way too many crafters around for the potential market (or anyway, for the size the market should be if we are to save the planet).

The sock monkeys have the same problem as the quilts I make. The pattern was originally designed during the Depression years so that mothers could make their children a toy out of old discarded socks. Now, of course, they are made of new socks, just as my quilts are made of new fabric. Sometimes I wonder why I do it. In my early quilting days, I used scraps left over from the clothes I made, but now we don't seem to make beautiful cotton dresses and shirts any more - most of the clothes sewing I do is either knit fabric (sweatshirts etc) or ball dresses (not really too many of those, but if the daughters have a special event, home sewing is the best way to get a unique dress at a reasonable price). None of those fabrics are very useful for bed quilts.

As for hand crafted journals, they seem to be everywhere these days, but I couldn't bear to use one for fear of spoiling it. The only way to get myself to write is to use basic, cheap exercise books ("notebooks" in the US, I believe). Actually, the paper in the "Mills and Boon" journals didn't look very nice to write on. Though there were some other Japanese fabric covered books that looked amazing.

There were also men's shirts selling for $240, made from vintage bed sheets. Looking at them, I don't think they were the good portions of used sheets - I'm pretty sure they were unused sheets. So why not just use them as sheets - by making shirts of them, a good portion would be wasted. Considering there seemed to be an air of environmentalism conveyed by the event, this is illogical to me.

More links:
World Sweet World magazine, an environmentally focused craft magazine who had a stall at the event
The Craft 2.0 blog (not very well spelled, but they are crafters, not writers!)

Catching Up...

Last week I didn't post much because I was busy doing interesting things. This week I didn't post much either, because I was busy doing less interesting things. Mostly, what I have been doing this week, apart from working, was putting magazines in envelopes, printing renewal notices, invoices etc, and carting box loads of magazines to the Post Office.

Now that they are nearly all mailed out, I thought I would take a break and write a blog post or two. I even took time to download last week's photos so that I could add some to my blog.

It's university holidays and my middle daughter, who went away to complete her last year of her bachelor's degree in another city, is in town. So I arranged to meet her for lunch one day at Memories Coffee and Quilt Store.



The owner of the store is Korean and makes beautiful quilts all by hand, many of which decorate the walls. She also sells fabric and all sorts of handcraft bits and pieces such as leather handles for bags. I tend not to buy fabric here. The colours of most of the fabrics on sale are rather muted, which is not what I usually go for. Interestingly, her quilts do often have brighter coloured fabrics in them, so I'm not sure why she doesn't sell any of these. There is a good range of indigo dyed Asian fabrics, though. The prices of the fabrics are quite reasonable, so I may return to buy some, since I'm thinking of trying out a more subtle colour scheme if I ever finish the current purple/fuschia/turquoise creation.



S was inspecting the detail of this quilt when I took the photo. She's carefully not looking at the camera.



This hexagon creation is stretched and framed and is not quilted at all. It takes up most of the wall of a side room which can be booked by groups who want a venue for "stitch and bitch" sessions.



A couple more quilts. I rather like the unstructured arrangement of the one on the right.

Does My Computer Have Alzheimer's?

It seems that no matter how many times I tick the "remember me" box on Google Reader and on Blogger, it still asks me to log in again every few days. I guess my computer has a short memory. (Which reminds me, it is high time I backed up my hard drive).

I find this mildly annoying. Also mildly annoying is the fact that I chose a cool user name on Blogger, and then when google took over, they insisted I use my e-mail address as my user name instead.

I haven't been blogging much, because surprisingly, I have actually been doing things this week (apart from work, laundry, cleaning etc, that is). Which gives me more to write about, but less time to write it. Further information may come in the next few days. Or it may just turn into such old news that I'll start afresh.

The Magic of Cloth

I thought I was ready to start putting my quilt blocks together, until I counted them and found I only had 40 instead of the planned 48. And I just couldn't bear the thought of putting the same fabrics together over and over. What could I do? I went shopping.

I'm trying to use up my stash really, not add to it. But I managed to find a couple of shops that sold really small pieces of fabric - in one case, the discarded samples fro the fabric companies.

I came home with a good range of purples, turquoises and pinks, given the small amount of money I spent. One piece with stylised flowers in blues and greens suddenly reminded me of a top I had in the sixties. I made that top myself, as I made all my clothes then, in the days before cheap Chinese imports. It had stylised flowers in several sizes and analogous colours of cobalt, turquoise, apple green, and violet. It was satin cotton, smooth to the touch. The remnants probably disappeared into one of my very early quilts, now long lost. Perhaps it was the "quilt" I made for my Girl Guide thrift badge - made from pockets of fabric stuffed with old nylon stockings, joined together with long strips of fabric appliqued over the joins. A pity. If I still had the scraps, they would be perfect in the current quilt.

I look at the army of people out there wearing black, and consider whether they have moments like these. Do they ever think "oh, look, black fabric. That reminds me of the black top I had when I was seventeen, and the black dress I had when I was twentyfour, and the black coat I had when I was thirty?" Somehow I don't think so.

Another Bloody Blog?

I've been trying to keep my computer time down for the last few days as I had a sore back. I sit all day at work so I took Friday off and made it a long weekend, and did lots of baking as I can do that standing up.

It seems to be a lot better now, and my boss swapped chairs around so I have a much more comfortable chair to sit in.

I have volunteered to help at the upcoming Writers Festival. This involves standing at the door taking tickets for a session or two, and has the bonus of free admission to that session. I'm always on the lookout for freebies these days, given that our income is not what it was a couple of years back. It's amazing how many ways there are to get little treats. I'll probably buy a few tickets once I know what sessions I have been allocated, especially for the poetry sessions.

One session I am not planning to attend is the session on literary blogging
- called "Not Another Bloody Blog". It's amazing how snobby writers can be about blogging. You don't for instance hear Olympic runners complaining that there are too many joggers out there. But I have heard writers express the idea that many blogs are worthless.

Well, certainly some deserve a wide audience, and others don't. But then, many are not written for a wide audience. They are written for friends and family , or just for the pleasure of writing. And probably for many more reasons besides. For instance, after our big trip last year, I recorded it day by day on my blog, with photos, mainly to fix it in my mind while it was fresh. In telling your life you get to experience it all over again - once by doing, and once by retelling. Of course, I peek at my site counter to, just to see if anyone else is reading it. And I have made some connections that I treasure through blogging, but I no longer worry about attracting dozens and dozens of readers.

It doesn't matter whether the whole world thinks my blog is "worthless", it is not worthless to me, any more than going for a walk would be - it improves my mental fitness just as walking improves my physical fitness.

Actually, many (not all) writers' blogs seem to be as boring as most of the others. "I have finished my first draft" or "my publisher has sent the cover mockups" is no more inherently interesting than "my first grandchild has arrived" or "I had scrambled eggs with chili peppers for breakfast".

A Little Craziness

Crazy weather we are having - click here

and some political craziness here

Hopefully the politicians will come to their senses and amend or repeal this legislation which seemingly puts an end to satire (how would "The Daily Show" get on if produced in New Zealand?)

Someone's a Little Confused

In New Zealand, roadside stock warning signs tend to show sheep and cattle. In Australia, they are just as likely to show kangaroos. In England and Scotland, especially in Scotland, they warn most commonly of deer or red squirrels (much rarer than the introduced grey squirrel and therefore worthy of protection). We also saw one sign which warned of badgers.

We didn't see the animals nearly as much as we saw the signs, and when we did finally spot a deer, it was in an area where there were no signs. The same happened with the squirrels. Which may just possibly explain this sign, which left us scratching our heads a little...



(Yes, it's a little blurred, since it was taken from a fast-moving car).

Carmi at Writteninc has posted the topic of Signs for his "Thematic Photographic" this week.

Wednesday Trivia

1. It's not a good idea to get baking powder in a cut. I found this out the hard way..

2. On this day in 1935, Allen Lane started British publishing house Penguin Books, "starting the paperback revolution" according to our newspaper.

He wanted to provide quality writing as cheaply as a packet of cigarettes. (Can anyone tell me what cigarettes cost these days? I have no idea.) He also wanted paperbacks to be sold not only in bookshops, but in railway stations, general stores and corner shops. Well, that has certainly happened. But I'm not sure what he'd think of the quality of books sold in those places, or in most bookshops for that matter.

In the big chains here, cookbooks and sports biographies seem to feature most prominently. And the paperbacks tend to be of the cheap thriller sort. Thank goodness for the few quality independent stores that still survive.

3. Also according to our local paper - someone has come up with the idea to put a basketball hoop on a rubbish skip. This is to be placed in an area with several fast food chains, frequented at night by youth, mostly inebriated. The idea is that they can "slam dunk their rubbish" - and that it will be attractive to pick up rubbish off the ground, if they can compete to get it through the hoop. Brilliant!

4. One of our major milk brands is running a contest in which the prize is a year's supply of low fat, high calcium milk. At least, it claims the prize is a year's supply. Then I read the fine print - "limited to 104 2 litre bottles".
In our household, we get through at least three times that much a week. When the children were younger, we got through twice as much as we do now. I'm afraid their prize (which works out at about a pint a day, a healthy amount for one person) isn't going to do much to help any household struggling with the sky rocketing prices of basic foods.

Monochrome

Over at Writteninc Carmi has taken to posting a photo theme for the week. This week's theme is monochrome.

Even though things still grow in New Zealand in winter, it seems an appropriate season for monochrome photos. Rain, bare trees, dark clouds.... yes, there is green grass (greener in winter than summer, even), and green trees, since most New Zealand natives are evergreen, but there is plenty of monochrome too.

I was about to capture a bare tree silhouetted against the sky from the supermarket carpark, when I caught sight of these trolleys. They looked a little forlorn in the rain. There wasn't too much colour in the picture, and Photoshop took care of the rest.

Book Awards

When I commented on Montana Poetry Day the other day, I didn't say that the winner of the poetry section of the New Zealand book awards was announced that day. It was Janet Charman for "Cold Snack".

I haven't yet read the book, which was out of the library last time I looked. I was surprised at the finalists, but put it down to being less familiar than I thought with the New Zealand poetry scene. It turned out I wasn't the only one.

The New Zealand Listener said:

"Everyone was so taken aback by the truncated shortlist for the fiction category.... , the three poetry finalists passed by unnoticed.... it wasn't long vefore eyebrows were being raised at the selection of Cold Snack by Janet Charman and A Long Girl Ago by Johanna Aitchison....from a field that had included much admired new collections from CK Stead...Vincent O'Sullivan...Jenny Bornholdt...and perhaps especially, Andrew Johnston."

Personally, I would add to those four Bernadette Hall with The Ponies

Anyway, Janet Charman was the eventual winner, although I was hoping it would be Fiona Farrell, the third finalist, for The Pop-Up Book of Invasions

And then there was the best first book award for poetry. The newspapers didn't bother to report this one so I had to poke around the website to find out. In previous years, there has been a shortlist for this category. This year there wasn't, and I wondered how it would work. Since one of the three poetry finalists was a first book (Johanna Aitchison's), did that mean she would be the winner? That's how it turned out for fiction - Mary McCallum for The Blue was on the short list. But the best first book for poetry went to Jessica Le Bas for Incognito.

I'm happy that she won as I have heard her read on a number of occasions, and she is a fine poet. Still, I'm a little confused that her book wasn't considered good enough to be nominated for the main award, but won over one that was. Perhaps it was a different set of judges.

It also set me wondering. I was very surprised that this was her first book, since she has been writing for a good many years. It seems that there are two sorts of poets in New Zealand - those who do all sorts of interesting and varied things in their lives (Jessica was in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s with the UN) and publish poetry later in life - and those who go straight from school to university, into the Creative Writing courses, and publish in their twenties. It seems the latter group get picked up by the university presses and publish their first books much more quickly. The non-Creative Writing course graduates have to rack up far more publications in various journals to establish their credibility before they can find a publisher willing to take them on.

I could be wrong of course, but that's my impression.

Here's a poem from Jessica - it may or may not be her best, but it's what I could find online:

Incognito my Love

Christchurch Writers Festival

It's nearly a year since our big trip to the UK, and I haven't really had a holiday since. One of my two jobs closed down for a couple of weeks over Christmas, but I worked right through at the other job.

I think that's why I was looking forward eagerly to the release of the programme for the Christchurch Writers Festival. I want some time off work, but I don't want to waste it at home the way I seem to waste my weekends these days. Supposedly, it was launched last night, with details in this morning's paper. The "details" turned out to be a decent sized article, with a listing of "highlights". We were directed to the website for the full programme. But the website said "coming soon".

I am such a patient person. I phoned the festival office, and established that programmes were in fact available at the libraries. So I collected one on the way home. (The website is now up and running. Apparently they had a few problems).

I'm about to peruse the programme more thoroughly. A couple of immediate observations:

1) The ticket prices. Way way up on what they were two years ago. Sigh. Isn't everything?

2) Poetry is definitely the poor relation. Two years ago, we had poets from several different countries - Ishle Yi Park (I'm not sure if I have the spelling correct) from New York, a poet from Chile, several from Singapore, Iggy McGovern from Ireland. Actually, it turned out it was done on the cheap. The Korean-American and the Chilean were living in New Zealand, the Irish physicist-poet was on sabbatical in Melbourne, Australia, and the four Singaporeans were sponsored by the Singapore Arts Council. Still, there was a good sprinkling of poetry from poets I hadn't heard before.

This time, most of the poets seem to be local, with a few from a little further away, but still New Zealanders. Now it's true that we tend to fall into the trap here of thinking overseas is necessarily better. The local poets are in fact very fine poets. Bernadette Hall, for instance, is a former winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. However, most of them are poets I have heard before. Novelists and non-fiction writers may be brought in from around the world especially for the festival, but poets are not. I think it's because they are just not supported by their publishers (not commercial enough?)

The upside to this is that the poetry sessions for the most part have much lower admission prices. Does this mean poets will take any opportunity to perform their work for very little reward?

Readwritepoem: Ekphrasis

Image by Rick Mobbs of Mine Enemy Grows Older

Portrait of Nanda
In an empty room, in the gathering dark
I sit in a green chair,
hands in my lap. I am still

thinking about the way that you left.
The wind and the rain blew in through the door
of the empty room, in the gathering dark.

the peach trees we planted grow by the road
where you drove away. You did not look back
at the trees, or the room where I am. Still,

I sit here, thinking about you, and the trees
which bore this summer one solitary peach.
I plucked it last night in the gathering dark

and thought of sap rising, and the veins in my body
like branching twigs, enclosing my heart
ripe like a peach. I am still

thinking of the juice of the peach,
and the worm inside, and you
far away in the gathering dark,
and like the trees, I am still.

Ekphrasis (poetry inspired by an image) for readwritepoem
I decided to make it a double challenge and write a villanelle - although I have interpreted the form rather loosely and dropped the rhyme scheme, and also repeated ends of lines rather than whole lines.

Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day in New Zealand. Which I almost forgot about, since I had to work. In some centres, they schedule readings in the evening on National Poetry Day, when those of us who work for a living can actually get to them. In Christchurch, the only people who organised anything were the university, and it was at lunchtime.

I could probably have gone if I'd remembered, except that I would have had to go by car to fit it in my lunch break, and it's really hard to find a carpark around the university in term time.

So, instead of poetry, I took photos of oil spills in the supermarket car park. I hope poetry had a good day without me.

Strange Phobias #1

Metrophobia: an irrational fear of poetry.
No, I didn't make it up.
See this poem here. (Scroll down, it's the first one below the bio).

A Sunny Interlude

This morning as I stepped out of my car where I work, I heard a bellbird singing in the nearby tree. This small native bird is not very colourful, but it's song is as beautiful as it's name implies. I couldn't help stopping for a minute or two to listen. (You can listen too, if you find the link in the sidebar of the page I have linked above - however this short clip doesn't quite do it justice).

At lunchtime I drove between jobs, stopping at the bank on the way. The edges of the panes of glass in the front windows acted as prisms, casting rainbow stripes across the pavement.

The sunny day, warm for winter, was a welcome relief after the snow, biting wind and rain, and miserable greyness we were experiencing a week ago. Which made it hard for me to act on this week's prompt at readwritepoem, which was to write a poem "celebrating" the more miserable aspects of summer.

So, I bring you an old poem from my files - one of the earliest I wrote, at the height of summer, using the prompts "river" "ice" and "drought" - hence, a mix of seasons

Drought

Here where the winter rain
froze in the cracks
and pushed until the rocks came tumbling down

Here where the spring swollen river
woth the strength of young love
swept me off my feet
and I fell into the cold, sharp shock

Here now the river has grown old
lies shrunken in a stony bed
the brown grass withered on the banks
and the rocks feverish in the hot sun

Winter Light

Chiaroscuro

Five o'clock. The bright interiors
of freight forwarders' warehouses
framed in the dusk like a Rembrandt nativity
on an old postage stamp. No camels.
No baby. Planes overhead. Men with forklifts,
ordinarily wise, load cargoes
for distant lands. A single soft flake
lands on my windscreen.
The evening's first star
grows brighter in the sky.

More light-filled poems at readwritepoem

Snow

It may be pretty but it's very cold!

Listening to Me, and other Links

Plains FM where I read my poetry on air a couple of weeks ago is now streaming live. They have poetry on the first Saturday morning of each month.
I was exploring their website and found they have a podcast of my interview which you can listen to here. Just scroll down till you find a poet named Catherine on June 18th (and yes I am revealing my last name, should you care to look).

The Women on Air poetry webpage is here and again if you scroll down a little you can see one of the poems I read, and a photo of me - this is a bit old, they didn't ask me for one so they must have dragged it up from the archives somewhere. That's OK, it makes me look a little younger!

Helen Lowe who interviewed me has a book scheduled for publication in the US in September. For fantasy lovers, here are her websites:
About the book, Thornspell
and about the author Helen Lowe

I'm Not the Only One...

I thought this photo was perfect for my blog, given the blog's name

A New Month

...and I thought I might attempt a blog post every day for the month. So...
somewhere around midnight on June 30th our internet went down, and it was still down when I left for work this morning. Which made me think it was us and not our ISP.
Especially since my son (who works for the ISP) said there were lights blinking on the router, and perhaps I could "get Dad to look at it". Which would have been fine, except that "Dad" is out of town for a couple of days.

And then I went out in the still-dark dawn to get the newspaper, and as soon as my feet hit the doorstep, they slid out from under me, and I skinned my ankle and bruised my butt on the concrete steps.

It was very, very frosty. So frosty I had trouble getting the car door to open. But I managed it, and de-iced the windscreen with two jugs of warm water instead of the usual one, and went off to work in my new comfortable shoes.

And when I got home the internet was back, so all is well again.

Besides which, at lunch time I bought a new heat pump so our living-dining area will be much warmer and cosier, when it is installed, which won't be for another couple of weeks, unfortunately.

Poetry with Limits

For readwritepoem
The prompt this week was to write poetry with a limited word set, for example using the words at Shufflewords.

Since I have several sets of magnetic poetry that I never get around to playing with much, I thought I would use real magnetic poetry rather than virtual magnetic poetry.

Usually my poems start with an idea. This time I decided to just select words that I liked the sound of, and play with sounds more than trying to make sense. As I said, I'm not very practised with magnetic poetry. Usually I get diverted enough sorting the words into alphabetic lists of words of the same length that I run out of time to actually use them!

Here is the result:

Christmas Trees and Birthday Candles

It was the end of an era as we celebrated my youngest son's 21st birthday. All my five children are now officially adults, which makes me feel rather old. Or at least, I still feel the same age I always felt, so how did it happen exactly?

Of course several of them still live at home, they know where it is cheapest!

We had a party with buffet dinner at our home last weekend, which meant Thursday and Friday evenings and most of Saturday were spent cooking casseroles, desserts, birthday cake, a roast leg of lamb and vegetables. We also tidied up a bit. We even put the Christmas tree away. Yes that's right, the Christmas tree. Only six months late. (It was suggested that we leave it up to celebrate "mid-winter Christmas" which is quite popular in these parts, however the birthday boy wanted it put away). We don't use the large front room all that much and I am a champion procrastinator. In fact last year I got as far as putting away the decorations, but the tree itself stayed up all year, which is something of a record.

We used to have a real tree which of course did get disposed of after a couple of weeks, but these days we have a synthetic one. There's only one thing more forlorn than a Christmas tree past it's best and that's a used birthday candle. The tree at least went off with our green waste to be mulched and made into fertiliser for people's gardens. (Very good of the City Council to charge us for green waste so they can mulch it and sell it back to us).

But what do you do with a used birthday candle? Sometimes we re-use them, but you can't really get away with that more than once, it would just look cheap to put a stub of a candle on the cake. Someone should start a business collecting up and recycling used birthday candles - you could melt them down and make new candles from them, or turn them into biofuel, or use the wax for batik, or melt them into weird statues, or something. Maybe I could melt them down and make little floating tea-lights.

I was one of those conventional old-fashioned mothers who stayed at home until the children were all at school, then found the work world didn't really want me any more. It took a while, but I think I've managed to re-invent myself and find a place in the world. I think the Christmas trees and birthday candles deserve that too.

We managed to spin out the celebrations and have a family dinner as well on the actual date which was Friday. Tomorrow he's off to Paris for a week and a half. It's too late at night for me to bother to link to the previous post, which had the link to the news article which explains why he's off to Paris. In fact I think it is high time I got to bed.

A Shameless Plug

I'm not sure if this can be heard outside Christchurch, but I will be on local access radio this Saturday morning.
The link is to the current program, but after this week I guess it won't be mentioning me any more, so be in quick:
Women on Air

Awards Time Again

I bought a number of poetry books last year, because several of my favourite New Zealand poets brought out new collections. I thought it was a great year for New Zealand poetry, and that I was fairly familiar with all the new offerings.

I was surprised, then, when the shortlist was announced for the Montana New Zealand book awards. Of the three poetry finalists, I had read one but don't own it. (I borrowed it from the library). The other two weren't known to me at all. I guess I will have to get reading.

The judges commented that it was an especially fine year for poetry, and they could easily have chosen five. It set me wondering what the criteria are. There is a separate award for the best first book (although there is no shortlist this year, unlike in previous years, so I'm not sure how it will be chosen). So, do the judges favour mid-career poets? The two I own which I thought would make the shortlist for sure are both by very experienced poets who have won before - Bernadette Hall's "The Ponies" and Vincent O'Sullivan's "Blame Vermeer". Do the judges decide that it is time someone else had a chance? Or are the finalists chosen entirely on merit - did they feel that these two weren't up to the writers' previous standard? I can't see it myself, though as I haven't read the ones that were chosen, I can't really compare yet.

One of the three finalists, Johanna Aitchison's "A Long Girl Ago" , is a debut collection. Will the "best first book" be chosen from the main category finalists? If so, she would seem to be a shoo-in.

According to a book shop newsletter I received today, "the judging panel takes into account enduring literary merit and
overall authorship; quality of illustration and graphic presentation; production values; general design; the standard of editing and the impact of the book on the community.

I'll be very interested to find out the winners in July

Here is One I Prepared Earlier...

Since I spent the weekend alternately coughing and sniffling, and sometimes both at once, the idea of heading for a bit of land sticking out into the Pacific Ocean, coated with a layer of snow dumped by winds straight from the Antarctic, wasn't very appealing. Not even to run around looking for orange and white flags (also known as "orienteering").

So I stayed home wrapped in snuggly quilts and watched TV.

Instead I thought I'd post these photos I took on a walk the previous Saturday, before the cold bug hit. This small enclosure has been decorated with prayer flags for quite some time. I'm not sure if the fence was put there just for the prayer flags, or if it serves some other purpose - maybe sheltering some rare native plant? Nothing inside the fence looks particularly unusual though, apart from the flags.

I'm trying to prove to myself that with a bit of imagination, I can visit any country I want without leaving home. So - do these look like Tibet? (If you have been there, don't disillusion me too much!)

Feeling Like a Tomato

A few weeks ago we had an early snowfall which hit our tomato plant. Up till then it had been rather prolific, but the tomatoes started falling off, so we gathered them up and set them on the kitchen windowsill to finish ripening.

The tomatoes looked fine. But they didn't ripen. Instead they started to ooze puddles of brownish liquid.

For the last week I've been feeling very much like one of those tomatoes. But, I haven't entirely finished a box of tissues yet, so I guess that's OK. I took the whole week off work, one day at a time. And I'm trying to convince myself that I'm fit to head back tomorrow, because sitting at home coughing is getting boring.

We had snow again last night. The hills looked very pretty this morning, but the air didn't feel so pretty. I'm contemplating the depressing warnings that if we don't cut peak time power use, power cuts are likely in about four weeks time.

Don't they know that most of us don't actually get up in the morning thinking "Wouldn't it be fun to waste some electricity today?" Because really, we have better things to do with our money than waste it. (Like buying poetry books. Or food.)

Every year, the power companies give us clever ideas to save power. And I roll my eyes and think "Don't they realise we've been doing that for twenty years or so already?"

Sigh. Thank goodness for our open wood fire, which we are not supposed to use because of air pollution, and our new gas cooktop.

More Quarry Photos

More photos from last week's outing to Halswell Quarry. I took these round the abandoned quarry workers' buildings, after I had completed my orienteering course.

A group of young women were filming a video. They had a large stuffed dummy, which apparently they threw over the edge of the cliff, but I missed the action.

I'm not sure what it was in aid of - perhaps a school or university assignment. It wasn't for the 48 hour Fast and Furious Film Festival , which took place the previous weekend.

Imaginary Worlds

On a hill track near here, a sign warns walkers to watch for "underrunners". These are actually underground passages carved by rain in the clay soil, but the word intrigues me and makes me imagine strange creatures living down there.

This poem is very much a first draft so be kind!

Underrunners

Once they knew the sun. The earth betrayed them,
gave way beneath their feet. You may hear them howling
but you will not see them. They gnaw roots,
snatch at the occasional pale insect.
They wander passages where pale fungi bloom,
running, always running, they keep in time
with the footsteps of those above.

For more imaginary worlds, visit readwritepoem

Why Yes I Do Still Have Legs - Why Do You Ask?

I haven't been orienteering in ages. But all club members are supposed to serve as helpers a few times a year, and I was phoned earlier in the week and asked to help at today's event.

So I stood/sat near this bridge for an hour and a half, writing finish times on clip cards



It was fine when I took the photo, but not for long. Rain did it's best to put a dampener on things...
The garden looks harmless enough here, but this is the flat part. You can see the cliff wall of an old quarry in the background. The bridge is a memorial to the Korean War, I think.

After I'd been relieved of finish duties, I summoned up enough energy to go out on a course myself. Which is quite a different proposition from walking to work a couple of times a week. Safety hazards were described as "pits are deeper than they look, rabbit holes, slippery wet grass and rocks, the quarry edge, cars on the access road" and probably a few more I've forgotten. And yes, it was very slippery. Trying to follow tracks as much as possible didn't help all that much given they were mostly mud churned up by the feet of the dozens of orienteers who went before me.

I stopped at this spot, after fruitlessly searching up and down the hill for the control flag, and photographed the view while I gave my brain a rest.



This is the view across the plains, from the same spot as the previous photo, just aiming the camera higher.



Then I found the control I was looking for, and continued round the course. Further on, I had a choice between going round the top of the quarry and going round the bottom. I think round the bottom was probably a much shorter route. But I hate going down then up, much prefer up then down. And besides, visiting the quarry without walking round the top of it is just not done.

Fantastic views, but I didn't take photos as I thought I should aim to finish before the course closed. Maybe another day.

Who Says Poetry Doesn't Pay?

According to this newspaper story, a Washington College graduate won a $US67,000 prize for her poem about New Zealand's Franz Josef glacier. (You can read it if you click on the link).

Actually, reading the story carefully, I think they may have it wrong. It seems to me that she actually won the award for a portfolio of work, not just one poem. But either way, it's more than most poets will receive for their efforts in a lifetime.

Autumn Inspirations

At one stage I was trying to publish a daily photo. It got too boring, as some days I had little opportunity to find new things to photograph, given that I leave home just after light in winter and come back at dusk, always by the same route.
I'm sure though, that I can manage a photo expedition once a week or so.

On Mondays I switch jobs at lunchtime, which gives me the perfect opportunity to stop somewhere interesting on the way and snap a few shots.

It's almost too late to be taking autumn photos. I've never figured out the best time, because some trees are still stubbornly clinging to their green, while others are completely bare.

This is the Avon River, near the Christchurch Botanic Gardens (although we are never very far from a river anywhere in Christchurch)



and this is the Antigua Boatsheds, much featured on calendars. Tourists have been hiring canoes from here since the late 1800s.

You Don't Know How Lucky You Are

A few days ago the price of petrol went up - again - and our local newspaper published a list of prices from different countries.

In NZ dollars per litre (I have no idea how that works out as US dollars per gallon, but I assume the conversion is accurate):

United States $1.33
Australia $1.80
New Zealand $1.94
Britain $2.84
Netherlands $3.23

I will admit that Europe probably has much better public transport than the United States. But it is interesting that most of the complaints I've seen on blogs about high fuel prices come from the US. The Brits don't seem to complain about it at all.

Edited to add:
Maybe I should have converted those figures to prices per gallon. One US gallon is 3.78454 litres so by my calculations, taking the exchange rate into account , it comes out at $1.28 per litre in NZ dollars. A little lower than I said. And since our price has gone up nearly 10 cents a litre in the last week, we are now at $1.97 a litre for regular, over $2.00 for high octane.
I do realise that many Americans have to commute long distances with no suitable public transport, the whole lifestyle is built around cheap fuel. On the other hand, salaries are quite a lot higher in the USA or Australia (or just about anywhere) than in New Zealand.

(End of edit).

I'm trying (without a lot of success) to get up early enough to take photos before I leave for work, the light is lovely at this time of year. This is down by the river, I'm hoping to get back on a colder morning. When it is frosty, the mist rises from the river and the early sun shines through.

On Not Blogging

I feel as if I'm getting my life in order - more or less.

By keeping a household task or two in mind, I get them done as soon as I get home from work, which keeps things more or less under control. You just have to remember, as the late Peg Bracken once said, not to start in the same place every time.

(And if you want more handy housekeeping hints, she also said "If it's loose, pick it up, if it's not, dust it, if it moves, feed it")

Somehow my one or two daily tasks, as well as eating dinner, and keeping up with a favourite TV show or two (usually while I do the ironing at the same time) seems to fill my evening.

So now all I have to figure out is how to find time to keep blogging, writing poems, and giving myself the occasional treat outing.

I did get some more of the quilt done over the weekend. It's flagging a bit though, as I desperately want more fabrics. I think I need to reconnect with the quilt group I used to belong to, and find some other quilters to swap fabrics with. It wouldn't do my budget much good to get too carried away in the fabric stores (besides, the fabric stores here suck).

I also had a very pleasant evening on Sunday, as my eldest daughter invited us for dinner - presumably in honour of Mother's Day. And my middle daughter phoned from Wellington.

That's about the sum of the excitement around here at the moment.

I had hoped to have a poem ready for readwritepoem, but I'm running late. We'll see if I manage it before the end of the week.

Getting Reacquainted

Well, I set myself goals for the year, and promptly lost interest in them. I'm not beating myself up about it. I realised that I have certain obligations, and I don't need to make further obligations out of activities that I choose for myself.

I've been working full time for over a year and contributing a large part of the family budget. While I don't do so much of the meal preparation any more, I do most of the housework (as much as any housework gets done, that is) and I do all the laundry. I have commitments to the administration of Takahe magazine.

As for the family history, poetry, orienteering etc, I do it because I want to. And if I don't, I don't have to.

Here is what I am up to at the moment instead of pursuing the goals I announced earlier:



You can see my sewing machine manual on the left hand side of the photo, because it was so long since I had used the machine, I found I had forgotten how to turn it on. (In my defense, it was a fairly new sewing machine when I last used it. I can still remember how to turn my old machine on, the one I had for twenty years or more).

I also couldn't find the switch for the light. After searching the manual for a while, I found that the light should come on automatically. It doesn't. Or at least, it does sometimes. When I twitch my nose properly, or when the wind is in the east, or something. Grrr! I can still sew though, with a carefully placed lamp.

The idea was to make a quilt with fabrics on hand. There are two black and white fabrics and twelve coloured strips in each block of this quilt. I've made eight blocks so far - ninety six coloured pieces. Despite starting with a big stack of purple, turquoise and pink fabrics, I still find myself wanting more variety. I'm trying to resist the urge to buy too many more (besides, the ones in our local quilt shops all seem to look the same).

I'll show the quilt again as it progresses, and tell you more about it.

Meanwhile, there has been a little excitement in our household. One of the young people in this news story is someone rather closely related to me...

Catching Up...

I came home from work on Tuesday to find a sign on the street corner a couple of blocks from my house. The riverside street was going to be closed the next day for tree felling.

Since our little cul de sac leads off this street, with no other entrance and exit, I wondered if I would be able to get out the next morning. As it turned out, the sign was a block further up than the part that was actually closed, and although I had to slalom through traffic cones, I was able to leave without any trouble.

I'm not sure if I was relieved or disappointed. A day at home would have been nice. But I'd probably have felt obliged to go to work anyway, which would mean a tedious and complicated bus ride.

You'd think they'd find a better way to notify the residents than a sign on the corner the night before.

I had an errand to do on the way home (collect accounts for a small literary magazine from the auditor), which left me running late for the final session of the Canterbury Poets Collective autumn readings. However the first half is open mic, and the second half is the guest readers, so I didn't mind too much missing the first two or three. There were some fine open mic readers and a guest reader I was really looking forward to - Rhian Gallagher. Rhian is not very well-known in New Zealand as she lived in the UK for quite a few years, where her collection Salt Water Creek was short-listed for the Forward Prize for best first collection. I first came across her work on the Poetry Daily website (no link as their archive only lasts a year).

Unfortunately I was rather tired and found myself dozing off. In my waking moments I confirmed that I really did like her work, and I also enjoyed the final guest poet Tony Beyer. I think I'll be looking for their books to study more.

Overall I'm beginning to think that I don't really take in all that much at readings. What I come away with mostly is an overall impression of the sound of a poem. And what I am interested in is: does it sound like a poem? What makes it a poem? Much of what I hear, especially from the open mic readers, sounds like prose. On the page it may look like a poem, but on reading it aloud, the line breaks seem to be lost. And some of the open mic poems had really, really long sentences. Beautiful pieces of prose, but prose none the less.

I listen for rhythm and cadence. Some of my favourites were those that didn't contain complete sentences -lists and fragments. It reminds me to experiment more with grammatical constructions in my own writing.

I do have some reports and links on some of the guest poets from earlier sessions, but i'll keep them for another post.

Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

I went out to our backyard to pick grapes this morning and was greeted by a beautiful dew-hung spiderweb



It's quite hard to get all those little raindrops perfectly in focus!

Forty Years On

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the Wahine disaster. The house where I grew up overlooked the harbour where this took place.

April 10th 1968

Every year we made the journey
stood on deck watching the wake
draw a thread between islands
north and south where grandparents, aunts
uncles and cousins mirrored each other like
left and right sides of a garment

Back home we watched the ferries pass
morning and evening as sure as
sunrise and tide fall,
tide rise and sunset
Maori, Rangatira, Wahine

That stormy day we watched the broken ship
drift onto rocks, list
the fleet of small craft weaving back and forth
trying to darn the hole in the harbour,
trying to stitch the ship to shore

On Sport and Writing

I've never thought of myself as athletic, but there are certain sporting events that capture my imagination. No, not the rugby. I'm just not a true Kiwi in that regard - I have no interest whatsoever. But one event that usually has me checking the results is the annual Coast to Coast adventure race.

Over two days - or one, for the really ambitious - New Zealand's top adventure racers (and some from overseas) cycle, run, and paddle their way from one side of the South Island to the other, across the mountains and the plains to finish at Sumner Beach not far from here. Some are there to try to win, others just to say they did it.

There are usually a number of people I know among the competitors, often fellow members of my orienteering club. It's the sort of event I could imagine myself competing in - but only in my imagination, never in real life!

First, the attraction. I grew up spending a lot of time outside - climbing trees, swimming in the sea, clambering over rocks, making hideouts in the bushes. I think of myself as an outdoors person, but in a rather dreamy contemplative kind of way, not in terms of "further, higher, faster". When I think about the sports I find interesting, though, they are the ones that take place in natural settings - climbing, sea kayaking, adventure racing etc.

The hitch is, of course, the deadline. Those people who do the Coast to Coast just for the sake of doing it? They are still a whole lot faster than I'll ever be. If you don't finish the mountain run by a certain time, you are not allowed to complete the course. The fastest people in our orienteering club do courses more than twice as long as the ones I do, in less than half the time. The fastest ever runner of the Coast to Coast did it in ten hours or so. The slowest ever, twenty four hours. The maths doesn't stack up.

Do you believe that you can do anything you want to do? I don't. That is, I do believe that if I wanted to cross the island by foot, mountain bike and kayak, I could do it. Given a week or so. (But the safety infrastructure wouldn't be there at other times of the year, so I'd be unlikely to try it).

Given enough time, we can probably all do way more than we imagine. But some of us are always going to take longer than others. Fortunately, writing isn't a timed activity. Some poets write a poem a day (I did myself, for a month last April. Most of them were rubbish, but the experience was exhilarating). Other poets spend years perfecting each poem. In the end, it doesn't matter how many attempts and rewrites you make - what matters is the poem itself, the end result.

On the other hand, if you need to leap across a ravine, it has to be in one leap. If it takes you more than one, you're in trouble!

Readwritepoem: Clothing

For readwritepoem, where the prompt this week was clothing:

(Note: the original of this poem is laid out in a wave formation. I'm lacking the time to put all the tabs in. Might come back and do it later. I haven't written anything new for a while, so this is "one I prepared earlier")

Girl in a Ballgown

For your final school
ball you choose shot
satin, woven at cross-
purposes, the warp and weft
of it, purple of a ripe berry,
green of a new leaf.
I cut and pin and stitch
because this is one thing
I can do for you these
difficult years –
make you a skin that
fits. When you walk
you are sunshine on green
seas, you are purple cloud
shadows shifting on the waves.

You stand high-heeled on the table.
Your level-eyed father
pins the hem straight.
And suddenly you are fainting,
falling head first in a shimmer
of green waves, tumbling
ocean
ocean
ocean
until he,
playing Daedalus to your
Icarus, catches you just in time,
rewriting the old myths

Catching Up...

A whole month into the year, and when I review progress I find I haven't done much towards my goals. The one thing I have done is to increase my level of exercise. I figure that if I manage one thing each month, I will get there in the end.

This weekend, anyway, may be different. I plan on tackling the first chapter of the family history, and I may even tackle a poem for readwritepoem, for the first time in a while. Mostly, I've been using the summer weekends for lawn mowing and gardening. This weekend that's off the agenda, because I made a visit to the doctor, and I have stitches in my back, so no heavy lifting or pushing for a couple of weeks.

I visited the doctor a week or so ago for some asthma medication, and she noticed a suspicious spot on my back which was why I went back to have it removed. When I was a child, it was quite normal to spend all summer on the beach, wih regular doses of sunburn. I recall peeling great strips of skin off with great glee! So I always figured this was going to come sooner or later, and it doesn't appear to be too serious - she thinks it may be a BCC (basal cell carcinoma) which is very slow-growing, but still not something you invite to stay for a long visit.

The trip for the asthma medication was overdue too, but the ongoing saga of the waterbed prompted me to visit - I'll save that one for another post.

In the meantime, here are some photos of the walking track I discovered while orienteering last week. We had another event this week, which was quite different - among flat suburbs with waterways and wetlands interspersed - lots of reeds, waterbirds etc. These Wednesday evening events are a series we have every summer around local streets and parks, and then for the rest of the year we mostly have Sunday events when we get out into the country more.

The track passes the bottom of a garden:



The view from the top:



I have a fascination with roots and rocks: