More Dunedin Photos

Dunedin was a prosperous city in the 19th century due to the discovery of gold in the region. Later, however, industry and the population moved north. This means that the old buildings weren't pulled down for development as much as in some other cities, and it has a fine collection of Victorian and Edwardian architecture.

This is the wonderfully ornate railway station:





A detail of an old house near the archives building:



About a fifth of the population are university students. Since exams are over, many of the students have left town, but not without leaving their mark:

Road Trip

I took a few days off work, since it was over a year since my last holiday, and went on a road trip. My youngest daughter came along for the ride.

We drove down to Dunedin last Thursday, where I spent the afternoon doing family history research in the Presbyterian Church archives, before checking into our motor camp. Then Kay came to pick us up and we went to an Indian vegan cafe for a meal, followed by a poetry reading. Photos on Kay's blog here. (Scroll down, it is quite a long post).

The next day I went for an early walk along St Kilda and St Clair beach (they merge together), which is familiar to me from the photos Kay has posted on her blog from time to time.





These children were part of a school group who had been staying at the motor camp.



Then research in the Dunedin branch of the National Archives while daughter C browsed in the museum, followed by a visit to the Early Settlers Museum.

We were planning to drive round the Otago Peninsula but I realised I had left the sunblock at the motor camp. So I headed back to put some on, on the way I decided to stop in at Anderson's Bay cemetery to visit a few relatives.



This is the amazing view from the cemetery - I believe the beach is called Tomahawk Beach.



It was a very hot day and by the time we returned to the motor camp I had a nasty headache so there was a change of plans and I spent the rest of the day being very lazy resting on my bunk.

Lots more photos to come.

That Other Election

Yes, the one in New Zealand - not as newsworthy or exciting as the one in the US, but every twelve years they coincide.

Here is an Australian doing what the Australians do best - mocking New Zealand.

That's OK, we give as good as we get. It was a former New Zealand Prime Minister who once made a famous comment that New Zealanders leaving for Australia raised the average IQ of both countries...

We have a complicated electoral system here, though not as complicated as some, which means that we get two votes - one for the candidate to represent our electorate, and one for the party which is to govern the country. So, of course, in the twelve years since MMP began, we have never had a majority government, they always have to form a coalition with one or more smaller parties. There are a long list of these contesting each election, but most fall under one of the three r's: the radical, the reactionary, or the ridiculous.

In the latter category is the Bill and Ben party, to whom we owe the best quote of the election night coverage:
"We can't be voted off, we found the hidden immunity idol".

New Zealanders thought otherwise. The minor parties that did make it into Parliament were the Green Party, the Maori Party, the right wing ACT, centrist United Future, and left wing Progressive Party (one seat each for the last two). So now we are waiting to see how our rather centrist new right wing Prime Minister will hold off the more right wings demand from the ACT party, possibly by playing them off against the Maori Party.

One thing about outgoing Prime Minister Helen Clark is that she was superb at holding together unlikely coalitions.

John Key on the other hand promised in his victory speech to make New Zealand safer, more prosperous, reward (or was that encourage?) ambition, and help those who can't help themselves. He didn't quite promise to do it in six days...

Another newspaper article suggested that New Zealanders are quite realistic and that what they expected of Helen Clark is more of the same, and what they expect of John Key is more of the same, with tax cuts. He could well be right.

Poetry and the Listener

There are two mainstream publications in New Zealand that make quality poetry more accessible to the general reader - the Listener and North and South. The only other journals that regularly publish poetry are the small circulation literary magazines.
North and South being monthly publishes twelve poems a year. The Listener is a weekly which publishes television listings, but also articles, reviews etc of general interest and therefore by publishing a poem an issue, brings us fifty two poems a year. Except that sometimes it leaves them out. And recently it has been suggested that they will stop publishing poetry because of the economic recession. For more on this see Beatties Book Blog here.

As a reader, the first thing I look for when I get my weekly copy of the Listener is the poem. I'm always disappointed if they've missed it out. It is one way of getting exposure to a wide range of New Zealand poets. If all I wanted was the TV listings, I could get them from much cheaper rival publications, or from the newspaper.

Writers of novels don't rely on magazines. It may be hard to get a first novel published, but the only real way is to write it and send it out to publishers, directly or through an agent. Poetry is different. I've been surprised at some of the names I've heard nominated for "best first book of poetry" in our book awards, because often they are poets who have been publishing in magazines for year. The market for poetry books is so small, that publishers want to see a good publication history in magazines before they will consider a book deal. There are few enough magazines out there that the loss of even one is - well, I won't say tragic, when there are real tragedies in which people lose their lives - but it is very disappointing.

Doubly so because the Listener apparently pays quite well, from what I've heard.

New Zealanders - if you want to contact the Listener, the arts editor concerned is Guy Somerset, and the website has contact details.

Bookless

Well, not actually bookless - my shelves are quite crowded and there's always the library. However, I signed up for the e-mail list at our local branch of Borders. This week's coupon was for 50% of a full-price book which seemed well worth the effort of a special trip.

I don't browse at Borders nearly as much as I used to. It is right beside one of the myriad of routes that I can take between home and one of my two jobs. However, if I go there on the way home I am faced with a very tricky right-hand turn into peak hour traffic to get out of there again, so I tend to avoid it. Instead, I tried to make a quick visit in the middle of the day while travelling between the two jobs (meaning a left turn, much easier as we drive on the left here).

I quickly remembered the other reason I've been avoiding the place. The mall is building a new multi-storey parking building on the convenient car park that I used to use. By the time I found a car park that wasn't rendered useless by construction activity, I had a long walk to get to the books.

And when I got there, I really couldn't find a special book that called to me - that said "I am the book you have to have, one to be part of your life forever, one for which four weeks loan from the library just won't do." There was one, which I won't name, which I had wanted to buy a couple of months back when I had a book token, but the paper quality turned out to be so poor that I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Of course, in about three days, after my voucher runs out, I will probably remember several books that I really, really want, but for now my mind is blank.

What's That Again?

I was looking for Carcanet's New Poetries IV at Fishpond (New Zealand online bookstore) and I got the question popping up - the one search engines use when they think you have misspelled something...
"Did you mean...?"

What did they think I meant?

The question was "Did you mean New Poe tries IV?"

What was that? Why on earth would I want a space in the middle of the word?
And then I looked again and figured it out. Visions of Edgar Allen's descendant hooked up to a drip, in a graveyard with bats and ravens flying around. Hmmm...

Night

I don't seem to be writing many posts lately, my last few posts have been photos for Carmi's Thematic Photographic.
My mind is turning towards writing new poems, and editing old poems, which seems to divert my energies away from writing blog posts, but images are another matter.

This week's theme is night.



The first photo is the Bridge of Remembrance here in Christchurch, lit up at dusk. The time of year was midwinter (about June or July), as I was on my way home from work and in summer it is of course still bright daylight at that time.



The second photo was taken in December 2006 at Carols by Candlelight. The event had in fact been cancelled. But some of us didn't know that and turned up anyway. Someone decided to conduct, some had brought their own carol books from previous years, and candles, and someone else dashed home and fetched a trumpet. It's amazing what a great event we had without the celebrity comperes, brass bands etc.

Happy

For Thematic Photographic, "happy"

In a Blur

This week's theme at Carmi's Thematic Photographic is blur

It brought to mind the photos I took last year when we drove through the small village of Freshford near Bath, in England. My greatgreatgreatgrandfather was born here. Unfortunately English country lanes are very narrow and unlike New Zealand roads, places to pull over and stop to take a photo seem to be sadly lacking. Furthermore, twilight was rapidly approaching. So even though we were getting quite practiced at clicking the camera on the move, the long exposure time dictated by the low light meant my photos of the village came out rather blurry.



There's a poem to go with this one (although the bridge described in the poem was actually in a different photo). The italics are a quote from another poem that was on Poetry Daily, I need to look it up to find the author and title.

Freshford

Yes, yes, you can’t step into the same
river twice, and I can’t cross
the same bridge as my ancestors,
but all the same, this bridge is one of the things
that has changed least since you lived here,
linking the village with the quarry, on narrow roads
meant for horses. On both sides now
the stone houses, clean and prosperous looking,
country retreats for the middle classes,
and cars pulling up at the inn, in the twilight.
There were weavers and washerwomen once.
Where are their rough cottages? Pulled down,
or renovated, made large enough for small families
to sleep one to a bedroom. Your seventeen children
one by one left their shared beds
to trudge over this bridge to distant cities
in the hope of work. Look, here are photos
I took from the car window. Have I captured
your ghosts? I see only a blur. We are moving
too fast.

Simple Pleasures #3

After I posted the photo of the girl on the swing I started to think about childhood pleasures. Parents these days seem to be inundated with advice on the importance of a rich environment for children. Unfortunately this often seems to be interpreted to me lots of educational toys and "baby Mozart" DVDs.

I believe that when I was growing up I had a very rich environment. Lots of time at the beach and outdoors, climbing trees, sliding down flax bushes and making tunnels through the daisy bushes. Many, many books borrowed from the library, which had far more books than my parents could have ever bought me. Time spent with adults who could respond individually - my parents, and my grandparents just up the road. A grandfather who believed in learning enough that he was still learning himself (Esperanto and chess were his two big retirement pastimes). Nature, of course, can do something that no "educational" plastic toy can ever do - it can change from day to day, all by itself.



This child is spending time in just the sort of environment I loved as a child (even though I was totally unathletic, as you will see from my sidebar, I loved the outdoors). I don't know who he (or she?) is - I snapped this during the "farewell to the godwits" ceremony held here a couple of years ago. They do it every year when the birds are about to set off on the long journey from New Zealand to Siberia - a miracle of nature that impressed this child far less than the miracle of sand and water.

For more photos of children, visit Thematic Photographic at Carmi's blog.

More Simple Pleasures

This one is my brother and myself, with my Dad pushing the cart, outside my grandmother's place here in Christchurch. We must have been on holiday - we lived in Wellington at the time.

Probably about Christmas 1952

For Thematic Photographic - kids

Endangered Species

Recently this rope swing appeared on the riverbank near our house. While driving home, I spotted it and pondered the possibilities of photographing it for Carmi's Thematic Photographic this week - kids. Almost nothing says "kids" as well as a rope swing, even if there are no actual kids in the photo.



Just as I pulled over, however, the young girl appeared to play on it. So I used my zoom to get a few photos from a discreet distance. I rather like that it is a little blurred - it speaks of movement - and it makes it more anonymous, too.



I don't think the swing will last very long. Apparently city council workers cut them down whenever they come across them. I'm not sure if it's the trees or the children they think they are protecting. I think it's a shame that modern play choice come down to artificial playgrounds, carefully designed to remove all danger (and hence fun), and Playstations and Gameboys.

Thematic Photographic - Kids

Carmi has invited us to post photos of kids this week.
My own children are all well grown up and show no signs of producing the next generation. While we do have lots of photos of them when they were younger, they were mostly taken by my husband, and it feels a bit odd to post someone else's photos on my blog.

So, I hunted to see what else I had. Mostly, my shots of children aren't particularly great as photos, but since most children are adorable anyway, whether the photographer is skilled or not, I decided to share a few.

This is a wee girl I spotted in the street one day. Since I have a daughter who loves zebras, I asked her mother very nicely if she would mind my taking a photo, and the girl posed very nicely for me.



More "kid" photos here

Four Types of Sentence

Some years back I took an evening course led by a poet who is also a Steiner teacher - in fact the classes took place at the local Rudolf Steiner school. It was at least partly based on a book by Paul Matthews called Sing Me the Creation, which is centred around four types of sentences.

Of course poets don't always use sentences at all. We can write in fragments, or lists. But it is hard to think of any sorts of sentences other than the four that Matthews describes - the statement, the command, the exclamation, and the question.

I started thinking about these four again while reading the poetry of Olena Kalytiak Davis recently. Most poems that I read, if they are written in sentences, rely heavily on statements. (Sometimes fairly strange statements, but statements nevertheless). In Davis's poetry, I found many many examples of commands, questions, and even exclamations, and I think it is one of the reasons I find her poetry so powerful.

For instance, "In Defense of Marriage" consists mostly of commands:
Marry the white fences;
marry the fenceless
Moon and the defenceless sky

and

Promise to forsake.
Give in
to the cistern full of asters

The final statement seems stronger for its position at the end of a string of commands:

I married the way moths marry.
I married hard.

And then there are her questions, like this one from "The Panic of Birds"

What was it
I understood so well last night, so well it kissed me,
Sweetly, on the forehead?

The exclamation is the hardest, I think, to use effectively. Nineteenth century poems are full of them, of course - the word "Oh!" is a give away. It's one word that some beginners use misguidedly to make their work seem more "poetic" and one word that puts editors off enormously. (See the introduction by Billy Collins to Best American Poems 2006)

Davis makes very effective use of "O'" in her poem "In the Clear Long After" (which is included in the first Poetry Daily anthology. The last two lines are

O, to be stung by an errant bee. O, to sting.
O, to see you again. Covered in spring.

There are poems by Davis that I love, and poems that leave me mystified, although I am decreasing the number of those as I get to know them better. She's a little known poet but one I believe is worth becoming acquainted with. The Paul Matthews book is well worth a read, too.

Poets and Day Jobs

Since it's confession time over at January's blog (or perhaps not, time differences between continents always confuse me) - anyway, Tuesday there or not, I thought it was time to confess what a terrible procrastinator I am. I have little bits of paper stored up for months on which I have ideas for poems and blog posts.

This week though, I thought I would try to have a catch up and get some of those blog posts (and maybe even poems) written. So there will be lots of posts from me this week.

One of the news items over at Poetry Daily is this one about poets and their day jobs. Not many poets, of course, make a living from writing poetry. Some have jobs in universities and make a living from teaching poetry, but I don't think it's the same thing at all. Robert Saxton says in the article, "the price I pay for a salaried job is lack of collegiate empathy" - where does he think the collegiate empathy would come from if he didn't have a salaried job? Wouldn't he be rather isolated from other poets - unless he was in a university - and then he'd have a salaried job, in which he would spend quite a bit of time teaching rather than writing.

I found myself thinking about poets and their day jobs - in most cases, I can't tell from the poetry what the day jobs are. There are exceptions, of course. In New Zealand, Glen Colquhoun is well known as a doctor poet, and one of his collections, "Playing God" is full of poems that arise from his experience of medicine. Ted Kooser worked for years as an insurance executive, but you don't see that much in his poetry. The Czech poet, Miroslav Holub, was an immunologist, but the poems I remember most from reading his work are his "Minotaur" series. I've read a poem about the work of engineers, and another great poet about a manager having to make men redundant, but whether the poets were in that line of work or not, I have no idea.

I found the article interesting, but wondered about the comment from Jane Routh. She's a farmer. I think that's a great day job for a poet (despite being rather time consuming) but then, I'm rather partial to nature poems, myself. Much more interesting than "office" poems. However, she said "the worst 'day job' would be poetry: what would there be to write about?"

Well, of course, all those things we write about when we are not writing about our jobs. Families, nature, friends, history, ideas, science, childhood memories, and on and on.

I found myself wondering what I write about most. Not my day job, that's for sure. I don't find a lot of poetic stimulation in accounting, although a spreadsheet did make an appearance in one of my poems once. I've written a fair few poems based on my family history research - both about specific ancestors, and about the lives of people of earlier times in general, the immigrant experience, and so on. I've written about the colour white, the letter Z, simple kitchen ingredients like eggs and honey, I've written about scenes from my trip to the UK last year (though much less than I expected), mythology, missing my parents, incidents from my childrens' childhood. Currently, I'm obsessing about birds. It started with a discussion about how poetic crows are, and then I began wondering why there are no crows in New Zealand - why the English didn't introduce crows, even though they did introduce starlings, blackbirds, sparrows and many others. Whooops! I thought I was on to a new topic there, but it seems to have come back to social history, and the immigrant experience again. But with another layer.

So, I don't think it would be a hindrance at all for your "day job" to be poetry - you would still be able to find things to write about. But you probably do need some sort of obsession that isn't poetry. What Natalie Goldberg calls "the third thing". There is you, and writing, but what is the third thing that informs your writing?

What do you write about?

You Wouldn't, Would You?

Suppose you, the reader, were to plan on submitting poems to a literary magazine. You surely wouldn't do any of these things:

1) Fail to read the submission guidelines.
2) Having read the guidelines, fail to follow them.
3) Fail to check the current postage rates, so that your submission arrives marked "insufficient postage" with penalty postage for the recipient to pay.
4) Fail to send a stamped addressed envelope when requested.
5) If submitting from overseas, fail to send the requested IRC (International Reply Coupon), and instead, send a stamped addressed envelope using stamps of your own country. (Strangely, the New Zealand Post Office takes exception to Australian or American stamps on envelopes posted here. Or perhaps not so strangely!)
6) Fail not only to enclose a stamped addressed envelope but also fail to put any identifying marks, ie name and address, on your submission.
7) Submit your "inspirational" true life story to a magazine that clearly publishes only fiction and poetry.
8) Submit your work by e-mail to the magazine administrator (not the editor whose e-mail has not been advertised), when the guidelines clearly say no e-mail submissions.
9) Follow all the guidelines, have your work accepted and published, move house after your work has been accepted and fail to inform the magazine. And then complain when you don't receive your payment or contributor's copies.

You wouldn't, would you? So who are all these people who do all of the above? (Yes, I'm a bit frustrated at the moment).

An Overdue Review

"Unleash the Poem Within" by Wendy Nyemaster published by Source Books.

I received a review copy of this book a while ago, just about the time that Juliet posted her review on her blog Crafty Green Poet and then again on readwritepoem.

I enjoyed reading the book, but found myself wondering what I could say about it that Juliet hadn't said already. It is, as Juliet has said, aimed at beginning poets. As a cross between a writing book and a self-help book, I would say that it definitely leans towards the self-help end of the spectrum. (It is listed on the publisher's website under "health and wellness" rather than under "poetry").

I found that my thoughts clarified a little after I picked up a copy of Sheila Bender's book "Writing Personal Poetry" in our public library, and compared the two books, which are both aimed at beginners. Bender's book however, is definitely more focussed on writing than on self-help.

Wendy believes in writing poetry in form, and presents a number of different forms, one in each chapter. She believes that the restraints of form mean that the poet has to work harder to find the right word. This may be so (and I find it absorbing to try to write in traditional forms, myself), but she doesn't really address the factors that determine the "right word". The danger in writing rhyming metrical verse can be that a word which may be wrong in other ways is chosen merely to fit the rhyme and meter, and Wendy doesn't address this problem.

It can be true, of course, that beginning poets don't always understand that so-called "free verse" may also have restraints, and they may not work so hard to find the right word or musical turn of phrase, thinking that "prose with line breaks" is free verse. Sheila Bender firmly favours free verse, but she makes it clear that it is something more than prose with line breaks, and that it has rhythm and phrasing of its own.

The forms that Wendy presents start with the sonnet, the sestina and the ghazal, but she also includes a number of "forms" which are actually types of poems, such as odes, letter poems and "epiphanies". So in fact although she encourages rhyme and meter, these chapters also encompass freer poetic forms. Wendy suggests occasions when each form may be used. These certainly had me thinking, and would be a good starting point for many beginners. I would hope that they would go on to expand their horizons. To me, it's a bit like being given a tall skinny jar and wondering what you could use it for. You might be told, "well, you could keep your spaghetti in it" and realise that yes, it's a perfect jar for spaghetti. But you might also choose to put buttons in it, or layers of coloured sand, or herb-flavoured oils. To be told that a sonnet is the ideal form for writing about emotions is interesting, but there are many sonnets which express ideas in a rational and unemotional way. Her idea of using the villanelle to write about the repetitive phrases that crop up in our lives is a good one. For me though, I've written several villanelles and none of them fit this pattern. (Strangely, none of my close relatives - parents etc - seem to have been addicted to using stock phrases, so I don't really seem to have a repertoire to use for prompts like this).

Wendy illustrates her book with examples drawn from the work of her Poet Posse group. She also names, but does not publish, examples of the forms from well-known women poets. Her idea I believe is to encourage the reader to believe that she (it is aimed at women), too, can write - that it doesn't take special talent. There is an upside and a downside to this. Will the reader be encouraged to try something by setting lower standards, or not? First, you have to believe you can do it, or at least that you have enough chance of success to make the attempt worth it. Secondly, you have to believe that it is an endeavour worth attempting. Consider ice skating, for example. Are you the sort of person more likely to be drawn by the stumbling attempts of beginners, or by watching the artistry of Olympic champions? If it is the latter, it is well worth seeking out the named examples by more famous poets - the internet will turn up most of them, or your local library.

Sheila Bender's book also uses examples from poets in beginning classes. The difference is that she shows both the poems in the very early drafts, from initial free writing exercises, and in progressive revisions, giving ideas on how to improve the work. Wendy I suspect is not so interested in revision. In fact at one point she says that a poem about an emotional event shouldn't be revised later on when your feelings change - you should write a new poem. There is some validity in this, although I feel that revision can be done that is sensitive to the initial feelings - that expresses them more clearly, rather than denying and changing them.

I believe that Wendy's book would be of interest to those who are interested in writing most of all to clarify their lives to themselves. There is also the pleasure of writing in form, which to me is a similar pleasure to the pleasure I get from crossword puzzles or sudoku - the pleasure of "making it fit". It would be a good starting point, too, for those who are interested in sharing their poems with others. However at some point many may want more, in which case Sheila Bender may well show you how to continue. Her book is a much more substantial one (in richness of information if not in actual length). Strangely though, I found Wendy's more enjoyable to read.

(Sheila Bender's book is out of print but is listed at Amazon as available used. It may well be in your library also).

Angles #3

As I was driving home in the late afternoon, I noticed the railings of the footbridge over the river casting long shadows. I thought I might get an interesting photo, so walked down there with my camera.

As it turned out I didn't really like the composition of any of the shots I took. But then I looked down and noticed the tree stump I was standing out. Apparently it had been cut up in sections with a chain saw, because there were lines and grooves going in all directions.



For more interesting angles, visit Carmi's Thematic Photographic for this week

Angles #2

A couple more "angle" photos, taken in the city a few weeks ago.



I've always been intrigued by the way buildings reflect each other, in the city.



This shadow of a rather heavily pruned tree intrigued me, but the photo seemed to lack something, until I spotted a pedestrian about to walk into the picture, so I waited for him and took another shot.

For more photos on the theme of angles, hop over to Carmi's blog, here

Word Fishing

For readwritepoem

Moths

Along the esplanade moths make cursive loops
around the lampposts. Do not think
that self-immolation is part of their design.
Nor that the red that pools beneath
these pohutukawas - pruned, regimented -
is blood. Around the headland
others of their kind sprawl across the cliffs,
a tangle of roots like knotted veins.

There we lie lazy on the sand a while
while frayed blossoms drift across our bodies
and moths fly straight and true
by the light of the singular moon.

The prompt was to take five words from other poems, and use them in a poem of our own. My five words were moths, pohutukawa, cursive, lazy, frayed.

Pohutukawa is a New Zealand tree which bears red blossoms like little brushes in summer - generally around Christmas time, so it is known as the "New Zealand Christmas tree". It often grows on coastal cliffs.

I took the word from this poem by Bob Orr.
"Moths" came from a poem by Olena Kalytiak Davis
"Cursive" and "lazy" came from two poems in "Made for weather" by Kaye McKenzie Cooke
"Frayed" came from a poem in "Waterlight" by Kathleen Jamie

It was an interesting exericse - while looking for words, I came to the conclusion that most poets don't use remarkable words - they just put words together in remarkable ways. I don't feel that my effort did the originals justice, but it's time I started to write regularly again, and this seemed as good a place to start as any.

Angles

For Thematic Photographic - this week's theme is "angles"
This building - part of our public hospital - is full of interesting angles, and I haven't yet quite found the view that does it justice, but this is the best of the one's I've taken so far. (I love the colour, too - it has one yellow wall and the rest is white)

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough

Pink, rather than white, like Housman's cherries, but still a magnificent sight all around Christchurch just now.

On the other hand, spring has it's downside. I finally realised that my frequent gritty heavy-eyed feeling is not tiredness, it's an allergy. It's never been a problem for me before, but apparently pollen counts are very high this year after a strange winter - more snow than usual, but also wetter, and warmer on average.

Let's hope the pollen counts settle down soon.

Spring and Other Things

It's been a wet winter and now we are enjoying warm spring days, which means that the grass is growing and there is a volcanic explosion of pollen. I use the word "volcanic" because everything seems to be coated with a fine dust, and when it rains, lines of pollen settle in cracks in the pavements and along the edge of my car windows. The colour reminds me of the sulphur deposits I've seen visiting New Zealand's geothermal areas.

Pollen of course means inflamed sinuses. And the rapid growth means that my backyard has become an overgrown jungle. I spent a fair chunk of the weekend trying to tackle the back lawn. I use a push mower, for the exercise and the benefit to the environment. But it can't cope with the lawns as they are at the moment. I should probably get a "Jim" (Our local lawnmowing/gardneing franchise). My daughter calls her local Jim, whose name is actually Bob, when her lawns get out of hand, but I can't help feeling the money would better be spent on books. (My daughter on the other hand feels her time is better spent writing. She may be right. You can't have it both ways).

Anyway, I couldn't cut the grass with the push mower, and I couldn't find the secateurs, so I ended up trimming the longest patches with kitchen scissors. I may just be a little crazy. On the other hand, since the grass is actually about 60% weeds, and the other 70% or so has an underlayer of moss, at least doing it this way meant I could pull up quite a few of the weeds along the way. And get a close view of all the insect life in the long grass. Besides, I was probably doing something at least as useful as most of the other things I do at weekends (such as surfing the net, playing computer games and generally not writing).

I did, however, while not writing, manage to send off a couple of poetry submissions. While noting that the last time I sent anything out was about two years ago. Today I have three poems rattling in my head, so I'm planning to actually do some writing this week (which I had better get on with, since it is nearly bedtime).

Links for Writers

Mark Sarvas on the Christchurch Writers Festival (with photos that would make me nostalgic for Christchurch if I wasn't still here).

Emma Darwin on procrastination. Of course, I would never do any of these things. The fact that I spent several hours tidying my desk today is not procrastination - it truly needed to be done. I couldn't possibly write while looking at messy bits of paper everywhere, now could I?

And for historical research, a truly huge compendium of interesting links at Deb's Historical Research page

Coffee

There was a lot of coffee drunk in the prefects' room in my final year of high school. That was the year we studied T S Eliot. There is a line from "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" -
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
that is forever linked in my memory with that year.

I had been a slow starter when it came to coffee. It was only as a teenager, when I started going to "socials" that I realised that most of my contemporaries were drinking beverages other than milk and cordial. I was at a Presbyterian Bible Class social, and was asked whether I would like tea? - No thanks. - Coffee then? - No thanks - leading my friend Fiona to ask me "What are you, a Mormon or something?"

I figured that for the sake of my social life, I would need to learn to drink something. I settled on coffee. Our Bible Class ran a baysitting service, and I was going out on evening babysitting jobs from the age of about twelve or thirteen (difficult to imagine now, despite the Babysitters Club books that my daughters used to read). There was always a tray of supper left out for the babysitter - the makings of tea and coffee, along with biscuits or cakes. It was a perfect time to practice my coffee drinking skills, with no one to see if I tipped half of it down the sink. Gradually I learned to tolerate the bitter taste, always with plenty of milk and sugar. (Years later when dieting, I managed to abandon the sugar habit).

In post war Wellington, European migrants were bringing new tastes and culture. It was the era of the coffee bar. Not that I dated much. But the standard date was to go to the movies, and afterwards to go to a coffee bar, usually the "Chez Paree". Entrance was through a cave-like passage. I remember a dimly-lit, smoke-filled room. Red gingham checked tablecloths. Candles in Chianti bottles. A folk singer on acoustic guitar. The coffee was strong Cona coffee, bubbling away in glass jugs. It was too strong for my taste. I can't remember what I drank there instead, but I think it may have been a "spider" - rather like an ice cream soda, made with a tall glass of Fanta (bright orange soft drink) or Coca Cola, with a scoop of ice cream, cream and chocolate sprinkles.

I went to university, got married, raised a tribe of children. Some time when I wasn't looking, the coffee bars faded away. And then sometime when I wasn't looking, cafes arrived with their new coffee culture. I still drink my coffee as I have always done - instant coffee, lots of milk, no sugar. I'm confused by all the cappucinos, moccachinos, macchiatos, espressos. As far as I can tell, the nearest thing to "coffee with milk and no sugar" is a flat white, so that's what I usually order. Unless I have hot chocolate.

So I was rather surprised to see on Mark Sarvas's blog that he hadn't encountered a flat white before coming to Australia and New Zealand. And that he seems to think it is something quite special.

More musings on coffee over at Sunday Scribblings.

For more on the post war coffee bar scene in Wellington, click here.

Not On My Blog

I received this e-mail today:

"Hi Webmaster,

I am (deleted) and interested in sponsoring your blog http://www.poetrychook.blogspot.com. We are offering you $5.00 for the posted links on your site. You will be paid $5.00 for this link on your blog. The due date will be 2 days after the links will be given to you.

Simply mentioned the keywords anywhere within the body of each post and write one post in every keyword. It should be not less than 150 words and must be a unique content. You can write it on your own journalistic style but don't give negative comment about the keywords given to you. Hateful or rude review will be declined and please don't mention that the post is a sponsored one or placed it in any category that is called sponsored paid. The anchor text or keyword, where you are to direct the link through should be used in its exact given form.

Keywords are 'casino' related. Kindly inform me if these are okay and we will give you all the details for posting.

We will be paying thru PayPal after your review has been approved. Please let me know if you want to continue with my offer. And kindly add my email address to your email address book to make sure your spam filter does not discard any important messages from us. Please let me know if you have any further questions and if you are interested on this offer. "

I was aware of opportunities to earn money with advertising on a blog - not that mine gets enough visitors to earn anything much - but I certainly wasn't aware that "hidden" advertising like this went on. Not on my blog, thank you very much

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.