Travels with Tammy

We were accompanied on our travels by a Satnav system with a friendly female voice, who my daughters promptly nicknamed Tammy. Once our destination was entered, the screen showed that we had to turn left in about 200 kilometres, so it was straight up the east coast of the island.

Tammy was all you could want in a best friend and guide. Always calm, she told us "in 200 metres turn left", and then as the turn approached "turn left". But if we made a mistake, she never berated us. Instead, she recalculated, and either told us to "turn when possible" or found a different route for us. Never a regret about past actions - just "how do we get there from here?" Even when we confused her by diverting from our route to find a restroom, or a KFC store.

Once in a while, though, Tammy was wrong, and we had to trust our instincts. According to Tammy, this is not a road (her screen showed us driving across country):



(It was too new to show on her map).

On the other hand, Tammy thinks this is a road:



This is the vehicle ferry across Cook Strait, which shows as a toll road. Just out of curiosity, we asked for an alternative route with no tolls, but she failed to find one. She must have failed to consult these men who sailed their van across, perhaps inspired by Top Gear

Tammy does not think this is a road:



or this:



but in fact both are legal highways. The first photo is of Ninety Mile Beach, which is actually only 55 miles long -still by far New Zealand's longest beach. We drove up it after a careful check of the tides. The Satnav screen showed us surrounded by water, and after a while Tammy stopped saying "turn when possible" and merely showed a dotted red line connecting us across country with the nearest road she could find. Tourist buses take this route every day, but there are signs warning cars they proceed at their own risk. But my husband is a confident driver, and we made it with no problems after a careful check of the tides. In fact, we drove too far up the beach having missed the turn off up the stream, and asked directions from a friendly fisherman. The second photo shows the route off the beach up the Te Paki Stream. You can see the tyre tracks we were following disappearing into the water (shallow, fortunately). It's the only place I've ever seen a road sign which says "Caution Increase Speed". (To avoid getting stuck in the sand). Then, near the top where you emerge onto a properly formed road, there is a sign sticking out of the stream which warns "Caution Oncoming Traffic" which made the girls crack up with laughter.

Thematic Photographic: Shiny

Here's a shiny fellow, and his female friend, that I met on my travels. Sadly, he put his tail down before I could manoeuvre myself to take a front-on shot (I think my daughter has a great one, though, I must check)







for more "shiny" photos head on over to see Carmi.

Home Again

Actually, I've been home for a few days. However, we arrived home on Sunday evening, and I was back to work first thing Monday. And then there was the backlog of mail, and e-mails, and laundry to catch up on. Not to mention a couple of engagements on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. So I have hardly had a spare moment since I returned.

I'm just beginning to sort, label and edit my photographs.

I intended to do some revision of old poems while I was away, and maybe even write some new ones. I took a fat folder with me. But somehow, once I was there, I didn't want to write. We did a fair bit of sightseeing, and on "relaxation days", I did some reading, and some walking locally. In general, it was a time for what Julia Cameron calls "filling the well".

Now I'm back, and wanting to write, but without the time. Maybe this weekend...

Here's a small taste of where we went. More to come

Spring Break

I'm taking a spring blogging break. Back in a couple of weeks. In the meantime here are two photos from my walk around the block a couple of days ago.

Blossom is bursting out all over.



In recent years more and more of these New Zealand native paradise ducks have joined the brown ducks and mallards on our local river.

Pet Peeve Solved

I was clearing out my e-mail inbox - and wondering why I had a particularly irrelevant looking e-mail from a genealogy list flagged as important
- so I looked and found it was from SKS (some kind soul) who did a couple of lookups, one for me and one for someone else, and put the other one in the subject line
- I had probably opened this e-mail to check why it was flagged about a gazillion times before
- and then I had a brainwave.

I forwarded the e-mail to myself with a new subject line, so I would know exactly what was in it.

Note to self:
When I get about twenty or thirty e-mails from various members of a committee I am on, all with the same very general subject line because no-one every changes it
- and when one or two of them contain important information that I want to be able to find easily later
- I can just do the same thing. E-mail it to myself with a more relevant subject line. Problem solved (as long as I remember to do it).

(Of course it doesn't solve the problem of accidentally ignoring important e-mails in the first place, because of a misleading subject line. Never mind, it's a start).

Readwritepoem #88: Salacious Diodes

I nearly gave up on this week's prompt at readwritepoem. I wrestled with the list of words supplied, and after half an hour or so had a few phrases that didn't quite seem to fit each other, lines where I had written the words over and over again in the hope that a poem would magically write itself, and a great deal of frustration.

Then I took my notebook out again this morning in my coffee break, and somehow it started to come together. I used eleven of the fourteen words supplied (and put another one in the title of this post). I'm not sure that the two stanzas of the poem quite gel together, but I'm more pleased by the poem than I thought I would be.

I had in mind Nathan's comment that he always starts writing from words, not ideas. I tried to do the same thing. Given the words supplied, I thought this poem might come out more like a "Nathan" poem and less like a "Catherine"poem, but I can see my own world view sneaking in there, despite the fact that the words weren't ones I'd usually choose. (It doesn't have a title yet).

Magpies rant from the branches
of the macrocarpa, ready
to fling themselves at anyone
who dares to pass bare-headed.
Sunlight coagulates in pools
over the yellow grass, over the froth
of water tumbling over stones
in the creek, over the carcass
of the dead sheep turning rancid
in the paddock.

Memory like a reel of 8-track tape
unspooling backwards. Take it
with a large spoon of salt.
All our lives run in the same direction,
our particles bustling homewards.
We might lay our stories out
as if they were printed
circuit boards, copper etched
on silicon, transistors, diodes
the electrons’ precise elocution.

More salacious diode poems here

What's With All the Knitting?

During the recent Christchurch Arts Festival, random pieces of knitting started to appear on tree trunks and lamp posts:



(Well, yes, actually, this one is not knitting, it's crochet, but I'm pretty sure I saw some knitted pieces too)

and then today I read that the Poetry Society in the UK have a project going on to knit a poem. (It's not too late to take part, apparently).

According to the article at the Guardian newspaper Knitting and poetry are more similar than they might first appear......With poetry and with knitting, you work line by line, and if something goes wrong you have to unravel it

And this poem explains How to Knit a Poem

On Writing Process

I'm a great fan of writing by hand. I very rarely start a poem at the computer, much more often I will scribble out ideas and drafts in a notebook, and then type it up later.

When I want to revise, I print it out so I can read it on paper instead of the screen, and then I scribble revisions on it before amending the computer file.

I didn't think that novelists worked like that any more though - I imagined that the slowness of longhand must mean that they all work at the computer these days. So I was delighted to read Emma Darwin's blog post about her process - she writes long hand in journals, using the right hand pages only, and leaving the left hand page for notes. There's a nice photograph with the post, too. She types it into the computer later. It sounds as if it's a method that would suit me, if I ever write a novel, or am foolish enough to attempt NaNoWriMo.

Emma's is my favourite writer's blog, because it has none of the tedious "my novel is up to page 100" or "got my proofs back from the publisher" sort of posts that seem to fill most writer's blogs. (Or at least, these sorts of things are there, but only in snippets.) Mostly, her blog discusses the art of writing in a really interesting way. It is directed at novelists, but I still find it a great read.

As an aside, I found a mention on Carolee's blog of a book "The Writers Retreat Kit" by Judy Reeves and went to Fishpond to check it out. Fishpond is the New Zealand version of Amazon. Since we are a small country, some strange things happen on Fishpond. For instance the "people who bought this book also bought.." brings up very odd pairings. And today they didn't disappoint me. Apparently I can get a great double deal on "A Writers Book of Days" also by Judy Reeves, if I buy it along with "Making Latex Clothes". To which I can only say "huh?????" (Or as my children would write, WTF?)

Readwritepoem #87

At Readwritepoem this week we were invited to write poems honouring vowels. My first thought was the letter o, which has always seemed the most poetic to me. There are so many "o" words I love, such as ocean, sorrow, willow, follow, not to mention crow.

However, I have put the letter "o" aside for another time, as I wanted to challenge myself by exploring another letter. I started making lists of "i" words and when I thought of "islands" I was hooked.

Homage to the Letter "i"

The least of letters, it is familiar
to the inhabitants of islands
thin thread in the white ocean
of the page, dotted like a rock in the tide
on which sea bird shit,
while their cries of krik krik krik
hang in the air.

We live in the littoral zone,
migrants washed up with the drift
bits and pieces discarded by sailors
ships' rigging, sticks and string.
Twined lines of bull kelp
litter the shore. Spined fragments of kina.
A pied stilt steps over rusting links
of an anchor chain. It stitches the sand
with its beak, in and out, in and out,
probing for pipis. The wind whips our hair.
We eye the horizon, rim of the Pacific,
do not flinch at the sting of salt.


(I think the second half still needs a little work. I found it quite a challenge to use sufficient "i" words and still have it read well. But, it's much improved on where it was a couple of days ago.)

Thematic Photographic: Abandoned

I'm a bit of a sucker for old, rusty bits of metal, or weathered paint on walls - it's the texture that appeals to me. Cobwebs are another thing that appeals to me. So when Carmi announced that his theme for Thematic Photographic this week would be abandoned, I knew exactly where in my files I wanted to look.

This abandoned car is beside a narrow walking track in the Port Hills of Christchurch, between a small stream and a cliff. It amazes me the lengths people will go to, to get an old car into an inaccessible spot, just so it can be left there to rust.

My Dentist Wants Me!

...and this is the reminder card.

(Really? Really, really new?)

I don't actually find it too unpleasant going to the dentist. Managing to fit it in is another matter. They do have one evening clinic for the ten percent or so of the popluation who work during the day (it's more than that? Well, apparently we have to fit in to ten percent of the clinic hours). I'm guessing it will be booked up for the next few weeks, and then I'll be on holiday, so perhaps they'll see me in September.

Excavate #2

For Jill and Carolee's Double Dog Dare Mini Poetry Challenge

(These pieces are perhaps not as original as they might seem, being a response to various events in the Christchurch Arts Festival. The phrase "a bed becomes a boat" that Carolee responded to in the comments of the previous piece was a description of a theatre performance "Slava's Snowshow" in the festival programme).

Excavate #2

Beneath the forest
an ancient city
beneath the city
an ancient forest
petrified totara stumps
line an old river bed
in the streets
Herne the Hunter wanders
half-human, half-stag
far from his ancient haunts
searching for the city's
savage edge.

Thematic Photographic: Lines

Every child loves trains. Or at least, every child loves trains in the same way that every child loves dinosaurs - a lot of them love trains, and adults like to push the idea at those who don't.

When my children were small, they did seem to enjoy train rides, and even better than train rides were train rides that went through tunnels. So when we moved here to Christchurch, I planned to take them on the train through the hills to the port of Lyttelton. (Even better than a train ride - a train ride with boats to look at, at the other end). Sadly I discovered that the suburban trains that I remembered from my childhood no longer ran. Perhaps one day as oil prices soar, commuter light rail will come back, but for now, we just don't have the population density to make it economic.

In the meantime these railway lines carry no passengers - only freight, in containers heading for the port on the other side of the hills.



For more photos on the theme "lines" visit Carmi here.

Poetry Mini Challenge

This is for Jill and Carolee's Double Dog Dare Poetry Mini Challenge over at Readwritepoem. (I'm a day or so late, but what the heck)>

Three poems using a synonym for "dig" as the title of the series, and using words culled from one's notebook, or a magazine or similar.

All words and phrases used come from the programme for the Christchurch Arts Festival

Excavate #1

Within the confines of the city
the wayward workings of memory
peepholes to the chaos
in our heads
Winter becomes a wind tunnel
a bed becomes a boat
directions will be given
to layers of history
On treeless plains
skeletons of extinct birds.
What lies beneath is not to be disclosed.

(Check out the new readwritepoem site, it is fantastic!)

Another Poetry Book Launch

On Monday I went straight from work to the launch of local poet Bernadette Hall's latest book, The Lustre Jug. It's her ninth poetry collection and it seems to me they just keep getting better and better.

Bernadette spent six months in Ireland on the Rathcoola Residency and the first half of the book consists of poems from that time. Though born in New Zealand, her father was born in Northern Ireland, and her mother's family came from Southern Ireland. So she had an affinity with the country before visiting there.

There is poetry that is very "accessible" as for instance most of the poems on Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry series. And there are poems that seem to set out deliberately to confuse and mystify. The poems that appeal to me the most lie in the middle - as these do. There are complexities that reward careful re-reading, but they are clear enough to offer some immediate pleasures, too. They are warm, compassionate, intelligent, witty, and fierce, sometimes all at once. Bernadette is also a great tutor. She taught the first poetry course I ever took, and is one of the instigators of the Hagley Writers Institute which is an excellent course here in Christchurch that bridges the gap between hobby classes and university level Creative Writing courses.

Here is a link to one of the poems from the book, Leda at the Billabong, which appeared in Best New Zealand Poems 2008.

The event was held as part of the Christchurch Arts Festival. On the upside, that meant we had a great venue. On the downside, it meant that we were unable to linger and chat after the formal part of the event, as another event was booked in the same venue. However, as I left, another local poet approached me to tell me that she had found her family all listed on my online family tree. A few questions revealed that we are related - approximately fourth cousins. It always excites me to make new family connections - a small unexpected pleasure to top off the evening.

(For photos from the book launch, visit Joanna's blog, A Dark Feathered Art, here). I planned to take my camera but was running late for work in the morning and it wasn't where I thought it was.

More Signs of Spring

Daffodils are coming up in my garden:



and other things:

Laundry Singapore Style

Carmi's Thematic Photographic theme this week is laundry.

So naturally, I remembered this photo that I took when we were in Singapore. Where else would you hang your laundry if you were living in a high-rise building?

More Poetry Events

At Joanna's book launch (see this post) I was offered a free double pass to a poetry event the following night, called Love Letters in the Margins. Not quite poetry, actually, but a fusion of poetry and music involving three bands, each with a poet appearing with the band.

I always accept free tickets! I planned to take my daughter, a contemporary of Marissa's, but she had to work, and the first few friends I tried were unavailable, so I gave up and decided to go alone. Which may have been just as well, because when I reached the ticket office at the Telstraclear Club where my name should have been on a list, they knew nothing about it. Since it was just me, however, they let me in for free anyway.

I thought I was entering what was basically a tent in Cathedral Square, but once inside I was astonished by the opulent surroundings - it was a polygonal space with plush upholstered wooden booths round the outside, and further polished wood chairs and tables on the floor in the middle. There was a bar and restauraunt service. The ceiling was draped red fabric with black scroll-like designs appliqued on - all very attractive.

The poets appearing with the bands were young local poets Marissa Johnpillai, Ciaran Fox and Ben Brown. I don't know their ages apart from Marissa, but their energy and style is what leads me to describe them as "young" as opposed to the more middle-aged and sedate sensibilities of many of the poets who read at the events I usually go to. Marissa read many of the same poems that she read at her book launch earlier in the week. What I like about Marissa's poetry is that it is positive and celebratory with none of the "angst" that often permeates the work of teens and twenty-somethings. There is a lot of food in her poems, and sex. It touches on her life both in Sri Lanka and in New Zealand, so has a touch of the exotic to it - but it also made me a little homesick for the Cuba St fountain in Wellington where I grew up! (Marissa spent a year studying for her Master's in Creative Writing in Wellington).

The main difficulty with Marissa's reading was that I felt the band, Le Mot Cafe, were a touch loud in places, making it hard to hear her words. It did help that I had heard the poems and bought her chapbook at her book launch.

The other bands weren't quite so loud. I'm not going to say much about the other poets, although I enjoyed their readings, because I haven't had the benefit of being able to read the poems before or after the event (perhaps I should have bought the CD).

I found the collaboration interesting. At her book launch, Marissa had also performed with backing music - the rather quieter tones of a flute. Some of her poetry, although far from all of it, falls a little flat on the page, and I feel it is definitely conceived as music as well as poetry - the intonation, pacing, and so on is integral to its success. Most of her poetry though is just as successful on the page as in performance. I did feel that in all three cases on Saturday night, the poets had written their work separately from the band, and each piece as performed seemed to be a fusion of first a poem read to music followed by a song which originally had no relation to the poem. Still, it seemed to work.

I've known Marissa for ages since she was a contemporary with my daughters at the Christchurch School for Young Writers, an organisation which runs Saturday morning, after school and correspondence writing classes for primary and high school age students. And this morning I caught up with another their fellow students when I saw her face in the newspaper - Jenna had been blogging as Tatiana Anymodel at Jezebel - here is her "coming out" post - it's a great read! And I have to say that the School for Young Writers was a great place (and still is) for nurturing young talented writers - I expect to hear more of both Marissa and Jenna in the future.

Where's the Pied Piper When You Need Him?

For the last few weeks we have been battling unwanted furry visitors. They consumed a whole bag of blood and bone (garden fertiliser) in the garage, which was bad enough, but they have also managed to get into the house. We had our fruit and vegetables in racks of wire baskets and it has been interesting to find out their preferences - for instance, kumara (sweet potato) are favoured but not regular potatoes, carrots, apples and bananas are all tasty to rodents apparently but the oranges and onions were untouched. They also consumed all the seeds from the middle of the cut pumpkin but not the pumpkin itself. They have the ability to suck out the tasty kernel of the pumpkin seeds but scatter the dried empty husks all over the floor.

And no, I am not talking about mice, the tooth marks are definitely bigger. At first I thought it was mice, but the mouse trap was triggered and flipped over, empty. We put out rat baits and they took all the ones in the garage but haven't touched the inside ones. We have now put all food items inside plastic containers with lids but still haven't managed to get rid of the visitors.

So, this morning I went into the downstairs bathroom to do my teeth and hair before leaving for work, and found big rodent tooth marks in the cake of soap. (Aaagh!!!)

My daughter thinks we need a cat. Given the size of her last vet's bill, I think the electronic rodent scarer advertised for $150 would be cheaper. If it works.

(More on local poetry events coming soon).

Montana Poetry Day

Americans have a National Poetry Month. New Zealand poets, being far less ambitious, have a National Poetry Day. (The title Montana Poetry Day has nothing to do with the state of Montana, but the fact that it is sponsored by Montana wines).

Actually though, there are so many poetry events coming up here in Christchurch that it feels as if we are having National Poetry Month after all.

We kicked off with the launch of Marissa Johnpillai's chapbook on Wednesday, and on Friday - the day itself - Joanna Preston launched her new book, The Summer King. Joanna was lucky - and hardworking - enough to win the inaugural Kathleen Grattan award, which comes with a prize of $16,000 for a book length manuscript, and publication of the book by the Otago University Press. I've had the pleasure of hearing many poems in the book before at local poetry readings, and it was a pleasure to hear some of them again, and to take the book home to enjoy them at leisure later. Joanna's poems are never ordinary - she has a way of picking subjects which are slightly offbeat, and illuminating them with precise and perfect words.

Besides launching the book, she planned a wonderful event by inviting four other poets to share the evening. Each of them spoke about a poem by another poet that was a "touchstone" poem for them, and then read some of their own poems. I'm in awe of the way that each poet was able to speak intelligently and at length about poems and poets that had influenced them. I'm inclined to think that if asked, it would take me a lot of thought to get past "well, umm... because I like it..."

I'm fascinated too, by the range of venues local poets choose for their book launches. This was one of the more congenial - upstairs at local bar, The Twisted Hop, in a space that was just small enough to be friendly and just large enough not to be too crowded.

If you'd like to buy Joanna's book, do visit her blog - click on the link above - I'm sure she'd be delighted to tell you how you can buy a copy.

(Joanna - I thought I would find it on Fishpond, but their website tells me none of their regular distributors have stock available - I'm sure they would be happy to stock it if you let them know how!)