Chinglish

A Dragon year

2012-01-22T18:09:00.000+13:00

So in a few hours it's going to be the Year of the Dragon. A big year for me, with many personal 'projects' (the biggest of which I can't yet divulge), and if you believe such things as Zodiac predictions, it's going to be a year bursting with creativity, innovation and unpredictability. I can believe it!

Good thing I'm well stocked up on sleep. Since late November, when The Bone Feeder wrapped, I've been lounging in a pleasurable creative limbo - sleeping, reading (comics and newspapers mostly, though other books have crept in) and, I admit it, sampling the various crappy programmes that passes for TV these days (I now know all I really wanted to know about Gypsy Weddings, the inner workings of the restaurant industry and old antiques. I draw the line at spending any time on the X Factor, though. Just the adverts are cringeworthy.) I've caught up with a few excellent films on DVD too, spent lots of 'couple time' with my lovely squeeze, and we've done a bit of travelling around the South Island where I've been based for the summer. (I should mention that my creative laziness contrasts with my work in the medical realm, as I've had locums right through Xmas and January).

So. That's why there's been no movement on this blog (or my other blog on The Big Idea)... nothing's been happening! But we're back to the big smoke tomorrow, and I see the creative crowd are cranking up for the year, and a few deadlines are looming for me...

I am the 1%

2011-11-22T12:01:00.000+13:00

I am the 1%. I am the daughter of a doctor. I grew up in Remuera, the suburb many of our leaders, industry heads and politicians choose to live; I went to a private girl's school. I had access to the best education money can buy, my parents ensured I had the space and energy to study. I got into medical school on my own merits, but all the good role modelling and encouragement must have helped.

At university, I was encouraged to question accepted truths, to look for evidence with my own eyes, and to read and think widely. I was taught how to identify if someone was sick and how to look after them. I was taught about risk factors, pathology, microbes and the doctor's role in society.

But this training did not prepare me for when I entered the real world, with real people. People who were not in hospital because of a simple 1+1 =2 equation, but a far more complex sequence of events which sometimes started before they were born. People whose health was almost nothing to do with pathology and microbes but much more to do with where they lived and how much education they'd had. In my first year dealing with real patients, I learnt more about being a doctor than in 6 years of medical school.

I've since learnt many more things. How health is determined by the manner in which our society looks after its members. How a small intervention early on, such as support for a struggling parent, or a good education, can save lives and money down the track. How the most valuable interventions come from the community itself, working together in cooperation. How much we know now compared to twenty years ago and how much we still have to learn.

I am the 1%. But please don't look down on me for it. I am trying to learn. I know there are others, too, who don't automatically accept what our colleagues in power tell us. After all, we received the best education money can buy. So please accept our help. Talk to us. Teach us. Tell us how we can cooperate together to make things the best they can be for our society. Then there doesn't need to be a 1% and a 99%; there will only be the 100%.

The Bone Feeder trailer (performance footage)

2011-11-18T11:40:00.001+13:00

Tuesday Poem: The Problem of Descendants by Tim Jones

2011-11-15T10:36:00.003+13:00

They reassort your genes
and sort through your things when you're gone.
They ask: why did he keep that ridiculous hat, those
palaeolithic music magazines?

Half to the tip, half to the Sallies,
plus a small urn on the mantelpiece,
three photos, the fading diaries
they can't quite bear to throw away.

They remember you at birthdays, Christmas.
You recede into scrapbooks,
the photos growing faint, your children's children
forgetting why they know your name.

File formats are rendered obsolete.
Anthologies go out of print.
In a provincial library, behind a rack of shelves,
your last book battles silverfish.

Ashes, vanity. The years
scroll past like autocues. Yet,
scavenging the ruins, or terraforming Mars,
still someone somewhere has your nose.

I love this poem - funny, poignant and sad, it taps into our small hidden fears and anxieties. It's just one of the many wonderful poems published in Tim's recently launched collection "Men briefly explained". i was lucky enough to attend the Auckland leg of the book tour and to hear Tim read. I also interviewed him for The Big Idea: http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/news/blogs/talkwrite/2011/oct/105031-cultural-storytellers-tim-jones

The Bone Feeder trailer (behind the scenes)

2011-11-09T11:25:00.004+13:00

Us in rehearsal last week! The singing is now much better ;)

Radio NZ panel discussion on Asians in the arts

2011-11-07T06:24:00.000+13:00

This is only the second time Roseanne and I have been in a panel discussion together, although I think more and more people are twigging onto the idea of 'the sisters in the arts'. We've never properly worked together, but we do bounce ideas off each other and swap contacts. In this panel discussion, our friend Sonia Sly interviews us, along with a discussion with visual artist Liyen Chong.

Tuesday poem: Coming Home by He Zhizhang

2011-10-26T15:53:00.001+13:00

七言絕句

賀知章

回鄉偶書

少小離家老大回，鄉音無改鬢毛衰；
兒童相見不相識，笑問客從何處來。

COMING HOME

I left home young. I return old;
Speaking as then, but with hair grown thin;
And my children, meeting me, do not know me.
They smile and say: "Stranger, where do you come from?"

**
From "300 Poems of the Tang Dynasty" http://etext.virginia.edu/chinese/frame.htm
This is a poem I quote in my play The Bone Feeder. Yesterday over lunchtime, in order to give my actor something to practise with, I recorded my Dad reading this in his native Cantonese (with my mum in the background exhorting him to read it with 'more feeling'!) It was pretty emotional to me to hear my dad reading this, as I cannot read Chinese but understand it at a basic conversational level. The play, as might be suggested by the poem, deals with the migrant experience but is based on Chinese-NZ history.

The Bone Feeder : Press release

2011-10-20T23:22:00.000+13:00

Play brings to life ghosts of Chinese immigrants

20th Nov – for immediate release

In 1902, the SS Ventnor sank in the Hokianga Harbour with the bones of 499 Chinese miners bound for ancestral graves in Canton. A century later Ben, a young man, arrives in the Far North to try to find some link with his past. A new NZ play which draws on the traditions of Asian storytelling, The Bone Feeder is a sumptuous professional theatre production which uses a cast of 19 performers, live music, high-wire martial arts, dance, drama and comedy to tell this story of one of the first times of contact between NZ Chinese and Maori.

The Bone Feeder is a fictional exploration of what is for many Chinese New Zealanders a very real and significant piece of their history. The story of the SS Ventnor, chartered in 1902 by the Shin Tong Association to carry the exhumed bodies of immigrant Chinese back to their home villages, is one which carries emotional weight for the many NZ Chinese who lost family members in the shipwreck, and for the local Maori families who found bones washed up on the coast.

“Back in the 1900s, it was considered important for Chinese to return to their home villages,” playwright Renee Liang (The First Asian AB, Lantern) explains. “So the Chinese which had migrated to New Zealand to work, mainly in the gold fields, considered themselves only temporary visitors. They always intended to return home once they had made enough money. Of course, life being harsh at that time, many of them didn’t make it."

Those who died were buried in temporary graves, and the then-vast sum of four thousand pounds raised by subscription among the local Chinese community to charter a ship, the SS Ventnor, to carry the exhumed bones home. It was believed that people needed to return to their home villages in order to watch over their descendants and in return, have their graves looked after and spirits nourished.

Unfortunately, the Ventnor struck a rock and subsequently sank near the Hokianga Harbour. The coffins and bones were lost, along with 13 lives of crewmen. But some of the coffins and bones were washed ashore where, local stories reveal, they were found by local Maori and buried in family urupa.

The Bone Feeder follows the fictional Ben, a young fifth-generation Chinese New Zealander who travels to the present-day Hokianga to look for the bones of his great great grandfather. Driven by his father's dying wish, he encounters some unusual ‘locals’ – who may or may not be cheeky ghosts. It’s also the story of Kwan, a man who emigrates to NZ in the 1800s and has to decide where he belongs.

Liang says, “The story has evolved from a simple hero-quest to a much more layered consideration of what it means to be an immigrant or to inherit an immigrant story. I delve into history and intergenerational relationships, and hopefully make it funny and dramatic along the way. Because it is set in the Hokianga and involves 'ghosts', there's also a fair amount of magic which we use theatrical techniques to bring to life - high-wire flying, live music with traditional Maori and Chinese instruments, light and shadow play, puppetry and dance.”

It is believed to be the first time in NZ that martial arts with high-wire flying have been used for a professional play. Dragon Origin, NZ’s first martial arts stunts company, are providing the technical expertise and muscle power. Stunt choreographer and actor Willie Ying is excited about the show. “It is a chance for us to tell the real Chinese stories, stories that mean something to us.”

Significantly, many of the cast have family history intertwined with the real history explored in The Bone Feeder. Lead actors Gary Young (Apron Strings, Underbelly) and Rob Mokoraka (Strange Resting Places, Tama Tu), have both drawn on their heritage while developing their characters. Young’s family immigrated to NZ during the turbulent post-WWII era, and Mokoraka, who is of Ngapuhi ancestry, spent part of his childhood in the Hokianga. Even director Lauren Jackson (Passage, Exchange) has Chinese ‘ancestry’ – through her young daughter, who is one-eighth Chinese and whose great-great grandmother was one of only six Chinese women living in NZ at the start of the 20th century.

With set design by Jessica Verryt (Young and Hungry Festival 2011, Yours Truly), The Bone Feeder is heavily influenced by both Asian and Western theatre techniques.
Liang’s brief of “creating a magical environment where anything can and does happen” is explored to its fullest potential, with poetic touches and references to Chinese paper cuts and shadow play – with a distinctly NZ feel.

Talented composer Andrew Corrêa leads a group of musicians playing traditional Chinese and Maori instruments, who provide all the sound effects and music for the play. As in Asian theatre, the arrival of the musicians on stage will herald the start of the play.

Liang says that she hopes the story will have universal resonance. “ I can imagine what it’s like to have a foot in two worlds, torn between what is left behind and what is hoped for in the new country. New Zealand is a nation of immigrants – even Maori have their immigration stories. Ultimately it is the people we love – our whanau– that bring us home. And that to me is the most important thing.”

****
Website: www.bonefeeder.com

Season dates: 10-20 November 2011 (Preview 9 Nov)
Venue: TAPAC, 100 Motions Rd, Western Springs
Times: Tuesday – Saturday @ 7.30pm (Sunday at 4pm)
No performance Monday 14 November
Tuesday 15 November matinee @ 12pm
Cost: Tickets $15-$30, concessions for seniors, students, children and groups

75 mins. Parental guidance recommended for children under 10. In English with phrases in Cantonese and Maori.
Bookings phone (09) 8450295 from 10am – 5pm or online at http://tapac.org.nz

**

Full cast and crew:

Creative Team
Director - Lauren Jackson
Writer /Producer - Renee Liang
Dramaturg - Fiona Samuel
Production mentor - Andrew Malmo
Set design/props - Jessika Verryt
Design Mentor- John Verryt
Master craftsman/design - Ronald Andreassend
Lighting design - Nik Janiurek
Costume design - Estelle Macdonald
Martial arts choreographer - Willie Ying
Dance choreographers - Philippa Pidgeon, Su Ka
Animateur consultant - Felicity Horsley
Production consultant - Margaret-Mary Hollins
Production manager/Stage Manager - Theresa Hanaray and Jamie Blackburn

Cast
Kwan - Gary Young
The Ferryman - Rob Mokoraka
Ben - Kevin Ng
Wang - Charles Chan
Dan- Llanyon Eli Joe
Sam - Willie Ying

Chorus
Henry Cheng
Monica Mu
Benjamin Teh
Ally Xue

Musicians
Musical director/percussion - Andrew Corrêa
Composer/Ghuzheng - Jessica Wu
Composer/Taonga puoro - Riki Bennett
Composer/Chinese flute - TBA

Dragon Origin martial arts stunt operating team
Willie Ying
Rus
Salman Haider
David Mei
Walid Hossaini
Beyond Wen
Benjamin Teh
Henry Cheng

Tuesday poem: And what remains

2011-10-18T00:15:00.000+13:00

blinded he watches the play
words falling like tears

tracing the salt line
of frozen memories

last year’s hunk of lamb
still stiff in the freezer

outside, cloud gathers in
an upside-down mountain

**

one night she came to him
in white polyester pyjamas

traced her shadow
beside his on wallpaper

his fingers thrummed
against her cold skin

when the heart fails
blood pools in the peripheries

**

her glass music box
contained a Russian spring

yellow plastic daffodils
humming with melody

in her carved wood box
she keeps a single earring

false pearls lost in surf
at Karekare beach

**

his door frames the sea
when he holds it wide

a candle in an old bucket
makes a fluttering beacon

her feet squeaks among pebbles
finds the cracks in his mind

he paints her pink bike blue
so she can find the sky

**

feathers; a sea of bedded feathers
from snow-white geese

the slash of wounded duvet
gapes in surprise

the two of them laughing
in sudden snowdrift

kissing him was like
finding her lost tooth

**

a golden O swinging new
on both their fingers

a surprised mouth an O
the entrance to a cave

pushing in head first
O, he slips and she laughs

licks the blood on her lips
where love has kicked

**

his sweat stains
the stainless steel sink

the sodden whiff
of filled nappies

so this is house of dreams
this is the picket line

cracking the roses
of his mother’s last teacup

**

she’s made love to a man
on a white lawn chair at midnight

danced tango in Buenos Aires
with a man in an old silk suit

now she’s home to winter
the smell of rain on asphalt

bitter homemade lemonade
squeezes her tastebuds

**

chalk letters blow from asphalt
like children getting lost

crossing the road
the rain makes jewels in her hair

her umbrella makes
an upside-down mushroom

she finds herself wishing
for the burnt taste of his coffee

**

in Bangkok he sleeps
on beds without love

in Italy he sleeps on the road
while waiting for a ride

in Izmir stoned half-men
take his passport

in Kyoto his payment for sleep
is early-morning prayer

**

he sees his abuelo touching
a young lady’s knee

good touch bad touch
soft touch hard touch

the old man says
you saw it the wrong way

he feels his face melt
his ears and his soul

**

she looks like a frozen rose
petals held cold and stiff

her hands are ice crystals
melting in his cracks

her mouth like soft soap
fragrancing his shower

in the morning he wakes
to find her a puddle.

*****
This is the full text of the series of interlinked couplets written for mine and Gaby Montejo's Metonymy collaboration this year. It has just won the 'best writing' award at Metonymy. Gaby is a Cuban-American artist living in Christchurch, and he and I met to collaborate during my locum there in July. As we navigated the red zone fences to find each other, wandered around the ruins and explored new areas sprouting with life and people away from the ruined CBD, we were struck by the very personal debris on display - torn from or lost, abandoned, cherished or forgotten by their owners.

We started emailing each other memories - small childhood moments, love stories, moments of loss, betrayal, intimate tales we wouldn't normally tell a stranger.
Couplets were constructed from those emails, put together in small narratives, then separated again. Strips of paper containing a couplet each were stuffed into small baby socks and buried, toe-up, in a baby bath containing 67 kg of Christchurch liquefaction soil which had been transported to Auckland for the installation. Viewers were invited to fish a sock out, find their own couplet and keep, swap or recombine the couplets to make new stories.

And what remains of stories after we lose them or give them away....

My work's been mixed and mashed!!

2011-10-03T19:34:00.001+13:00

Just clicked on the winners of the Great NZ mix and mashup competition, and found out that the winning piece uses my poem "Crossed Cultures" and Dylan Horrocks' images from Siso! Allan Tia does a wonderful job (a few of his own drawings also feature). For his explanation of process, the judges' comments and a clickable link, go here. As my husband observed, "Comics make everything look cool".

Allan uses my poem in full, but a number of other entries combine lines from my poem with those of other poems - fascinating for me to see, and a rare insight into how others might see my words. Click here for all the entries to the 'literature' category.

The First Asian AB - Trailer

2011-09-18T09:48:00.000+12:00

Here's some of the quotes from reviews for our Auckland season, finishing tonight:

"Plenty of laughs and a whole lot of honesty...The First Asian AB proves that rugby in this country is about heart." - Theatreview

"a sensitive and wide-ranging meditation on the immigrant experience....exuberant physical humour." - NZ Herald

"The comical dialogue had the audience in stitches for a large portion of the evening." - Theatrescenes

And we're on our way to Wellington now!!

Introducing The First Asian AB, a hilarious new comedy from Kiwi-Chinese writer Renee Liang...

What would you do to represent?

Willy’s a homestay Asian student. Mook’s Samoan and he’s been here for ages. They’re best mates at Timaru Boys High. But when Willy decides his dream is to try out for the All Blacks, mateship — and everything else — is up for grabs.

A warm feel-good comedy with serious undertones, The First Asian AB examines the question ‘what makes someone Kiwi?’ Is it rugby, racing and beer – or being true to oneself and one’s friends?

At breakneck pace, Benjamin Teh (The Bone Feeder, Odd Socks) and Paul Fagamalo (Rent, Where We Once Belonged) capture multiple characters – a Samoan aiga, a bored class of thirteen year olds, two entire rugby teams playing each other, and one sassy girl called George.

Directed by Edward Peni (Samoa Mo Samoa, The West Auckland Cardigan Appreciation Society) with live music by Andrew Correa, and dramaturgy by Oscar Kightley (Brotown, Sione's Wedding), The First Asian AB debuts as part of the Real NZ Festival (the 'arty' side of the Rugby World Cup!).

tickets $18 full, $13 concession (seniors/students), $15 groups 6+

BATS Theatre, Wellington, 6pm, 22 Sep-1 Oct 2011
Tickets
http://www.bats.co.nz/content/first-asian-ab, (04) 802 4175
Q+A after the show on the 23rd

Magical ipods

2011-08-28T17:31:00.002+12:00

"Art is the greatest deception of all"

Tuesday Poem: Men are like pebbles (After Wendy Cope)

2011-08-16T17:11:00.002+12:00

Men are like pebbles

you know the type
lying in wait
on the sand

winking at passing ladies
bodies glistening with salt.

You know you shouldn’t
(what would you do
with another pebble?
the last one turned out
to be useless)

but another beckons
and another
and before you know
you’re picking one up.

And this is where it gets
really difficult –

how do you choose
the perfect pebble?

Some come round
some cornered
one looks like a small mountain
another like swirled chocolate
this one’s shaped like a shark’s tooth
and this looks like moonlight in your palm

You hold them, feel the weight of them.
You can’t decide
yet to take all of them home
would be greedy at best.

You start to see their imperfections
blemishes and strange angles
realise they are not as rounded
as they claim
suspect their charms
are only surface.

You want to fling them away.
You want to fling away the whole damn beach.
But just as you’re about
to push away the last one
you take another look.

This one is speckled
nice curves but nothing special
you can’t even remember why you picked him up
but there’s a nice heft to him,
an answering weight. He’s solid
practical
imperfect yes,
but then
so are you. His body feels warm and sleepy in your hand. Slowly

you slip him into your pocket
and keep walking.

Tuesday Poem: No ordinary son

2011-08-09T13:33:00.000+12:00

For years now
the piwakawaka has laughed
in your gnarled branches,
and you, bro, have laughed right back
into its fanned arse
gone on circling the earth
with smoke rings,
fingers stained from a lifetime of
roll-your-own words.

I remember finding your old place. Didn't even know
what poetry was then,
only that I could break in through your back door
wobble along drunken fence posts, steal your milk.
You would have laughed eh
to see this skinny oriental kid
with flat black fringe swaying on a stage
in Devonport. A kid with the words
of an old Maori in her mouth.

Later you tried to
sow your words at my school
casting your voice over thick absorbent carpet,
harvesting a sparse crop
of blue and green tartan chests.
You looked like you thought
the ground was too hard
maybe it was. You didn't see me smuggle
the wriggling seedling back home with me.

When I won the world and lost it again
my sister found your words
growing wild through the house
posted me a piece
packaged with a beeswax candle
and a can of Watties' baked beans.
I remember washing the tears off my body
with your river water. I remember the cool feel
of your words in my crevices.

Last month, I finally
waved my thanks out the window
as the wind blew us
past Te Kaka Point.
I'm glad I had the chance to say thanks, bro.
A mighty tree has fallen,
his seedlings still stand tall.
Tihei mauri ora, tihei mauru ora.

I found this a few nights ago when I was looking for poems to read tonight - I am guest poet at Poetry Live - 8 pm, Thirsty Dog on K Rd, for those of you in Auckland. I'll be doing mostly 'unheard' pieces, including some from my upcoming chapbook-that's-been-a-year-in-the-publishing, Toward the Cyclone, poems I wrote while on a study tour of Fiji last year. My friend Andrew Correa is guest musician, and we'll be jamming together on some pieces.

I wrote this poem a few years ago when Hone Tuwhare died - every time I read his poetry I'm reminded of how much he has influenced the way I approach poetry. Hone was someone who went for the 'heart' of an idea - there was a bit of 'head' in there too, but never at the expense of connecting with the real feeling behind it, the 'why' of writing that poem in the first place. That's why most of his poetry doesn't feel 'academic' (a good thing in my opinion) - even though Hone's poetry is now very much studied at a scholarly level.

Poetry to me has always been about speaking my personal stories and viewpoints. Even the 'character' or 'story' poems are written by channeling someone else's viewpoint through my writerly alter ego - the words I choose are the ones which make me respond a certain way about that story.

Anyway, back to prepping for the reading - please visit Tuesday Poem for more awesome poetry!

Talkwrite - Starting with ABC

2011-08-04T20:47:00.001+12:00

(crossposted from The Big Idea)
During the last six weeks, I’ve watched the skyline change as skyscrapers are gently, almost lovingly reduced to twisted piles of metal and rubble. I’ve listened as people passed their stories to me, over cups of tea or sitting side by side in a bus. I’ve walked around the streets, marvelling at snow, marvelling at mist. Mostly marvelling at how this city creeps up on your affections. I think I understand why against the advice of their ‘away’ friends, people are determined to stay here.

There’s no doubt that Christchurch is still hurting. At night, my apartment in the CBD becomes an island – there’s few shops within walking distance, and even fewer places to find food. Like a body whose heart has ceased to pump, the blood is pooling in the peripheries – places like Addington and Riccarton, formerly unknown for night life. Through a simple combination of geography and seismic luck, tiny office units, outdated buildings and cold garages in these areas have suddenly become the ultimate in real estate. There are stories of people putting down huge deposits, sight unseen, for 4-5 year business leases in buildings that previously would have stayed empty.

The squeeze on available buildings has meant even less space is available for those who can’t pay commercial rates. So theatre groups are finding it hard to get venues, poets have nowhere to hold readings as their favoured bookshop shuts down and artists can’t find cheap studios. But oddly enough, the destruction of traditional arts venues has allowed smaller spaces to flourish, and the cultural blossoming of the most unlikely suburbs.

Gaby Montejo has been my guide to the local visual arts scene. I met Gaby through Metonymy, a two month collaboration project in which artists and writers who don’t know each other are paired to work on a project. Over the last month, Gaby’s been guiding me around the city, enabling such finds as the local Buddhist vegetarian restaurant (super tasty) and street art flowering on walls beside demolished spaces. He’s also shown me two of the remaining ‘galleries’ in town: the working studio space in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury, and ABC gallery, a tiny gallery consisting of two rooms adjoining studio space in the industrial suburb of Addington.

more here

Tuesday Poem: One night a leopard came for her

2011-08-03T22:10:00.000+12:00

One night
a leopard came for her
spots soft over snow
singing rrrrr in her ear

She felt
the slow draw
of claw on her neck
sweet milk breath

her feet purling
the sheets
her heart drumming,
drumming the wall

In the morning
she shows her husband:
“See? there.”

In the mirror, a scratch
of blood. Red on snow.

**
It's true. One night last week, a leopard did come for me.

what they don’t know about snow

2011-07-29T23:23:00.004+12:00

snow in the morning tastes like sugar
and it’s warm if you snort it.

ducks. ducks hate snow
because it blindfolds the grass.

snow grows giants. you walk over it
and your prints get bigger through the day.

roses in snow look like
ladies in furs.

snow doesn’t hide the cracks,
it cushions them.

when snow gets sick, it gets angry
and hard, like ice.

angry snow hurts. it makes
going for a walk scary.

the men in orange jackets take scary snow away.
maybe it goes to prison, maybe they kill it.

the snow that’s left gets old and tired, even the snowmen.
eventually they shrivel up to look just like rocks. And that’s the end of the snow.

Rugby fanaticism

2011-07-23T22:58:00.000+12:00

This weekend I had off in Christchurch, so after checking out the excellent Farmer's market in Riccarton we indulged in a spot of compulsory earthquake tourism in Sumner. While driving along looking for cracks and boulders, Mark and I heard on the radio that one of the provincial cup matches was on at Rugby Park, so on a whim we decided to check it out. (I'm writing a play titled The First Asian A*B*, so am experiencing an uncharacteristic interest in rugby).

It turned out to be an excellent match to attend. Rugby Park, in the central suburb of St Albans, is a smallish local ground, called into service now that the AMI stadium is out of action for the forseeable future. It's much smaller, but also much less "commercial" feeling and therefore much closer to the feel of a homeground match in the 1990s, when the opening of the play is set.

The local heroes Canterbury were playing national underdogs Southland for the ITM Cup, and to up the stakes, the Ranfurly Shield was being challenged for. The region's rugby fans were confident ( and much more diehard and ubiquitous than in Auckland, from what I can gather). They had just come out of the Crusaders almost winning the Super 15 and the local Canterbury team winning their recent matches in a very convincing way. Also, as it was a home game the crowd was out in force, decked out in various warm combinations of red and black.

So it was all looking pretty grim for the Southlanders, especially as Canterbury scored two tries while I was still in the queue for tickets (I could tell by the response from over the wall). But then, amazingly, the Southlanders put their heads down and outrun, out defended and out possessed the ball. Their ball handling wasn't was good as Canterbury's, but they made less mistakes and had a great goal kicker and this meant they scored the crucial penalty which won them the match. (By the way, if any of what I am writing sounds wrong it probably is - I'm still pretty junior in terms of rugby watching!)

Anyway, I spent quite a bit of my time paying attention to the crowd around me rather than the action on the field. When the ball neared our end of the field (the tryline for the home team in the second half) people could be heard calling to their favourite players, rather like you'd call for a cat at dinnertime: "Here Robbie! this way!". There were lots of kids in the crowd waving their homemade "TRY!" placards, ditto posh looking old ladies - it seems everyone in Chch comes to the rugby. Particularly rich as soundbite sources were the two grumpy old buggers sitting just to the left and behind us. Throughout the game they could be heard muttering comments like, "what an idiot, can't he pass", "look at that, now the ball's back to where it started," "how did he get that? for goodness' sake." Another man, on the phone to a mate with the teams tied at 19-19 and with 12 minutes to go on the clock: "Never you mind, venison's still on the menu at Rugby Park" (Southland mascot is a deer).

Tuesday Poem: 102 Armagh St

2011-07-19T17:33:00.002+12:00

a window open
curtain an upflung arm
in the morning
the sky's
wide blue eyes
watching

below
in the street
bricks kneel
among tiny lilies
a wrecking machine
crouches
nose upturned
waiting for biscuits.

I'm currently living on the fifth floor of an apartment on Armagh St, Christchurch CBD. From the balcony, one can look out towards the red zone and the rows of wobbly condemned buildings - 'death row'. I'm only here for 6 weeks working, but admit to being a bit of a woose about being on the fifth floor. In my first night here I was shaken awake by an aftershock, but have mellowed so much that three weeks on, I slept peacefully through two aftershocks while my husband was kept awake - or maybe that was just the busy on-call ensuring I passed out successfully at night...

Not surprisingly, it's odd walking around the CBD, staring at the fences everywhere (they migrate frequently along with the wrecking machines, like grazing beasts). The CBD is eerily quiet and almost devoid of people, except on sunny weekends when the local populace comes in with their dogs, strollers and bikes and strolls along the fenceline pointing out the new holes in the cityscape and catching up with the latest earthquake gossip. I've taken to walking different routes to and from work, noticing the changes each day and the small details - rosemary bushes left undisturbed at the periphery of a demolition site, a fur hat perched perkily on top of a letterbox beside a red stickered property, the way the houses crouch at odd angles, almost as if they were people surprised at a party. The few people I do meet smile at me. Are they locals pleased to see that someone is enjoying the city, or are they fellow long term visitors? There are so many new people in town at the moment. On the corner of the Botanic Gardens, the same man in cravat and tails plays "La Vie En Rose" for hours, day after day. It's like groundhog day with a slightly melancholy European air.

There are the stories too. Everyone has them - small anecdotes about what's happened, more poignant than the dramatic news clips and the footage recorded on yet more helicopter flights over the damaged city. I've been recording them in my head, intending to write them down. I feel they need to be remembered, kept before they too are demolished by the passage of time.

I'm delighted to be this week's Tuesday Poetry editor - head on over to the main page to see what I've chosen - three poems, one from each of the shortlisted books for the poetry section of the National Book Awards. Winner will be announced this coming Friday, also the day when the country will explode in a riotous celebration of poetry - hurray!!

Rethinking Creativity with Sir Paul Callaghan

2011-07-07T12:01:00.000+12:00

(crossposted from The Big Idea)

Sir Paul is a physicist, teacher and communicator who has won many scientific accolades for his work in nano-technology and magnetic resonance. His experience and vision allow him to apply great depth of perception to his work in science and entrepreneurialism. He’s also the 2011 New Zealander of the Year, in part for his ability to bridge disciplines, and communicate how we need to work together to move this country forward.

Over the years, Sir Paul has written and broadcast widely, aiming to make science more accessible for all. He advocates the use of the arts to explain and explore science and find the human connection. To paraphrase, the arts helps to seek out that sense of wonder in science - to translate the ‘cold’ mathematical language of science (properties, dimensions) into something which speaks to people (emotions, colours, senses). He’s also spoken on how science is influenced by art and vice versa, observing that scientists ‘borrow’ the words used by the arts to connect with other parts of human creativity. (Unsurprisingly, many scientists – Sir Paul among them – are also artistic).

Sir Paul is also a firm believer in the future of New Zealand, although he says that significant changes need to be made in order to unleash our full potential. His recent address to StrategyNZ: Mapping our Future 2011 makes some very strong points.

His message is simple: NZ has limited natural resources, despite our blind belief in the ‘clean green 100% Pure’ image. We are behind in the world in terms of ‘smart’ industries, those which rely on good ideas cleverly executed rather than our traditional primary industries (farming, tourism) which are resource-heavy with a low relative return. He offers the staggering idea that 100 inspired entrepreneurs could double our present exports - around $4 billion of exports a year is currently earned by the high-tech and creative sector. And how would we do that? The answer is deceptively easy: grow our ‘smart’ industries.

read the rest here.

Tuesday Poem: 10 days, one night

2011-06-28T21:48:00.000+12:00

I wrote this some time ago, overwhelmed by a theatre show I'd just watched. But with 10 days to go until the Lifewise Big Sleepout, where I'll be "sleeping rough" in the Auckland CBD, it seems amazingly to fit.

Homeless for a night

2011-06-28T21:13:00.000+12:00

In 10 days, I'll be spending a night out in the open - in the middle of Auckland's CBD. The reason? It's all part of a fund (and issue) raising campaign, to sleep 'rough' for a night. I'll be sharing my patch - but hopefully not my piece of cardboard - with other "business and community" leaders - among them ex mayors, rugby players and banking (well they should come in handy!) staff. We've each pledged to raise $1000 or more to support Lifewise, which provides support services to the homeless.

In my work, I often deal with kids who have been affected in some way by poverty. It astounds me that people (especially politicians) don't realise, or pretend not to realise, that poverty is inherited in the same way that wealth is. In other words, if your parents can't pay for decent shelter, or feed you enough, or keep you warm - then it's pretty obvious that your health is going to be affected, along with your sense of self, your ability to attend education and to learn, and your resilience. There's many other things besides, but it all pretty much comes down to poverty being a root cause, with symptoms like drug abuse, poor mental health, and social dysfunction feeding into a vicious positive feedback cycle. And all too often it's something perpetuated through generations. This is when sticking a drip in a kid who's got pneumonia from living in a drafty garage starts to feel quite a bit like waiting at the bottom of a cliff with an ambulance.

But anyway, enough of me ranting tonight... if you want to help, either donate directly to Lifewise or (please!) sponsor me here.

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Do writers need social media? Part 2

2011-06-21T11:33:00.002+12:00

(crossposted from The Big Idea)
In my previous blog post, I discussed how blogs, Facebook and Twitter (ie social media) can be used by a writer to hook a readership and publisher. But are they worth the time away from ‘real writing’? In this blog, I explore how social media could enhance the writing itself.

As Musk and others say, exploring inner worlds in order to share them is what writers do anyway. I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing that sense of vague fear and dread before starting a new scene or chapter. The fear might be linked to the worry that this time, we might not be clear enough thinkers or complex enough psychologically to pull it off this time, and then our lack of depth would be exposed. So writing is also a quest to become a better, wiser person, a person with something to say (you see how cleverly I’m circling here?)

If this quest for self-betterment is what you would do anyway, then the only question remaining is whether you would feel comfortable sharing it. For some the answer is no – it would endanger their inner world and disturb their writing process. That’s OK. Having a blog doesn’t mean you have to bare all – you can choose to bare only some (although sincerity and truth are important, and readers make smart lovers.) For others though, discussion and dissection of issues are exactly what they crave, the thing that feeds their writing and fires off further ideas. They actively seek to connect, to graze ideas, to converse, to follow links until they hit one which might be the key to understanding their character or anchor a plot point. Reading, watching and linking to good writers, readers and thinkers is not a side activity – it is part of the process of writing.

read more here

Tuesday Poem: Appetite: or, an Allegorical journey

2011-06-14T07:00:00.000+12:00

o come to where the Fat Dog wags
its nimble backside, where you’ll be glad
you rolled your rotund form on
in through the door, the
rolling slippy slidy wooden floors
where waitstaff glide
waists pinched and arms long
with heavy jowled food, warm lumpy cups
of coffee, plates indigestive
with chocolate cake.

Come to where the cream is piled high as an iceberg,
swerve to avoid creaking chairs
as schoolgirls sail upon
their swooning love affairs.
For your own chair sits
beside the potbellied stove
which has swallowed a fire
much too big for it. Stay, guest;
but not too long – for they say
we make our own nests; and then we must lie in them.

Slipping sliding, the hippy trippy
waitress slides along olive oiled
avenues towards you. You consume her
as you have already consumed the grape painted walls,
the twisted chandeliers, the candles, the poetry painted above the toilet. You consume
her, whole, in her tight black T-shirt with the Fat Dog wagging its brisk tail until the
end. You lick the fat globs of cream off his backside and belch wholeheartedly, for
your heart is not yet in its last convulsions. You drip silver drooled coins through
the hands of the man at the coffee machine and then you jangle merrily on your way
through the door.

The Fat Dog Cafe is probably one of the best cafes in the country and my favourite place to eat in Rotorua. In my first year as a doctor, I worked at Rotorua Hospital - one of the defining periods of my life and a year when I really grew up. With my flatmates, we were "regulars" at the Fat Dog - going there once a week, as a treat or when we couldn't be bothered cooking and just wanted to lounge around in front of the fire and eat chunky lasagne and garden-crisp salad with gobs of mayonnaise....

talkwrite blog: Do writers need social media? Part 1

2011-06-13T19:48:00.003+12:00

(crossposted from The Big Idea)

This weekend, as a way of procrastinating about getting in the right frame of mind for writing, I’ve spent hours reading Justine Musk’s fabulous blog, Tribal Writer. Justine is a YA and fantasy writer, a mum of twins and triplets. (She’s also the ex-wife of billionaire entrepreneur and founder of Paypal, Elon Musk, whose high-profile divorce has had journalists and lawyers slavering for the last few years.*)

The quality and frequency of her blog posts has me wondering how she ever finds time for writing, unless she gets another talented writer to pretend to be her. (I know, I’m supposed to be writing right now, and what am I doing...?) Basically, Justine practices what she preaches: the engagement of a writer with their community of other writers and thinkers, and with their ‘audience’, two groups which should necessarily intersect. She does this through several blogs in which she collects her own and others' thoughts about the business of writing, which necessarily contains a large amount of candid self-reflection. She says that the tools of social media are just as important tools for the writer as paper and pen.

This fits with what I heard at the publisher’s event at the recent Auckland Readers and Writers Festival, in which an international panel agreed that in the current environment, publishers are looking for a writer who is not only ‘marketable’, but also comes with the social savvies to allow them connect with and grow a readership. Having a good manuscript is still the baseline condition, mind you. But on top of that, a potential new publishee will be asked if they have a blog on which they post frequently, are on Facebook and Twitter, and have skills and experience in appearing friendly, personable and accessible. As one publisher said, “They need to be stand-up comedians.”

for more, click here.

Talkwrite blog: One Day Moko

2011-06-09T17:02:00.001+12:00

(crossposted from The Big Idea)

* * *

As a writer, I’m intrigued and a little threatened by devised theatre. (What use is a playwright if plays can be made without a script?!) Yes, I’m playing devil’s advocate – I’ve since learnt that writing is actually integral to the process of devising, it’s just that often the writing happens after the story or scene has been found by the actors’ bodies. Following the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” philosophy, I recently took part in a couple of devising workshops, which were great fun (if a little painful for those who had to watch me ‘act’).

I met Tim Carlsen and Sophie Roberts at John Bolton’s excellent one-weekend course, run by The Actors Laboratory. By then Tim’s play One Day Moko, which Sophie directs, was well advanced. Tim is a recent Toi Whakaari graduate and met Sophie (also a recent graduate) as she was tutoring the graduate Solo shows. One Day Moko gives the one man show a surprising twist as Tim, embodying a homeless man (and his dog), interacts with other characters via a TV set, which he takes with him on his travels.

(more here)

Transformance - comment on an exhibition at Pah Homestead

2011-06-04T17:25:00.000+12:00

This afternoon, I went to A sense of dislocation, a dance/installation performance at Pah Homestead, an art gallery which is pretty much in my hood (Roskill/Hillsborough). I arrived late, but the performance, which featured music by Jed Town and movement by Elise Chan, Jeong Yeun Whang and Kristian Larsen, was earthy and quite discomforting, especially in the polished-wood surrounds of the Homestead.

The performance was related to an exhibition called Transformance, part of the just-started Auckland Festival of Photography.

The exhibition takes just two small rooms in the sprawling mansion. The works, by recent arts graduates from AUT, are linked by their exploration of the body/image as representations of self. Significantly for me, two of the artists in this exhibition are immigrants from Asia - part of the '1.5' generation (not born in NZ, but moved here early enough for NZ to have some impact on their worldview) which is increasingly gaining presence on the visual arts scene.

Jane Loo's video work is confrontational. She presents 'case studies' of Asian migrants (or children of migrants) - each character is presented staring face-on into the camera. Loo uses moving, scrolling and blurring text to give them their 'voice' - the tales, of an Anglo-Indian man who is not reemployed, he suspects, because he doesn't "look like a New Zealander"; a young woman who struggles to get an explanation of "adequacy" from her trusted tutor; and a young waitress who is chided by a "local woman" for her poor english - these are all familiar stories, but presented in a fresh format which is haunting in its spareness. There are touches of humour - misspellings which are hastily corrected - but overall this is a sad work, with no conclusions as to where to go from here. Perhaps it is enough for now to give the silent a voice, but I wonder where a follow up project might go.

Grace Chai, who moved to New Zealand from Taiwan at fifteen, shows off a series of manipulated digital prints of nude male bodies bonded together and augmented with machinery and natural materials. Beautiful, grotesque, and slightly erotic, she references classic myths in their titles. Unlike Loo, there is nothing directly "Asian" about her work, but perhaps her background pushes her to look more closely at the myths of "body" and "appearance"and how this limited view is restrictive, creating monsters of us all. Her work is more subliminal, challenging how we perceive, market and response to images of flesh: perhaps she is asking why we would judge one thing as beautiful and another as ugly? (or for that matter, how do we choose what is art and what is just artifact?)

Shekhar Kapur: We Are the Stories We Tell Ourselves

2011-06-04T11:46:00.000+12:00

I like this guy!! Especially his assertion that "panic is the wellspring of creativity". (I thought I was doing the right thing.....) More importantly,I like how he sees stories as the very stuff we are made of.... we define it, it defines us. Although he discusses this in the context of film, he references many other art forms - we're all interconnected.

Asian writerly staunchness.

2011-06-02T16:18:00.000+12:00

OK, a quick skite. Click here for a radio article that recently aired on Radio NZ on Asian writing on Aotearoa. Beautifully produced by the unflaggingly enthusiastic Sonya Sly!

And here's a link to a recent interview with my friend Chris Tse (no not the ex-boyfriend, the other one), who is also interviewed in this piece.

Joining the Twitterverse

2011-06-02T16:11:00.002+12:00

Spent last weekend (when not saving lives) obsessively reading Justine Musk's blog on writing - she's so witty and engaging it seems unfair that she is also beautiful and exceptionally well connected. Despite this, she succesfully projects herself as "one of the plebs" when it comes to writing, and getting yourself noticed as a writer.

It's no longer enough to be a very good writer - that's just the baseline these days. Publishers are also looking for people with the ability to lift their own profile, connect to a loyal reader base and do some of their own promotion. How to do this? One clue: it begins with an "I".

After reading the article on how the internet's "three pillars" (Facebook, Twitter and blogging) can help bolster a writerly presence, I have bookmarked her article on Twittering for writers and am following it. I admit to being a little nervous, being already so much of an internet addict that even I can't deny its impact on my ability to finish drafts. But Justine's blog is just the latest persuasive tract on the power of Twitter as a social force. And apparently, it's good for research....Alright then. (reluctantly, deep breath): one, two , three, dive.

Tuesday Poem: Birth

2011-05-31T11:37:00.003+12:00

I sit
in my dark office, see
sharp
shadowed spikes of exotic palm
slung
against stone walls
by noon-drunk sun.

I am waiting for a baby. Not mine,
you understand, that is not part of my contract,
but the baby of the woman
who lies gasping
unheard, unseen, around the corner. Her baby
sits, cheeks cradled
in the basket of her pelvis, not knowing
which way to turn, not knowing
that the correct way to enter the world
is to look both ways, then go head first. Too late to turn now.
This baby listens to the pained panting
of its mother’s heart, feels the roof
of her diaphragm tapping
fast staccato beats onto
the small wet muff
of its hair, like urgent rain. Its feet are cold.

This baby, you understand, is not my
responsibility
not yet.
I am not the midwife, my hands
do not slide slippery and slimy
up between the redness of thighs,
the warm something poured into
a metal bucket on the floor,
do not touch
the small white toes resting
in the perineum
as if waiting for a bus
which is late. I only watch,
do not move, do not clang together forceps
like giant tongs, lifting,
lifting the gray morsel
out, out
into the still world.

He (for now we can see
that it is a boy) lies naked
on my towel.
He is an unfolded nautilus
still dreaming under
the sea
listening to the slow
thud of his mother’s heart, the pulse
of the mask on his face,
the quickening beat of my heart,
of my breath
as I try to reach
his will to live. I push
each square digital second
into his waiting chest, time
clinging like mucus to my fingers.
At last he coughs and breathes.
His tiny eyes open and watch.
His heart flutters delicately
under the membrane
of my stethoscope.

Now I sit
in my dark office, pushing
words out
with patient contractions of my pen.
Somewhere in the hospital a mother
breastfeeds. I write.

I move between medicine, science and arts in my life. Often in one day I'll begin as a doctor and end as a poet; or break off from writing a play to attend a meeting on writing a research paper. I don't think it's all that unusual, in fact I think there's more or less a unifying theme to my three vocations - in all of them I'm dealing with stories, trying to understand and then re-express the things that underlie our lives.

Yet it's true that I have developed skillsets that are very different. Although I'm most at home in the consulting room, talking (those who know me will know I love talking!), I'm also well drilled in the protocols of resuscitation. Saving someone's life is more routine than you would think. There are flowcharts to follow, drugs laid out in order, and everyone has their role and even a kind of script.

(the baby is delivered and brought to the table)
"Dry."
(Someone vigorously rubs the baby in a warm towel.)
"No response? Stimulate."
"Wakey wakey."
(Someone tickles the baby and blows oxygen on their nose. The baby stirs and gives a weak cry.)
"Heartrate good. Resps established at - 1 minute."
"Are you the Dad? come over here and say hello to your daughter. Congratulations! Got a camera?"

For more Tuesday poems, click the link on the sidebar.

The power of many stories

2011-05-30T15:55:00.000+12:00

After reading some inspirational stuff on the weekend about how a writer's blog is a window to themselves and a key means of "connecting" with community and readers, I've resolved to be more regular in updating this blog. So from now on I'll be good (promise!) and also cross-post from my blog on The Big Idea, Talkwrite, which comments on the arts scene in NZ from the point of view of an emerging artist (me). The Big Idea is an online hub for NZ's arts community, and very well trafficked. I'll continue to keep this blog as a storage place for my more personal thoughts, experiences, the odd family photo, and of course the Tuesday Poem.

(crossposted from The Big Idea)

I’ve been frolicking in foreign lands, but made sure I returned in time to catch the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. As always, between sessions the foyer was packed (I later found out that attendance was up 21 percent from last year) and there were queues in front of the bookstore, the signing table and the coffee karts. Everywhere people were talking excitedly about what they’d just seen, or were about to see.

In an age where (some would believe) the more pyrotechnic the show the better, what makes people pay money to sit in a dark room and watch talking heads?
... read more here.

The danger of a single story - Chimamanda Adichie

2011-05-20T13:01:00.001+12:00

I was cheering all the way through this. I love the way Chimamanda points out her views, with sly jibes but not an ounce of anger at the assumptions people make about others' cultures. I love her attitude at the end - that if someone makes an assumption, it's not necessarily their fault, but more that they haven't had the chance to access multiple stories. And I love the way she humbly admits that she too often makes assumptions because she buys into only one story. I think it's important to remind myself of that, despite - or perhaps especially because - I spend so much time trying to create alternate narratives. (I laughed and cried a little inside when she talked about the literary professor who rejected her story because it wasn't "authentically African".)

To bring this back to a NZ perspective, I'm going to link to another video. The South Auckland Poets Collective is run by youth for youth - and principal to their goals is to reverse the negative stories and images about their hood that have been ruling the media for years. This is just one of many videos on their website:

Tuesday Poem: Umbilical Ode

2011-05-17T11:58:00.001+12:00

Such small indentation, crinkled, folded
a sow’s ear – soft stroked
as the skin of a newborn
who screams on separation from its mother,
ridged, silently capturing years of dirt
thrown in accusation or merely
by accident –
an eye peering back in contemplation,
winking,
with lint in it.

For years you have sat squarely in my belly
a silent Buddha,
sometimes laughing
from within folds of my flesh,
poking a barefaced tongue out
as I strip in front of the mirror.
Once you were my lifeline, my pulsating bond,
the blood hurtling
from my mother’s warm ventricles
throbbing through coiled conduits
squeezing past the gut,
taking the hook turn past the ligamentum teres
of the liver and round the joyride of my heart
to arrive barefaced and breathless back
at you, the waystation,
the conductor,
the portal.

When I gaze at you nightly
for some hint of divine inspiration,
I see the flesh twisting beyond the skin,
the grip of a mother’s hand losing.
I see the skin spiraled into the line
that stretches between me and my mother,
between me and my unconceived child.
I see the flesh twisting tightly closed,
the mouth drawing tight,
the pursestrings

pulling tight.

This is a poem I wrote a while ago (it appears in my first chapbook, Chinglish). I'm posting it now because I've been doing a lot of navel-gazing lately, and watching others do the same thing. I mean, writing is sometimes an exercise in this, right? (Informed navel gazing, that is.) It's weird - whenever I write something that I consider to be exciting, and innovative, and saying new things, yet it's not in some way anchored in my own experience, people call me out on it. It's as if we all have this inbuilt antenna for authenticity when we read or listen to fiction. (Obviously, the same requirement for personal connection isn't needed in non fiction or research).

I'll be posting a few things that have been making me think, soon...

PS. For more Tuesday poems, click on the little feather on the sidebar!

Tuesday poem: Tuesday afternoon in the Domain

2011-04-06T20:07:00.001+12:00

Tuesday
is a day of
scrunched-up ducklings
pushing tentative ripples
in tepid shallows

of grandmas
and grandsons
tracing leaf-patterns
with sticks

of crucifixion on a lawn
of close cropped daisies

of geese circling
like high white battleships
alert for dropped
icecream cones.

Tuesday is a day
to roll up in a ball
and hurtle down hillsides
after the sun.

Happy 1st Birthday, Tuesday poem! I've posted (a little late) something I wrote a few years ago after spending a sun drenched afternoon in one of my favourite writing spots in the Auckland Domain. A little spot of warmth to hold on to now the weather's started to turn cold and windy again (after five months of being able to wear skirts with bare legs - I'm not complaining). For more Tuesday birthday poems, click here.

Tuesday Poem: How I find the time to write

2011-03-15T10:47:00.001+13:00

I collect
small droplets of silence
merge them on my tongue
plant small words like daisies
weave them into garlands
offer this to a woman
diving off a cliff
daisies falling before her
a half circle of nail polish
glinting
on her toes
as she turns
to look back.

More poems on Tuesday Poems, click on link at sidebar.

Tuesday Poem: on the birth of a film

2011-03-08T12:04:00.000+13:00

for Roseanne

for five years
you have held it in your belly
felt it warm and growing
consulted experts
read books and played music to it

it kicked you awake at night

you fed it
with your own blood
felt its own heart
start to beat
traced the curving line
of your umbilicus

to where it all started

and now
it has arrived

tears
and joy.

My sister's film, My Wedding and Other Secrets, had its world premiere on Sunday night, and my whole family was there. It was an emotional night. Not just because it's the end result of over 5 years of hard work, trust and hope by my sister, but also because the film deals with some very personal stories.

The film itself, although fictional, is a love letter from my sister to my parents. The fact that they came to watch the film, with no certainty of its content, is also a gesture of love from them. My mother started crying before the film started (a good sign), and at the end she thanked Cheung Pei Pei, who played the character of the mother in the film, for playing the part with such sympathy. My dad (at his first movie screening for 30 years), left his seat at the end - to rush down the front and take photos of my sister receiving applause. That's a gesture of approval on his part - he's always done this with us to commemorate proud occasions.

As for me, my story is told on screen through the character of Susan, who has to deal with tragedy (you'll have to watch the film to find out). I hasten to add she doesn't make all the same choices I did, but all the same it was a buzz to watch "myself" being played by the very gorgeous Katlyn Wong (I come up to her shoulders when we're both in heels)! I get a couple of seconds of screen time myself as a bitchy waitress (debut speaking line: "yao gei" (soy chicken)). The appearance was so quick my husband missed it. I also appeared in the (real) tapes of us as little kids, which formed part of the opening credits.

All in all, a wonderful, warm night. And yes, there was red carpet and paparazzi. Below, a pic of my proud parents on the red carpet (complete with lion dancers).

Tuesday Poem: Christchurch to Greymouth

2011-03-01T13:26:00.002+13:00

From the place of broken earth
to the place of burning earth
I fly, wings outstretched.
The mountains peer at me
like neighbours through curtains
I am naked. I am unconcerned.
Sunset burns my hands as I land.
You see, I am here to help.
I, by myself.
I have brought nothing but
my burnt hands
and broken mind.

This - rough, unformed - is all I've able to write in response to the earthquake. Pardon its self absorption - I think, in these times, we are all looking inside ourselves, wondering "what if it were me?", "how shall I respond?". There are those who have not paused to think at all, who have not paused at all, who do not pause even now. This little poem is dedicated to them.

On Thursday I flew to Greymouth (well, Hokitika, then by bus to Greymouth) to work in the hospital there for a few days. The tiny plane has not much lap room for computers, and so I read Kapka Kassabova (her book Someone Else's Life is full of poems that seem appropriate to this time - but I haven't asked her permission, so I won't post one). I also scribbled this in my notebook, reading it that night at Frank's cafe where some poets meet every month.

Returning home

2011-02-28T18:29:00.002+13:00

It’s now nearly one week after the earthquake. The official death toll is still rising, as searchers systematically go through the rubble. No one has been found alive since Wednesday.

In the Air New Zealand magazine, an advertisement now has the ring of bitter irony: “What investment could be safer than houses?” Every plane leaving Christchurch is booked solid. Small children with their own little backpacks peer out from the aisle. The mood on board is surprisingly upbeat, although the newspaper reports suggest that some of those leaving Christchurch are leaving forever.

I don’t often watch TV, but this weekend I turned it on, drawn despite myself to the stories of disaster and eyewitness accounts. Every figure crossing the screen is labelled either “lucky survivor” or “brave rescuer” by the (usually breathlessly overwhelmed) presenter. I know they’re trying to do a good job, but it seems disingenuous. I don’t like being witness to a hyena feeding frenzy. My mental disturbance is not helped by watching footage of destruction sandwiched by ads trying to sell me maternal health supplements and hair care products. The most obscene ad I saw was one which tried to insinuate that eating McDonalds would help me lose weight (“Weight Watcher’s approved – so now you can feel good!”)

Luckily, the newspaper coverage from The Press is far better. Amazingly, it’s still being published and delivered – a much slimmer format than usual, but the writing in it is often pretty good. Many of the eyewitness accounts are from Press reporters whose building was one of those destroyed in the CBD. Writing as citizens and fellow survivors, their accounts are detailed, insightful and full of clarity, rather than swimming in emotion. There’s time enough for emotion later, now is the time for facts which can help people. I’m particularly impressed by the editor who is already thinking about the future of the city and whether this time, relocation (rather than repair) of the CBD is the best option.

Ditto with National Radio, on which I was briefly interviewed on Saturday afternoon. Conscious of the fact that radio is now the main information source for affected families, they’re doing their best to provide up to the minute advice about where to get clean water, food supplies, help. They’re also broadcasting messages of support and help on its way – I was asked to talk about what the arts community is doing to help (many fundraisers have either been held or are planned, as well as more practical measures to help professionals and businesses get back on their feet).

Online, there’s information flying around. Aside from a few messages still seeking people who haven’t made contact, you can now download information sheets about maintaining mental health and news items about what’s being done to support the disabled, refugees and the elderly. The trivialities have returned to facebook – there’s 20 replies to a post about what colour car to buy.

My weekend at Grey Hospital was civilised, although I did get more patients than usual. None of these were from Christchurch, but it does seem that there are going to be a lot of knock-on effects from the earthquake. Many patients outside Christchurch rely on services there being available when they need them, and many are trying to anticipate demand by getting seen earlier or moving to another centre. I communicated with other paediatricians – frequent phone meetings are taking place as units around NZ fill up. There’s a particular demand for Level 3 (the most intensive) baby care, and this could get worse with a number of premature births expected to be triggered by the earthquake. Midwives are among the professions being asked to volunteer to help. The situation is likely to last months and I’m worried about burnout of my colleagues.

As I step out of Auckland airport in search of a taxi home I'm greeted by a blast of warm air - it's 25 degrees and yet another scorcher. It feels as if I've been away for longer than three days. I'm happy to be home and on solid ground.

The weed mat of humanity

2011-02-26T19:09:00.000+13:00

As I stepped off the plane into Christchurch yesterday I was surprised at first by the gentle hum of conversation, the clink of coffee spoons, by smiles even. I don’t know why but I expected silence and grim reality etched on the faces of those I passed. But the airport was in full swing, uniformed staff walking around as if it was just another day of departures and arrivals.

It took a while to spot the small things wrong with the picture. The small café where I like to pick up soup had shelves empty of nearly everything except, oddly, cake. There were a lot more uniforms than usual. I realised that the friendly chatter around me had a tone of enforced calm. And Gate 1, at the arse-end of the airport, which is usually empty except for the few who are scheduled to take small ‘cigar planes’ to exotic destinations like Hokitika or Timaru, was packed. There were people on the floor, kids cartwheeling in the aisles, luggage spread all over the carpet.

I realised as I arrived to wait for my plane that everyone had their faces turned to the window, watching as an air ambulance landed. Two land ambulances pulled up, policemen strolled around in casual conversation with a blonde airport attendant, there was some activity involving old ladies and wheelchairs. The ambulances loaded up and departed and everyone turned their attention back to the TV, which was showing a live feed from the CBD. The electronic board showed a roll of departures – suddenly places like Hamilton or Tauranga felt like another country. Even though there were no announcements about when the delayed flights would depart, no one bugged the service desk people, who had clearly been at work for a very long time. Not even when the scanner failed and they had to board everyone manually and slowly.

As my plane finally left the tarmac I remember feeling a great sense of relief, followed by a sense of irony that I would find a small plane often dubbed the “flying coffin” safer than being on the ground. Yet being in transit in Christchurch for just one hour felt stressful. I have no idea how the people who live there can cope, seeing as they’ve been dealing with this threat since September. Everyone on the plane glued their faces to the window, trying to see if they could spot the cracks in the earth. My co-passenger later said he could identify the Hotel Grand Chancellor, which even from that distance had a visible lean.

Ferrying us to Greymouth, the taxi driver cheerfully rattled off his experiences: everyone on the West Coast felt the quake, of course they did, and they were all dead scared. The supermarkets had been cleaned out of bread and milk the last few days. Some people had taken off over the Hill to look after their rellies; the rest didn’t want to go anywhere near. But they all felt it, oh yes they all felt it alright.

In the hospital today, it’s impossible to escape the reality, even though my patients are the usual stream of wheezers and coughers mixed in with the chronically unwell kids. The nurse unit manager tells me that several doctors from Christchurch were doing a clinic here, and when the quake was felt they said it was a small one, comparatively. Then as it became evident what the news was they loaded up, six doctors in a four person car, and set off over the infamous hill road through Arthur's Pass. Luckily there were no slips and the road was not damaged.

Later in the morning one of the Christchurch paediatricians rings me to check I’m ok and to hand over a few patients. They usually cover the Greymouth services, in person or by remote – I’m only covering for the weekend. He cheerily assures me that they are all fine, their families are fine and in fact they are still happy to take transfers should I need to. I think of the months of overtime and stress ahead of them.

The TV is on and once more we are transfixed, swallowing the stories of desperation, of despair, of hopes dashed, as if there is no other diet. But there isn’t. Everything else seems shallow by comparison. The whole world seems trivial compared to what we are going through. And yet we are the trivial ones – glued to the TV while at least half the people who the earthquake affects don’t have access to power, let alone a TV, and they probably wouldn’t be inclined to watch it anyway. For them, cellphones and radio are their link to the world. And while we gasp in guiltily perverted horror at the scenes of devastation rolling across our screens, for some it will be weeks before they see the full images.

It’s still sunny as I step outside to go back to the hotel. The ground feels solid under my feet, but I breathe in the smell of fresh grass, just to make sure. I’m alone this weekend – my husband is back in Auckland – but I don’t feel isolated. I feel part of this great weed mat of humanity which has been pulled up by its roots in the last few days and is still trying to find a place to anchor. Piece by small piece, we grab onto the familiar things. We are beginning to joke again. And – even though it feels a little bad – we are beginning to smile.

On the edge of normality

2011-02-24T18:06:00.001+13:00

I’m at Auckland airport, waiting for a plane to Christchurch. On my way to the departure gate I’ve walked past people in jackets saying things like Red Cross and Australian Civil Defence; I try not to stare as I walk past a small desk with a large sign saying American Consulate, with two men in suits sombrely wedged behind it. Every few minutes an announcement asks people arriving from Christchurch to contact police or emergency staff in the foyer if they need assistance. It’s clear that this is not a normal day. Outside is normality, the world getting on with itself; here I am at a portal, a place where people with the label Survivor emerge to be whisked to safety.

At the gate, I scan the faces of new arrivals. There’s an elderly gentleman holding his grandchild like she’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen. My eyes fix on the small bandage just by his left ear. Did he get grazed by falling bricks, or is it just one of the legion of small injuries the elderly get on a daily basis? Is it just my imagination or is there hope, fear and impatience etched on the faces of my fellow departing passengers?

Once before in my life, I’ve taken planes with sorrow as my luggage. That time I travelled alone. No one noticed my transparency or commented on how I floated because I didn’t belong to the earth any more. The world turned on without me, everyone laughed and made noise and I watched from the other side of a wall that I thought would be permanent. I know what it’s like to take a plane knowing that I’ll only find unimaginable pain at the other end, the loss of a loved one, and how I’m impatient for the plane to land anyway.

This time it’s different. I am merely an observer. Everyone sees the sorrow – how could we not, when it’s our own world which has suddenly been cracked open - and we’re talking openly about it. The digital stratosphere is full of messages of love, of relief, of people telling the world they’re ok, to only worry about those less fortunate. Everyone tells everyone else to hug loved ones. But soon the messages of loss will start coming through. There’s a sense that we’re standing on the edge of a black hole that has opened up. And true to being Kiwi, we feel slightly guilty that we’re ok while someone else is suffering.

And then my little artist brain pipes up, the little cruel artist brain that knows how suffering wrings you out and then pushes you on, harder than before. Maybe it’s good for us to feel this way, once in a while. It’s not at all good that this has happened, but a disaster on this scale reconnects Godzone to the harsh, real world. Despite the images and people coming from outside, and the national obsession with travel, there’s still sometimes a feeling that this is the last safe place on earth, a place that’s clean and green and wrapped in cotton wool. A disaster on this scale shows us that safety can turn to danger in an instant. A crack has opened up on these islands of ours and suddenly we know what it’s like to be without communication, without security, fearing for our very lives. We’re no longer distant from what we see on our screens.

Christchurch is being compared to a war zone: transport, water, power and communication are down or unreliable, there are still bodies lying on the streets and buildings burning. Yet despite this people can still get on a plane and escape. Their family can text them to make sure they’re fine, and their friends gather pledges on the internet. We’re still at heart a civilised nation which has not lost its humanity enough to help others, and to deeply feel for others. And for that we can be grateful, not guilty.

A foot story

2011-02-22T18:54:00.001+13:00

After attending our friends' wedding on the weekend, and dancing the night away in my gold tango heels (I defy any woman not to develop a shoe fetish when in Buenos Aires), I now feel ready to write the story of the one glitch in our wedding day.

The day was perfect - weather, venue (Mark's grandparent's huge garden in Blockhouse Bay) and guests, even the small ones, all perfectly behaved...except of course I had to step on a needle a few hours before the ceremony. What's more, being only a paediatrician, I didn't notice it was a needle (it had gone in so deep there was only a puncture mark). So, I walked down the aisle, took photos around the gardens, went to the beach and even danced a tango, all the time with a worsening pain in my left foot. It did mean I had to abandon my glamorous gold tango heels for something a little kinder, though.

You can see the romantic results in the photos (a few posts below) when Mark had to pick me up and carry me around. Impromptu bedroom surgeries were performed to investigate the unseen "splinter", once by my bridesmaid (who also happened to be my sister and a surgeon, and very wisely refused my request of a radical dissection) and once by Mark's sister (who's a designer, and handy with a pair of sewing scissors). Finally, having hobbled home at 2 am to "rest and elevate" my offending limb, and woken with it no better, we went to Ascot A+E the next day where very luckily we hit a skilled orthopaedic surgeon who just happened to be doing a locum there. (It turned out he'd worked with my sister - she told me later he was known for his fine handiwork.) After some painstaking dissection he extracted a 1 cm long broken sewing needle from deep in my anaesthetised foot. Just goes to show that love + one panadol is a great analgesic.

After a single stitch and a course of Augmentin, I am now fully back to 100%. A fact I have now proved with my dancing - hurray!

Tuesday Poem: Notes for reading a poem

2011-02-22T18:32:00.000+13:00

Preparation time:
The space between breaths.

Equipment:
Scissors, scalpel or chainsaw.
A pen (does not need to be expensive).
More paper.

Degree of difficulty:
A pebble’s throw.

Steps:
1. Take a deep breath. Rise to the balls of your feet. Staying there, find the horizon.
2. Close your eyes and point to the open page of poetry.
3. Open your eyes and read on your exhaled breath.
4. Draw a line between the words you have read.
5. Repeat these steps, in any order.
6. If you like the poem, cut it up and rearrange. See if you like it any better.
7. If you don’t like the poem, write your own.

***
I wrote this poem a couple of years ago for a visual art exhibition, Little Rain. An experiment in the abstract and quirky.

Tuesday Poem - Aubade(1)

2011-02-15T16:46:00.001+13:00

I have worn another groove in you
this one between the
clavicle and deltoid

carved a notch
under your sleeping chin
to fit my head

moulded an upright nipple
where my fingertips rest

as sunlight taps the window

your breath blows even
against my neck

my hands walk downwards
I haven’t
much time

This poem needs no explanation or introduction! I wrote it some weeks ago but post it today in honour of the season. Incidentally yesterday evening, Valentine's Day, was spent at a tango class where I practised "close embrace" - walking backwards in high heels with my face nestled against a stranger's chest, both of us learning to adjust our breathing, the lengths of our steps, so as not to cause any injury. It's more fun than it sounds. I danced with Mark too of course but talking about strangers makes it a better story.

Comments....:)

2011-02-13T16:17:00.000+13:00

Just a note that I have received some comments on this blog from "anonymous". I welcome all comments, favourable or not (so long as they are not outright abusive, spam, or in a language I can't read), but since you know who I am, I'd like to know likewise! So "Anonymous", please repost with your real name - and thanks so much for your feedback. :)

Tuesday Poem: Falls, by Edward Lowbury

2011-02-02T12:45:00.002+13:00

Pulled by the sky's gravitation
Smoke falls upwards;
The monkey-spider floats, in perfect balance;
And a child on shaky limbs
Drops into its mother's arms,
Or falls light - no need to fear the fall
When earth is near and motherly.

But no maternal arms
Reach out to save those on shaky limbs
Who fall in second childhood.
The earth is hard and far away beneath them
The bones are brittle
And every fall brings pain or injury -
Until, at last, light
As smoke, they feel once more
The gravity of the sky
And learn to fall upwards.

- from Apollo, an anthology of poems by doctor poets (ed E. Lowbury, pub. 1990).
This is a book that's been in my possession for a while, but I wasn't until I went on my latest medical working trip to Greymouth that I took it out. Lowbury, a pathologist, includes two of his own poems in this anthology that samples widely from modern poets to the poet-physicians of antiquity (when indeed art and medicine were viewed as the same thing - Apollo was the winged god of poetry, medicine and music.)

What I love most of all about this poem is the surprise of the last line, a truly surprising and revelatory moment but one which the poem, with deceptive simplicity, builds up to. It's one finely poised between emotion and observation too - an edge which, as all doctors know, is a difficult one to walk. Although it's never mentioned, I have a sense that Lowbury is not just referring to his patients, but to some personal experience of the "shaky limbs" and the hardness of the world in a "second childhood".

In the introduction to his book, Lowbury observes: "With his wide experience of humanity a doctor should be able to view the world more objectively and with more empathy than most people; if he is poet this should broaden the scope of his writing, not only in the depiction of, or in imagery derived from, personal experience. Indeed, it is in their response to a wider range of human experience... that doctor poets have made their most widely valued contribution to poetic literature."

Tuesday Poem: Will you dance with me

2011-01-25T07:37:00.001+13:00

Will you dance with me
hold my hands lightly
as we learn to stand together,
learn to breathe and walk
as though we were doing it
the first time

Will you dance with me
work out each new step
laugh at our mistakes
find out how by pushing
at the spaces between us
we can find balance

Will you dance with me
through the long night
as violins fade
to something more real
as light cracks the sky
and dark becomes dawn

Dance with me when we’re at the beach.
Dance with me in front of family.
Dance with me and my friends.
Dance with me in the cobbled streets of Valparaiso,
wearing kimono in Tokushima, walking the Great Wall
at Badaling,
in Paris and in London

then come to dance with me at home.

Dance with me
again and again
dance through the tight places,
the hard places, the forbidden places
the soft places, the places
where we’ll find each other

Will you dance with me
this first dance til the last dance
the many dances in between,

will you dance with me.

This was the poem I read to Mark just before we stepped out for our first wedding dance, a tango.

Tuesday Poem: Blessing, by Greg O'Connell

2011-01-17T11:15:00.003+13:00

Today when silver ferns uncoil

Today when dolphins polish their beaks on the sea

Today when the seal chaperones its pups

Today when palms put on their red beads

Today when waves keep their promise to return

Today when night keeps its oath to sleep

Today when someone you love has gone
and someone wombed has been safely born

Today when mountains listen to the silence of the broken
and sunlight whispers to the waiting seeds

Today when someone arranges old age, long as a cloud

Today when someone inhales the blossom of a first kiss

Today let this hour bless you

With the smiles of friends let it bless you

With ocean-tang and manuka bless you

Let the vow of this day arc wide and high

Let its freedom and shelter hold you

Let its truth be boundless as the sky

This poem was read ten days ago at our wedding. It's by Greymouth poet Greg O'Connell, and written for his own recent nuptials. It was very generous of Greg and his wife Zoe to let us use this lovely work and add our own meaning to his images. The poem spoke to me, and continues speaking to me, because it acknowledges the fact that marriage is just one step in a cycle, but a significant one. I love the juxtaposition of the images "when someone arranges old age, long as a cloud" and "when someone inhales the blossom of a first kiss". We got married in a garden that Mark's grandparents had sown and that many family members at the wedding could remember playing in as children - very apt.

PS. For more Tuesday poems (yes, some are up early!), click on the feather top right.

Mark and I got married!!

2011-01-08T15:30:00.002+13:00

Things I am not allowed to eat at Christmas

2011-01-01T22:10:00.000+13:00

Garlic prawns and flambé scallops
a turkey roast fit for a palace
a ham that’s soaked in marinade
then slowly cooked for a whole day
and sirloin beef that’s tender-smoked
all smothered in a honeyed coat
soft-boiled eggs and panfried bacon
drizzled with an oil libation
and rolls of icecream, rich and pure
I do not touch – I do not dare

Camembert, a waxy crust
with creamy magma I do lust
and brandy snaps with farm-fresh cream
served with strawberries, pav and steamed
Christmas raisin pudding – a tiny piece
perhaps I can afford to eat?
It’s after all a special day
but if I do, I’ll surely pay.

Really I should not sit down
or I won’t fit my custom gown
for silk shows every belly bulge
and I’ll regret if I indulge
but all the family’s lining up
to load their plates – I can’t miss out…

The deed is done – the die is cast
I really can’t let Christmas pass
without the usual homage paid
to all things good, and rich, and baked.

I know that Wednesday, my dressmaker
will measure guilt in millimetres
Her tape is vastly unforgiving
the shape I’ve worked on - lost - to sin.

But what the hell, tomorrow morning
I’ll get up early and go running
or that’s the plan….. for now I reckon
I’ll take my empty plate for seconds.

Tuesday poem: House

2010-12-27T23:34:00.001+13:00

the new carpet
smells like warm ewe
you take my hand
lead me over its spine

to our bed moored
in the small
of the back

now we are riding a raft
the sky is golden cream
the sheep gently arches

outside the buses
arrive, unload, reload, depart
there’s light rain

inside we make our own weather

Tuesday Poem: Xmas by Susan Landry

2010-12-20T21:59:00.002+13:00

Susan and I are swapping poems as part of the Tuesday Poets "Secret Santa". Susan hails from Portland, Maine - so I'm very excited to be gifting poems across the other side of the world! Her poem is deceptively simple, and paints an innocent picture on the surface. But I love the way the dark and narrow "base" reveals itself to us as we read, jerking us back and then forward in time. You can read more about Susan (she does many more things than just poetry!) on her blog here. Which is also where you can find my poem, posted on her page!

Tuesday Poem: Two Minutes

2010-12-02T23:56:00.005+13:00

Two minutes
tick tock tick tock
so short a time
to remember 29 lives.

Two seconds
tick tick
five days of hope
stretching longer and longer
thinner and thinner
until

snap

And now we stand here
in the street
beside our cars
listening to birdsong

Two minutes of our lives to consider
years that others have lost
words stopped mid sentence/mid larynx/mid thought
by the sudden sharp cough of methane

No more than the earth's reflex
as we, like Maui
climb steadily along the innards
of Hine-Nui-Te-Po
seeking the black richness of her intestines
grinding out her insides
rolling in the dark muck
while some outside
chuckle over their billions
and poor people in China
wait for coal.

But to ask why
and for what
and to where
is for another day.

Today I give you two minutes of my words
to remember all those you have lost.

It was declared that today the nation would observe two minutes of silence to commemorate those lost in the Pike River explosion. I was painting the house when the radio fell silent. It seemed too short for two minutes, and soon after RadioNZ Concert announced "a return to normal programming" which included a moving clarinet concerto and a news item about how the traffic in Napier (Napier?) stopped and you could hear the birdsong. Somehow all this mixed in my head and this is the result. I performed it tonight, on K Rd, under a smooth grey sky and to the rhythm of an electric guitar and some drums.

As a matter of interest, I'm not the only one writing poems about Pike River - this effort has reached $315 on Trademe so far. Just goes to show how people still reach for poetry when it comes to expressing extreme grief or joy.

Tuesday Poem: Only Breath, by Rumi

2010-11-15T22:30:00.002+13:00

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

Translated by Coleman Barks

I was in Wellington on Sunday and went to see the exhibition on at the City Art Gallery - Roundabout. An amazing feast of ideas. My attention was caught by this poem, written on a wall in explanation of the exhibition's themes. I love the way it circles, eventually distilling its wisdom of what it means to be human.

Tuesday Poem: DIY Movember

2010-11-11T14:22:00.004+13:00

OK, so this post is a little late, but I feel justified as I've been writing a poem-a-day for a week. Well, ditties, actually. They are my tribute to my friend and fellow poet, Chris Tse, who to overcome his hereditary trichoincompetence has pledged to wear a different designer moustache every day in "Movember" and raise money to battle men's health issues. You can see his blog here. And if you click on the comments section, you'll see my silly rhymes.

I'm working in Blenheim this week and one of the galleries is showing a selection of works and words by Claire Beynon, a fellow Tuesday Poet. It's a wonderful collision/collusion of words, paint,image and idea - and there's reference to blogs, too. Check out her blog, Waters I have Known.

Tuesday Poem:Through the looking-glass

2010-11-01T23:49:00.001+13:00

mornings I wake
surrounded by shards
of mirror-glass

step backwards
into the shower
emerge from the foam
naked and once again
confused

the suit fits
but sits askew
my face different
under this sky
that tumbles pink painted blooms
onto me
as I drive to work

it seems familiar
but even the seagulls screech differently
and once more
the teeth of the sea
grin
at me
turn into tongues
waggle

say

this isn’t really your place.

Tasmania, September 2010

Tuesday Poem: Allen

2010-10-19T00:44:00.003+13:00

Brain
he treasures this
organ
even above
his stomach

tenderly grazes it
on books
teaching tapes
and ancient hi-fis

holds it like a flag
before his daughters

tells them they must
go to university
so they can care for him when he’s old.

Lung
he has made his name
by mastering
the weaknesses
of human breath

knows each rhonchi
by its sound
feels the depression
of young ribs

sits behind
his rosewood desk

knows sometimes
he can give back
the lightness of air
sometimes not.

Heart
it was a chair
so fine
it did not need
any embellishment

he touched its curves
added a cushion
for comfort
it became his throne

on long days
it called to him

when he sat down
he smelt incense
and dumplings cooking
in ancestral halls.

Liver
he left the towers
of Hong Kong
their 1970s beehives
of people

asked his lady
to trust him
found himself
with a flat tyre

on a backroad
to Pukekohe

some Maoris stopped
he was worried at first
he still hates the thought
of force-fed pavlova.

Spleen
in his daily life
he strives
for balance
and regulation

tells his three daughters
to walk every day
always to breathe
and stay happy

at night he checks email
for news of his mother

keeps his passport
nearby
knows he could leave
at any time.

Kidney
he tells his siblings
that bowels
and urine
become more important

as you age
he likes to think
they still listen
to their older brother

once a year they return
home like birds

fight like tigers
eat like pigs
kiss their mother
hope for another year.

More of my Human Archeology series, this time in honour of my dad. It was at times difficult, renegotiating the relationship between us as I gradually claimed my adulthood. But it's beeen worth it, and as I get older I realise more and more what my dad had to give up (and still deals with) to give us a life in NZ. This is posted in honour of my dad, and of the Metonymy exhibition, which has just finished with a memorable performance night.

Tuesday Poem: An open letter to Mr Peter Brown of New Zealand First

2010-10-12T17:33:00.006+13:00

Dear Mr. P. Brown,

I agree absolutely the matter of Asian immigration
Demands serious attention. After all, Mr P Brown, the true definition
Of a true blue Kiwi, like yourself, is, firstly,
A love of the All Blacks. Not in the literal sense
Unless you’re down the Loaded Hog on Friday night,
But I mean, really love the All Blacks, who were robbed
Of their right to the World Cup.

Secondly Mr P Brown, I know you can sing
The national anthem in both English and Maori
After all, true blue Kiwis like yourself, Mr P Brown,
Can. Maori is, of course -
the language of those poor bottom dwelling bastards
soon to be displaced by 'mini societies of Asians'.

And we all know the Asians rob people.
It was probably them that robbed the All Blacks.
And now they’ll rob
Those poor brown people of their rightful place to be
At the bottom of New Zealand society.
I feel your pain, I really do, Mr P Brown. I feel it here.
Better, far better, to have a flood of brown people here
than yellow.

With a name like Mr Brown, Mr P Brown, who can blame you
For being a defender of the poor oppressed in our society.
Like Winston Peters, who’s never played the race card, ever.
He’s brown. And you work with other brown people too.
They clean your office toilet, flush your shit down the loo.
An Asian cleaning your loo just wouldn’t be patriotic, would it,
Mr P Brown?

There’s no telling what the Asians would do if they became
Substantial. The greater the number,
The greater the risk.
Sell substandard goods from China?
Our Prime Minister’s only a woman,
She couldn’t tell the difference.
Real quality is Kiwi-made. Macpac packs, Pumpkin Patch.

Those Asians will never integrate.
All they’re interested in are the A’s and
Sending their kids to our best schools.
Their kids won’t ever be Kiwis.
Having them here would only cause
Division, resentment and friction. And not the kind
Of friction you get, Mr P Brown,
By putting your hands down your pants.

Oh and – you can always tell an Asian by the way they look.
They’re yellow, you see. Squinty eyes, and
always in the library. None of them can drive.
And none of them speak
English properly. That brings me to my third point –
All true blue kiwis speak English, don’t they,
Mr P Brown? Even the brown people.
They signed the Treaty in English, after all.

And my last point, the most important. A true blue
Kiwi is born here, Mr P Brown, right here on this soil,
Part of the whenua, they say. So people
Not from this land have no chance
Of integrating into our just, free, and above all,
Tolerant society. No chance at all, Mr P Brown.
I mean, we wouldn’t want a mini-London
On our hands, would we, Mr Brown?

You’re right.
There’s no telling what they’d do,
These immigrants. They should never have been allowed in.
There’s no telling what they’ll say next.

I'm obviously not done with political poetry. So I found this recently.... a poem I wrote and posted in 2008 after the (now happily silent) Peter Brown of NZ First let loose some flatulent comments regarding Asian immigration. Unlike the current limp-wristed response, his comments immediately and deservedly drew a retort from media and National party members. I ended up performing this poem a lot - always to a delighted and sympathetic response.

Don't get mad, get writing

2010-10-07T14:43:00.002+13:00

Have to say something for Paul Henry. He's done a great job of getting me riled up and off my arse to write. Here's a blog just posted for The Big Idea - in which I discuss what role artists and poets have in responding to current events. And that last poem was fun, but not nearly as cathartic as I'd like. I feel a rant slam poem coming on.

A conversation with a man at an avocado stall in Coffs Harbour Australia

2010-10-06T21:39:00.003+13:00

Me: Those look nice.

Man (interrupting excitedly): Mandarin!

ME: huh? No. The avocados...

Man: (pointing) No? No. Cantonese.

Me: I just want one avo...

Man: (stabbing with one finger) Fujian!

pause.

Me: Er.

Why would you think I was from Fujian?

Man: Oh, well there's this guy at work, see. Mr Lee. He's from Fujian. He doesn't speak Cantonese or Mandarin, he speaks Fujian...nese.

Strained pause.

Er right, fifty cents.

Me: Thanks.

Man: Shie-shie.

Me: Um, I can't remember the right response...

Man: Never mind, jie jen, see you again.

Me: Er, um ok, see you again.

Tuesday Poem - It’s just a laugh

2010-10-05T16:00:00.005+13:00

Paul’s such a dag, he’s such a lark

He’s never serious, never thinks

Why get so mad it’s just a laugh

You PC types are all so daft

It’s light relief – no call to think

Paul’s such a dag, he’s such a lark

Don’t blame it on the TV staff

They don’t like audiences to think

Why get so mad it’s just a laugh

Don’t let those cheeky darkies start

Their claims that Kiwis need to think

Paul’s such a dag, he’s such a lark

Immigrants like him? Pure class

It’s guys like him who make us think

But don’t be mad it’s just a laugh

The world’s a place that’s far too hard

I’d like to teach my kids to think

Paul’s such a dag, he’s such a lark

Why get so mad it’s just a laugh

Ironic that one of my first attempts at a villanelle (one of the more intellectual and difficult forms) would be prompted by Paul Henry, but that's what indignant anger will do! I thought the villanelle would be a good form because of its repetition. It also gives me an excuse to post a (hand covers mouth) rhyming poem, something which seems oddly appropriate for a poem about TV.

In case you haven't been following, English immigrant Paul Henry, host of TVNZ's Breakfast programme, asked John Key yesterday on live TV whether our Governor General, NZ-born Sir Anand Satanyand, was "even a New Zealander". Our valiant PM's only response was a weak laugh. Apart from a villanelle, my response is a strangled Gaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

Tuesday Poem: Epiglottitis

2010-09-29T00:51:00.004+13:00

who swallowed a cherry, my
pretty, who swallowed a cherry?

all night
they watched her
while her throat narrowed
to the size of a bullet.

the tongue of the clock
was pulled out by time.
the hands slid to the ground
and lay there, exhausted.

the silken arytenoids
in the forbidden castle
were drawn closed,
a curtain.

in the dimmed drawn breath
of the hospital room,
the flower children watched
their garlands wither.

four men came to see
the golden-haired princess.
they knelt down on top of her
and fed her life through a tiny tube.

they plucked her cherry
out by the pip
and pipped death
at the post,

they gave her the kiss of life,
and the princess awoke.

In one of the stranger reversals of my writing career so far, the above poem was recently published as a case report in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, complete with a picture and commentary by a distinguished infectious diseases expert. I wrote the poem a few years ago after seeing a real case.

Tuesday poem

2010-09-21T01:33:00.001+12:00

I'm the editor of the TP hub this week, so no poem from me - but please enjoy Doug's!

Tuesday Poem: Mark

2010-09-13T23:45:00.005+12:00

Brain

some days
she’d get lost
in the twists
of his gyri

other days
she’d direct
and he’d refuse
to follow

navigation was never
her strong point anyway

but it was worth it
for the days
they both went
in the same direction.

Lung

once he could run
for hours
beyond the streets
of Blockhouse Bay

breath rolling
in and out
of the bellows
knees like pistons

but these days he’s
feeling his advanced age

of thirty three
says he’ll marry her
since he can’t run
any more.

Heart

in his
house
there are
four rooms

one for sitting still
one for walking
one for sleeping
one for standing

the pigeons throw
shadows on the walls

he sees the wallpaper
is faded
knows it’s time
to change it

Liver

he likes watching
new shoots
unfurl from the earth
feels them moving

feels
spring kicking
as he runs
through puddles

feels as if he holds
the earth in his arms

knows he’ll fight
with his life
to watch her
bud.

Spleen
outside
their new house
there’s a puriri tree
with a broken swing

a letterbox
and two ducks
who may one day
make ducklings

his mother approves
of all these details

he wonders
whether a bunny
would fit
on the lawn.

Kidney
they don’t agree
about the dog
or the tiles
in their kitchen

he doesn’t agree
with her taste
for the wedding
but he doesn’t say

what matters is the way
she moves her mouth

on his lips
the pigeons perve
through the window
as they strip.

This is one of the sets of sonnets for my project with artist Paul Woodruffe, selected for Metonymy 2010. Our project, called Human Archaeology, investigates the layers of history around each individual, and the stories they tell about themselves and the people close to them. There are ten slipcast ceramic figures in all - two representing myself and Paul, and the rest representing people dear to us - "companion figures", if you like. Mark is my fiance.
People are encouraged to "excavate" the mummies, delving past the surface and into their cavities where they will find these poems. If you're in Auckland, please visit the exhibition at Corban Estate Arts Centre in Henderson - there are 25 works where an artist has worked with a poet or writer to produce a completely new piece - all very different and surprising! And 56 pairs worked together in total - some of the pairs also produced performances which will be showcased in their lovely ex-church, on Saturday 16th Oct.
Please go to Tuesday Poem for more poetic goodness!!

Thanks Tim!!

2010-09-10T00:47:00.002+12:00

The wonderful Tim Jones, a great poet, writer and community enabler (even if he is from Wellington!) has published an interview with me. He was incredibly patient - waited a whole 6 months for my answers - but thanks to his persistence, I had to think very hard about my writing and direction. Thanks Tim! His blog is here - a very interesting collection of articles about writing, science fiction, and the environment.

that old Asian-Western dichotomy

2010-09-10T00:28:00.003+12:00

Been reading a beautifully written article by Vietnamese-American writer Andrew Lam (thanks Karlo Mila for bringing it to my attention!) I think a lot of what he says about Asian parents pushing their children towards a more professionally "secure" future is true - to an extent. Last week kiwi novellist and poet Alison Wong, in her acceptance speech for the NZ Post Book Award for Fiction, said that she initially disappointed her parents by becoming a writer (although no doubt they are very proud now). As I've found with my parents, they worry, not because they are ashamed of having an artist in the family (I'm definitely not the first), but because they come from a background of having lost everything and knowing the value of a professional degree.

The reason I quibble is that I think we are moving out of that generation now. I mix with a lot of fresh, joyously vibrant 20-somethings (and feel old and somewhat like I'm hiding my true age sometimes). Many of them are doing arts as their first career choice and have supportive, proud parents.

My parents are supportive too - in a slightly confused way - they're still not too sure about the path I'm taking, but they see that it makes me happy. I'm also different to Andrew and Alison in that I did actually take the professional path first. And that wasn't due to goading from my parents (although people assume that all the time). I really wanted to be a paediatrician, I chased the dream and enjoyed it, and it was only after I knew I'd get there that I realised I needed something else too.

So... are Asian artists more tortured than Western artists on this? I don't really think so, particularly not today. We're still underepresented in the NZ arts community, but rapidly growing as a group, and in a diverse range of fields. Yay!

Tuesday Poem: Big

2010-08-17T20:12:00.002+12:00

This is the Big country
crammed into a small island

Big trucks on Big roads
drawing tight bands
across the belly of the land,
land that shudders
at the memory
of natives driven to destruction
trees this year
not people
not this election year.

Big heaters and Big power bills
to keep those home fires burning
Big people in Big houses
staring at the empty sea,
minds constricted
by all this space.

Tuesday crept up on me so apologies for posting a 'raw' poem which still needs a little baking. I've been working on the northern coast of Tasmania recently, and this poem explains a little of what I've been hearing and feeling - it's a lovely coastal spot, but marred by history and the fact that the big multinationals still have so much power here. They're pulping the native forests and mining in the National Park and the majority of the local population seem more interested in talking about their new cars and houses. I suppose NZ's not much better...

Tuesday poem: Body

2010-08-09T17:52:00.003+12:00

I've just joined a new online poetry group, Tuesday poem . It's a wonderful way to get a fresh injection of poetic energy going into midweek (though I can't remember the last time I worked a "normal" 40-hour week). And for those of us with lazy poetic bones, it's a great stimulus for a stretch!

So: here's my inaugural 'Tuesday poem': actually a set of six sonnets, written as part of a larger project studying the archaeology of the person.

Brain
you swim
between islands
dive for words
sunken treasure

read the pulsation
of jellyfish
forget you can’t
breathe underwater

what you call memories
others call dreams

sometimes
you reach out
too far
and wake.

Lung
she once learnt
to tell the direction
of the wind
by wetting her finger

holding it up
to the sky
trying to understand
what cold was

now she’s been
to Antarctica

but still
she finds
most navigation
difficult.

Heart
she learnt
the valves
are tethered
like parachutes

that heart attacks
called infarctions
sound like
rude noises

that blood must balance
on both sides

and that
a healthy heart
tilts face upwards
like a question.

Liver
inside the liver
there are many suns
an inland river
ships and towns

factories and abattoirs
smelters and
storage towers
for sugar

a small girl standing
at a frosted window

her finger
drawing
a smiley face
on glass.

Spleen
that first day
she stood alone
in the playground
wet the wood chips

the following week
some big boys
pushed her
she lost her first tooth

after that she learnt
to keep her mouth shut

swallowed
her words whole
later spat them out
in silence.

Kidney
the principle of
countercurrent
exchange is like
two lovers kissing

talking
in tongues
limbs looped
in anticipation

the old Toyota
a warm uterus

to grow
new fruit
new dreams
new life.

Visit Tuesday Poem for more poetic lusciousness...

The Sir Peter Blake Emerging Leader Awards

2010-07-03T23:26:00.005+12:00

With the other Emerging Leaders and the Blake Medallist, Ray Avery.

With my personal spy, Mark

A couple of months ago I received a phone call at work from one Sir Ron Carter, one of NZ's iconic leaders. The news he had for me was (he said)very exciting but also top secret - so secret that even the hotel room was booked for me under a different name. But now the secret is out and I can reveal that I am a Sir Peter Blake Emerging Leader for 2010.

This is an important milestone, not only because I get a nice heavy trophy (for a rock it's very pretty) but because it's made me realise that I am being watched. Not in an uh-oh way, a nice way. Both my old school and my old university nominated me for this award. And though I'm still not sure what made them pick me over thousands of other achievers (was it the unusual arts-medicine work? the community involvement? the interesting path I took?), I am very, very grateful that people were looking out for me.

The wait gave me time to adjust my thinking. I was feeling weirded out for a while, and worried that the exposure from the award would affect the way I work. But now I've decided to think of it as a tap on the back. "You've been noticed, now step up and do some work."

There are a number of cool things I'm discovering. First, the award gives me a label. I'm now an "Emerging Leader", as identified by a nationally respected Panel. Though some aspects of that elitism sit about as uncomfortably as the corset I wore under my formal dinner gown, it does mean that people have some way to relate to me. This was illustrated by a "Women in Leadership" cocktail party I attended on Wednesday, in which I felt completely foreign. Nearly every other woman in the room was a CEO or high powered politician. They seemed puzzled that I was there, even though I'd taken off my scarf and had the foresight to put on makeup. But I was tailed around the room by the St Cuths staff (who were acting like proud mother hens) and when they introduced me to these powerful women as a Sir Peter Blake Emerging Leader, the fog cleared and everyone started talking to me. Bingo! The award is like being given the keys to a different part of the house, one I never really thought of exploring before. But it only opens the doors. I still have to walk through.

The second cool thing is that I get to talk. And I do like to talk. Apparently I'll start getting asked to go to schools and organisations to talk about leadership. I'm not exactly an expert(I've never really studied it). But the 'label' will give me the kind of believability that is also a huge responsibility. Yikes. As I said, I do like to talk, especially to kids, and watch them watch me openmouthed that a woman who moves her face so much when she talks could also be a leader... um, right, I'll stop talking now.

Posh Awards dinner - "after" photo

Pecha Kucha presentation 2010 - The writer's toolbox

2010-06-10T00:14:00.011+12:00

Following are the images and words from my presentation at the NZ Book Council Pecha Kucha night in Feb. (It's taken me ages to get around to typing them out). It was the second one I’d attended, the first I’d presented at. I wasn’t prepared for what I found at Galatos –a long queue of punters at the door (some were ended up being turned away), and inside the place already packed to capacity with chairs, floor space, walls and stairs all being used as places to sit or lean and people squashed elbow to elbow. Luckily Suzanne of the Book Council spotted me and pushed/pulled/dragged me through the crush to the reserved sanctuary near the front, and I felt rather small when I saw who else I was speaking alongside. It was like taking a huge hit from a wall of energy when I stood up to speak – I’ve hardly ever seen a NZ audience so engaged. Hurray for rock star moments!

NB: What I've posted below are my notes. In reality it went so fast I had no time to look down, so here's what I actually said....

Intro
I have a split personality. Sometimes I’m a poet, sometimes a short story writer, sometimes a performer, occasionally a novelist. Sometimes I’m a paediatrician and sometimes a researcher. You might think it’s difficult doing all these things but actually they support and enhance each other. I think of each skill as an item in a toolbox – so for each story or situation, I pick the best tool (or two.). Today I’d like to share a few waypoints on my personal journey, and show you some of my favourite tools.

1. My career as an artist is only three years old. Three years ago, I experienced an awakening – of sorts. Like many, it was triggered by a personal tragedy. After a period of numbness, I responded by trying to find the stories in my life that would hold me together.

2. So this is my crazy family – like all families, they are beautiful, mysterious, demanding, frustrating and energising – often all at the same time. This picture was taken by me on the day my nephew took his first steps. It was also a day when my family came together to celebrate the impending marriage of my youngest sister. And for me as a writer, this is where my stories start – the family.

3. And the female relationships in my family are often the most interesting. This is a recent photo of my aunty feeding my grandmother, who’s in her 90s. On my aunty’s lap is my grandmother’s great grandchild. In the background is my younger sister. So there are four generations of women in this photo. I’ve found that again and again I’m drawn to exploring interrelationships and the ties that bind – willingly or unwillingly. The bloodlines and what draws us together, as families, as humans.

4. So the first tool I discovered was poetry – on the page. I started making small chapbooks. This one was a family affair – with drawings by my sister and nephew, and poems about my family.

5. And I also found poetry – in performance. This is Tim Heath, one of my friends, in full performance mode at Poetry Live. He’s competing in one of the regular Poetry Slams. Poetry Live has been around in Auckland for thirty years and isn’t going away anytime soon! Currently it’s on at the Thirsty Dog in K’Rd on Tuesday nights starting at 8 pm – I’d encourage you to go along.

6. So then I discovered theatre. Here’s Jin Wenxin as the Daughter in Mask, the first of my short plays to be professionally produced in the Manawatu Festival of New Arts in 2008. As the playwright, I was inspired by the storytelling traditions of traditional Chinese Opera, although my knowledge of this is still from the position of an outsider. It helped me understand how to explore intergenerational relationships through the language of vision and movement as well as words – a new tool for my writer’s box.

7. This led to Lantern, my first full length play, produced in 2009. Unsurprisingly, it’s a family drama – based on a NZ-Chinese family. In the process of writing this play I was able to play with a multistranded, multicharacter approach to storytelling, over a longer period of time. I learnt ‘on the job’ how to construct narrative which benefited the novel I’d begun in 2007.

8. I also learnt about collaboration, in this case with a director and actors – leaving the space for others to ‘complete the gesture’. Here, Andy Wong and Li-Ming Hu embody a young NZ couple. I learnt how rehearsal needs a collaborative approach, but with recognised roles.

9. Collaboration also happens with the audience in theatre – in fact community involvement in storytelling is one thing that makes a story more powerful. This picture is of the Lantern Project, in which members of the public were encouraged to leave their own poems written on paper lanterns. Eventually over 400 small lanterns, with poems, covered the walls in The Basement theatre foyer. It was easy to get that many poems – stories need to be told.

10. There’s also a lot of collaboration within the arts community. This picture is from Metonymy, an “artistic blind dating” service dreamed up with fellow poet Christian Jensen and artists Hannah May Thompson and Makyla Curtis. We matched 33 pairs of artists and poets in both our first and second years, resulting in two well attended exhibitions, several new books, and a number of enduring partnerships.

11. Workshops and teaching have been another new skill set. Whenever I’ve been out at schools and the community to teach, I’ve found that the learning is two-way. Here some kids at the Glen Innes school holiday program at Youthtown do “visual poetry” in the form of chalking stories about themselves.

12. And there’s also performance in collaboration. During the People in Your Neighbourhood (2009) project organised by the British Council NZ, I had a brief moment as a rock star while performing with ghuzheng player Yao Chen and the UK-based Urban Soul orchestra. Here’s a picture of me performing at WOMAD to a crowd of over 5,000. The track – spoken word, traditional Chinese instrumentals and Western orchestrals – features on a CD and album downloadable free from the British Council website.

13. I find writing in collaboration very satisfying. Here I am with Robbie Ellis, Catherine Norton and Frances Moore, at the Bay of Islands Arts Festival a few weeks ago. Robbie set some of the poems from Banana, the chapbook I showed earlier, to music. Just to show we’re into mixing it up culturewise: the premiere of Seven Banana Songs took place in an 140 year old Anglican church, with a Chinese-kiwi poet and western composer and singer.

14. In my most recent project, I’ve found all these ‘tools’ coming together. This picture from historical archives shows survivors from the SS Ventnor, which was wrecked off the coast of the Hokianga harbour in 1902. The ship carried an unusual cargo – 499 coffins of Chinese who had come to NZ to work but had died before they could be repatriated to their home villages.

15. When I was exploring the strands of this story, I found myself back at the bloodlines – the ties that bind and connect us. This is an image used for promoting The Bonefeeder which is by Nagpuhi, Irish and Scottish artist Penny Howard – who traces her bloodlines back to the Hokianga. Penny and I met on Metonymy.

16. The Bonefeeder is the story of a young man who travels to the Hokianga in search of his great great grandfather’s bones. The play was first produced at the end of last year at Auckland University, and this picture shows Mike Ginn in the title role with Ben Teh as his much older relative…

17. …and the ghosts of dead miners haunting their every (mis)step. This project added another tool to my toolbox – direction. I was able to experiment with the traditions of Asian theatre and European forms such as Greek theatre, as well as physical theatre.

18. Doing this, I found out how to write poetry without words. Theatre is poetry on stage as well as on the page – working with all the elements – lighting, costumes, actors’ bodies.

19. I also collaborated with live musicians – a group called New Nature who I’d met through the People In Your Neighbourhood Project – and composer Andrew Correa. We’re currently excited about rehearsing for an outside ‘promenade’ version of the play, to be performed at the Hamilton Summer Gardens Arts Festival.

20. And this is my last image – a new baby awakening the stories and memories of her great grandmother. It’s a reminder that all the tools of a writer are no use without a story that matters. These are (for me) all family stories at their heart - The Bone Feeder is a ghost story that turned after several rewrites into a family drama.

Metonymy 2010

2010-06-07T19:40:00.002+12:00

It's official and we've started getting the word out: Metonymy 2010 collabrations happen next month, with exhibtions and performances September to October. For those who don't know, this is a creative collaboration aimed at creating new links between artistic disciplines - everyone who's serious about making good writing or art is welcome! http://metonymy.weebly.com/

Emerging Pacific Leaders' Dialogue, March 2010

2010-04-04T00:39:00.002+13:00

There were 130 of us, from 22 Pacific nations.

Princess Anne came to the closing plenary in Tonga, to watch and comment on our presentations.

The Fiji Study group presentation - a series of devised monologues with choreographed "dance" (I directed).

Baby Boa! (I liked - but not so everyone in my group).

Sweet arch...in a tunnel of sugar cane

Our welcome kava ceremony in Fiji.

The amazing, cool and totally wonderful Fiji Study group!!

The Bone Feeder - story on Asia Downunder

2010-03-29T10:57:00.001+13:00

On the road

2010-01-31T22:54:00.001+13:00

On Friday morning, I got up early, squashed the last few items into my suitcase, drove to the hospital, handed in my loan car keys, did the morning ward round, handed out some boxes of thank-you chocolates and left for Timaru airport. Seven hours and three planes later, I was in Kerikeri in the Far North, being the “walker” on stage for Nimby Opera’s lighting plot.

Being “on tour” with an opera company (for one leg of their North island tour) has been both serene and fun. As was the case initially with the People in Your Neighbourhood tour last year, I feel I’m here on false pretences, as I’m not actually performing. ( I did actually perform at WOMAD in the end.) Some of my “Banana” poems have been turned into a song cycle by a Wellington composer (and friend), Robbie Ellis. The world premiere took place today, at a 140 year old Anglican Church, the Anglican Mission Church in Waimate North.

Robbie and I deliberately didn't communicate over the score and the first time I heard it was today. I admit to being a bit nervous, but I shouldn't have been. Robbie did a very sensitive job of interpretation and I even found myself in tears at the first song, which was about my grandmother's slow slide into dementia. The audience (mainly well heeled retirees) were quite responsive too, although the music wasn't always the "classical" fare they were used to (Robbies sudden appearance in a spiderman costume at the end of the last song bing a case in point).

Yet another type of collaboration I have experienced, now. It's exciting and rewarding.. though I can't help feeling like I did no work, seeing as most of the poems were written 2-3 years ago.

Cooking in Space

2010-01-06T16:59:00.009+13:00

I'm currently working about halfway down the East coast of the South Island. Timaru is one of those places which rates its attractiveness by how close it is to cool places(Hamilton and Palmerston North are others - sorry if any patriots are reading.) But truly, it is quite charming to be in a small town miles from anywhere else. There are certain advantages - but more about that in a future post!

One of the 'nearby' attractions is Mt Cook, NZ's tallest mountain, only 2 1/2 hours away and therefore irresistable... and there's a salmon farm on the way there, too. So that was where I went on Jan 4 which in the warped world of the salaried worker is a stat day off. It's picture-postcard landscape, especially the McKenzie Country (named for a famous cattle rustler/honest drover, depending on which history you read). At this time of year, the road verges are awash in iridescent blue lupins, fluffy sheep and alpacas (yes, alpacas) roam the pastures and the tussock waves golden from the clifftops. Get the picture? That's no match for the blueness of the lakes though - too cold to swim in but that doesn't matter. I swam with my eyes instead.

Despite the utter beauty of the mountains, it turned out to be a day spent thinking about even bigger things - space. There's a planetarium at Mt Cook, useful because the Big Boy is famed for its grumpy weather and there has to be something else for all those camera-toting tourists to do. We arrived while it was blowsy and raining, so we sheltered under the big dome which shows movies about outer space.

Space is amazing. Space is immense. Space is disturbingly wonderful because at a certain stage my brain is turned inside-out from thinking about all the big numbers and apparent contradictions in astrophysics. I mean, when someone is explaining it with plenty of metaphors, I get it, but there's only so much meningeal trampolining that can take place before my mind spits it back out. But I really like the exercise.

Anyway. To the point of this apparently random post. As I was watching these movies, and later that night when we were standing on top of a hill beside Lake Tekapo peering at the universe through telescopes, I started to think about my place in all of this. And what my characters would do if they were confronted by the enormity of space and the smallness of their own existence.

To a certain extent, I work by splitting off parts of myself and animating my own characters (sounds like sci-fi horror I know), so really this was about what I do when confronted by how small my place in the world is. The reaction differs depending on my mood, but it's also driven by my underlying character, which is turn is shaped by my experiences (which I can sometimes influence) and my genetics (which I can't).

Looking at Mt Cook reminded me of a past experience which has influenced me a lot, although I often forget it. My close childhood friend, Lizzy, died while climbing Mt Cook. I was 23 when I heard she'd fallen on the descent from the summit. A few days later I received the postcard she'd sent from Mt Cook village before setting out. And at the funeral her parents passed onto me two things: a gold plated brooch of an ice axe Lizzy had owned and a photograph processed from the camera found with her body. In the photo Liz, sitting on the summit, is watching the sun blush on the white slopes below her. Her face is turned towards the camera and she has an expression of fulfilment.

Liz was an adventurer in the fullest sense of the word. Throughout our childhood and early adulthood she'd astounded me by how she ran at things (sometimes carrying me literally on her back). We must have looked an odd pair, seeing as she was strongly built, good at sport and about a head taller than me. She seemed to have an effortless energy when it came to doing things she wanted to do, not merely dreaming about them. And so, staring at that last picture of hers, I decided to take her as an example and do the same.

I'm proud to say that lot of the big things I've done since then bear her mark. Most of the big backpacker trips, across Europe, Asia and South America, were influenced by the thought of what she would have dared to do. And, even if I didn't literally think "what would Lizzy have done?", probably most of my life changes (such as taking up writing) were probably born out of what by now had become my own habit. So thank you Lizzy, and thanks for showing me how.

The Milky way, from the top of Mt John, Lake Tekapo

Hamilton Gardens - first working shots

2010-01-02T18:18:00.004+13:00

After spending New Year's day travelling down South, I'm now back in Timaru enjoying a (so far) benign on-call. Since I have to be within 15 mins of the hospital, the easiest thing to do is stay in the motel, taking advantage of free broadband and my still-smooth and shiny albeit not so new Macbook pro. And update my blogs a little.

So here are some photos I prepared earlier... about two weeks ago in fact. Don't worry, marination of the ingredients for this long is intended. I made a "field trip" to the Chinese Scholar's Garden in Hamilton and took these working shots so that I know what environments I'm writing The Bone Feeder (promenade version) for. It's pretty exciting to have access to a garden, especially one as obviously wandering as this one... fun!

Incidentally I paid a visit to the new Dunedin Chinese Gardens yesterday. They too are very impressive - it's easy to see why they cost $9 million - given they were constructed in their entirety on a site near Shanghai before being broken up, shipped over and reassembled by the original Chinese artisans. Not so these gardens in Hamilton, but the same sentiments, ideals and design concepts nonetheless went into their making. These Chinese gardens on the other side of the world have a special significance to the world of my play, being made by people with a deep longing for the culture and refinements of the place they come from but nonetheless determined to make a place for themselves in their new home.

Resolutions, Resolutions.

2009-12-31T16:26:00.008+13:00

So, it's another year (another decade in fact). This time ten years ago I was with my partner, Casey, and some friends to welcome in the new Millennium. We were confident that Y2K wasn't going to hit, that the world as we knew it would go on and we believed in the lasting power of friendship. That evening we used my trusty old Toyota, Helga, to get to one of the world's most beautiful west-facing beaches, Piha. As the sun went down we fired Roman candles into the sky, made sand-fairies and stayed up playing board games all night. Before dawn we drove to eastern-facing Long Bay to watch the sun rise. It felt raw and new then, the clouds searing apricot-pink on my retina, despite the fact it was just another day.

Fast forward and now Helga is gone and I'm on to my fourth car. The world's future is pretty uncertain. Casey is gone too, leaving me pushing words in his wake. I have found a new love, who is with me now. It feels so good to hold him and feel his solidity, his realness. My friendships remain, so at least I was right about one thing.

I promised that before the start of this next year, I would make a list of things I would prioritise. Not saying yes to every opportunity that comes my way has been one of the hardest skills for me to learn, and it's fair to say that I'm still learning. But this last year has been hectic, too hectic most likely, and I need to slow a little and take time for the important projects. So here they are:

1. My play, The Bone Feeder.
2. My novel, The Colour of Rice.
3. Working as a researcher and writing papers in Growing Up in NZ.
4. Working as a paediatrician.

I think that's enough, although there are a few small writing and organising projects I've already promised people. I hope they will be just that, small and time-limited. That I will have enough discipline to work on the big (and daunting) things, to do them justice. And that at some stage in the next 24 hours I will have a few moments to sit on a beach, listen to the sea, and ponder.

Deboning The Bone Feeder

2009-12-29T16:25:00.006+13:00

So, after three years of being haunted by the story of the SS Ventnor, I am taking my project to the next stage. I'm currently working on a redraft of the play that was presented in October at the uni (it seems so long ago already!). Once again I've managed to open my big mouth and now it seems the play is going, in less than two months, to Hamilton, Masterton, Palmerston North, and Hokianga.

Of course, like most things I do, 'touring' is far simpler to arrange than to actually do. It sounded so cool at the time. Of course all the actors said yes. But now, with some actual funding in my bank account and bits of half-written media pitches already floating in my brain (yes I'm your typical multitasking producer), I'm back to the far more basic problem of restructuring the play so it will a) be a cracking yarn and b) hold up in all the venues. While there's afternoon blue sky and South Island green outside, I'm stuck at dawn in a howling gale in the Far North.

I promised myself at least an hour (hopefully more) of writing per day over the 'holiday' season. But so far instead of facing my fears and just opening up that document, I've been boning up on my dramatic writing theory with the help of an over 60 year old writing manual, The Art of Dramatic Writing, by Lajos Egri. It was recommended to me by my new director, Simon Zhou, and it has the advantage of looking like a hefty tome (so one looks intelligent with it on a desk)but being relatively easy to digest.

In fact, like many good textbooks, most of its advice is strikingly familiar. I'm sure I've heard a lot of its ideas come out of the mouths of theatre gurus (and I don't mean that sarcastically at all) who have advised me in the past. Things like a good scene should contain conflict and characters must be three-dimensional and always be growing. And then it goes on to show, in steps, how this should be easy, not difficult, to attain and so for now I am full of hope. But still I'm scared of opening up that bloody Word document. It's far easier to eat strawberries al fresco on my balcony and pretend I never said anything about a tour.

Wish me luck.....

Small town moments

2009-12-24T21:51:00.006+13:00

Old granny in fishnets dismounting taxi in front of restaurant: check.
Two tiny Asian kids setting up a giant chessboard: check.
And 30 minutes later one putting the other into checkmate: check.
Kid in waiting room with cigarette filter up nostril: check.
Anxious looking guy in black singlet inspecting meringue cases at supermarket: check.

Writer in disguise: priceless.

Christmas Song

2009-12-24T13:46:00.003+13:00

Ah, Christmas. My family have always observed the rituals patchily. The religious aspects tend to be lost on us (although one year I attended midnight mass in Hong Kong with my mum, a lapsed Catholic, and was pleased to be able to recognise the hymns). I almost snort as I pass the TV playing crass commercials. But it's insidious. Social pressure, no matter how subtle and invisible to everyone except myself, wins and once again I have wrapped presents. And tonight among other things I'll probably pick up some chocolate for doing the rounds when I see rellies on Boxing day.

I'm in Timaru at the moment, by the way. It's become a habit to land myself in small town oases during the festive season and work in their hospitals over Xmas, something I enjoy (and given the options - hopefully this won't offend any of my rellies reading this - it's a good way to occupy my time over the 'festive'season.)

Anyway - what a long introduction. Here's the poem.

Christmas song

Birds quibble and chitter outside my room
The breeze weaves ribbons through the sun
Trees on fire with red red blooms -
As one more year is finally done.

The breeze weaves ribbons through the sun
Inside, the telly shouts and storms
As one more year is finally done,
We're told to buy, it is the norm.

Inside, the telly shouts and storms
Strawberries this year are unusually huge
We're told to buy, it is the norm
This warmish weather's such a boon

Strawberries this year are unusually huge
But dams are dry, the rivers low
This warmish weather's such a boon
We'll get through this, we always do.

But dams are dry, the rivers low
The hottest summer in bloody years
We'll get through this, we always do,
We live in Godzone, don't you fear.

The hottest summer in bloody years
In Europe they're dying from the cold
We live in Godzone, don't you fear
And she'll be right, the saying goes.

In Europe they're dying from the cold
Samoa, homeless survivors still bleed
But she'll be right, the saying goes
There's time- and presents under the tree.

Samoa, homeless survivors still bleed
Australian bushfires year after year
There's time- and presents under the tree,
Just close your eyes and don't you fear.

Australian bushfires year after year
Trees on fire with red red blooms
Just close your eyes and don't you fear,
Birds quibble and chitter outside my room.

Bone Feeder - show announcement!!

2009-09-10T00:37:00.001+12:00

The Bone Feeder

How far would you go to find your family?

In 1902, the SS Ventnor sank in the Hokianga Harbour with the bones of 499 Chinese miners bound for ancestral graves in Canton. A century later Ben, a young man, arrives in the Far North to try to find some link with his past. He finds more than just restless spirits….

Place: University of Auckland Drama Studio, level 3, Arts 1
14A Symonds St
Time and dates: 7.30 pm 30 Sep, 1 + 3 Oct, 4 pm 3 + 4 Oct
Cost: $15/$10
Book: 09 373 7599 x 84226

Writer/Director Renee Liang
Musical director Andrew Corrêa
Music by New Nature

when art and computers collide....

2009-08-03T15:23:00.001+12:00

I sound so wise.

2009-08-03T14:42:00.003+12:00

An interview recorded last month and now playing on Creative Momentum.

Thanks to Janette Searle and Philip Patston for some judicious editing to make me sound more fluent than I actually am!!
And now, to actually use some of that 'process' and 'structure' I keep going on about.... my friend joked the other day that I need a PA. I'm beginning to think that might not be a bad idea! (I think they are otherwise known as boyfriends.)

My Ordinary Life

2009-07-09T01:52:00.006+12:00

Renee: Hello?

Occupational Health Gimp: Hello, may I speak to Dr -er- Lee-ung?

R: This is me.

OHG:Lovely, right er - (in tone of great concern) how are you feeling?

R: What? Um - Who are you?

OHG: Occupational Health. From XXXX Hospital.

R: Oh, er - hi.

OHG. I'm calling regarding patient Gillywig, who you saw on the weekend. Do you recall this patient?

R: Um. Possibly. There were quite a few. Patients. On the weekend.

OHG: Ah, yes. Teehee. Well, Patient Gillywig has been diagnosed with the H1N1 virus.

R: Ah.

OHG: Were you aware that this patient has been diagnosed with the swine flu?

R: Not really.

OHG: Do you remember this patient? To jog your memory, this patient had: cough, fever, muscle pains and joint ache.

R: Sounds unique.

OHG: Pardon?

R: Nothing. Maybe I remember them.

OHG: So when you saw this patient, did you: a.) wear a mask, gown or gloves?

R: Um..No.

OHG: b.) Did you stay a distance of one metre or more from the patient, at all times?

R: Well I did examine the patient.

OHG: So did you stay a distance of one metre or more from the patient?

R: Well, I examined them.

OHG: Ah.
(confused silence).

R: No.

OHG: (triumphantly) So then you are a close contact of the patient.

R: If you say so.

a beat.

OHG: (writing) 'Close Contact'.

R: So, um, what happens now?

OHG: Pardon? Oh, er nothing.

R: Do I have to get swabbed?

OHG: Oh, no no no, we're not doing that kind of thing anymore. The Department of Health no longer requires it, it's become such a common illness.

a pause.

R: Well.. do you need to do anything else with me? Because um.. I'd better get on.

OHG: What? Oh, er, no. I just write down that I've talked to you.

R: And that's all?

OHG: Yes, that's all.

Lantern - Auckland Season

2009-07-05T23:35:00.004+12:00

digital schizophrenia

2009-07-05T23:02:00.006+12:00

So er - yes, it's been a while since I've updated this!! Good intentions notwithstanding. Since the last time I blogged I've put on a play, written two more and been in a couple of art exhbitions. I've also spent much more time working on reviews and my "official blog" than on this wee labour of love.

Blogging for different reasons is an interesting topic. It brings out varying 'digital persona' (the whole discussion about digital identity and how we manufacture it for the web is an old topic, right? But perpetually fascinating. We love to talk about how we talk about ouselves.)

So yes, I write differently on The Big Idea than I do on this blog, even though to a certain extent I'm blogging about the same topic. But on my "official" blog, I'm aware of two differences. Firstly, that I've been invited to blog because of who/what I represent (emerging artists) and secondly that the readership frame is slightly different, more "serious artists", though it probably overlaps quite a bit.

Blogging there has changed blogging here, though. I'm now more aware of who reads this.... and that I have no idea who this 'who' is. While this blog started as a place for me to let it all hang out - in a literary sense - now I'm aware of pulling back a bit, even as I know I don't want to. Sad but ... ah maybe I'll have to go back to the paper diary for the real gritty uncleaned stuff, and burn it before I die. Old fashioned but traditional.

Anyway I meant to note that I'm quite tired, because I've been at work all weekend wearing my doctor persona. Driving home, I had the strangest feeeling sneak up on me - all I wanted to do was shut the door of my room and watch DVDs for hours and hours until I fell asleep. It might be strange that this is strange, seeing as this is what lots of people do all the time. But usually my head is too full of creative must-dos (not as glamorous as it sounds - mainly emails or redrafts), so I feel like I'm wasting time with movies or DVDs. Sometimes even the invitation to an evening watching mindless DVDs with friends has me worrying that I'd spend it instead silently frustrated, that time was slipping away. (what's wrong with a nice dinner instead, and real conversation?) Yes, misguided perhaps. Shallowness has its place, we all need to switch off sometimes.

Hmmm so a thought - being currently and temporarily of the full-time worker ilk, would this eventually turn me into a DVD watching automaton with 'no time' for writing?

Calling all poets

2009-05-23T20:08:00.000+12:00

On the fifteenth day after the start of the Chinese New Year, streets throughout China are festooned in traditional lanterns. Crowds wander the streets to read poetry written on the glowing paper. Some of the poems are riddles to tease, others wishes for prosperity or tributes to love. In some parts of China, young men who write their poems on a lantern may find themselves admired by appreciative young ladies, thus the alternative name for this day, Chinese Valentine’s Day.

In the spirit of poetry and love, The Basement will become host to hundreds of tiny lanterns during the run of Lantern, my new play. From June 8-13 the public will be able to admire poems on paper lanterns, written by poets in Wellington (where the play premiered in April) and Auckland. They will then be able to immortalise their own thoughts in poetry and scribe the results on a paper lantern, to be displayed throughout the run of Lantern.

I am wanting poems from all and sundry!! The paper lanterns are tiny so couplets are ideal. Or you could just send me extracts of longer poems. Please be aware that due to the challenges of writing poetry on a small 3-D object, formatting is likely to be lost! Poems emailed to docrnz@gmail.com will be written on a lantern and posted for all to see; alternatively if you are in Auckland you can come to the play and write your own!! I'll bring some lanterns with me to the next couple of Poetry Lives (Tuesdays from 8 at The Thirsty Dog). But communications via electronic media are welcome; I'll take photos and post them somewhere at a later date. Make sure your name is attached somewhere so it can be written on the lantern too.

Send poems from now until June 12 - the earlier, the better.

The Lantern Project installation is free to view whenever The Basement foyer is open, box office open 1 hour prior to show.
Lantern is part of STAMP at THE EDGE and is being staged with the assistance of Auckland City Arts Alive. For more information, go to www.lanternplay.com.

Lantern , The Basement June 8 -13, 8:00 pm as part of STAMP at THE EDGE
Book at buytickets.co.nz
(09) 357 3355
Lower Greys Ave, Auckland CBD

Three poems from Metonymy

2009-05-19T20:10:00.000+12:00

Day 10

Notes

push and pull of bodies
breathheld suspense
of clouds
of fragments.

walls do listen here
ears tightened
to suck in our
disembodied confidences

a moment of tenuous
connection: a held glance
a line drawn tight
then let go

a kite quivers in mid air
watches its suspended flight

Day 11

Knife

you remind me of
a fly caught between walls
a joyful violence
to the way you lurch

from verb to verb
landing on nouns to
taste them with feet.
inside this kitchen

is a place renamed paradise.
breathe in. breathe out.
the bag fills
and deflates.

keep going
and you might get out.

Day 27

Afternoon

When I’m with you
the hours ribbon
like roads
to the horizon

clouds powder
the wrinkled green
cleavage of hills
golden leaves fall.

When I’m with you
I see a mountain
grazed with light
snow

eyes closed
against frost.

Metonymy Exhibition opening - Monday 11th

2009-05-08T23:21:00.001+12:00

Lantern preview - Asia Downunder

2009-04-26T15:32:00.000+12:00

People in Your Neighbourhood - video item

2009-04-12T11:12:00.006+12:00

A recent story which aired on TV, posted by the lovely people at Asia Downunder. This story features pretty much all the amazing people I went with to WOMAD - I wasn't in this story because I had a family dinner on the day they were filming.

More about the PIYN people:
http://www.last.fm/music/Various+Artists/People+In+Your+Neighbourhood/+wiki?ver=3

and listen and download free at http://www.last.fm/music/Various+Artists/People+In+Your+Neighbourhood

11 days to go!!

2009-04-10T22:06:00.005+12:00

I apologise for my absence from this blog - it's a sad but true irony that the more happening in my life, the less time I have to actually think and write about it. Which is one of the purposes of this blog, really - a rather navel-gazing approach, but let's be honest, I am a bit of a navel-gazer....

Which is why I've named my production company Omphalos Co. or O.Co for short. (My sister suggested O might be thought to stand for other things... so let's debunk that theory right here. O does NOT stand for Orange, Omnibus or Orgasm, OK?)

O. Co is opening its first production in exactly 11 days. Lantern has been about 14 months in the making now. It's become an 85 minute, three act play, and Andy and Li-Ming are furiously rehearsing right now with Tony, the director. It's so nice to work with the same team all the way through - the actors have grown into the characters, or rather vice versa, and I can honestly say that this has been a very collaborative effort. So that's one of the really cool things about this whoel experience.

Of course I am now taking a very different role to that of writer and I can say that swapping hats to the role of producer has been interesting. It hasn't been as bad as I thought, actually (she says heading into the final straight). Like all first timers there are frequent moments of wobbliness, of "oh shit! did I say the right thing? did I make the right decision?" At the end of the day, the responsibility is mine. It's heavy, but not as heavy as it could be.

I have to say that I've been lucky in assembling a team of people who not only know what they are doing, but are very nice about it - to the point of generosity. This is the environment of the theatre community that I've found, and I can't help but feel that this is a magical time in Auckland theatre. We are at just the right stage where there is enough concentration of talent to make really good work, but the scene is not so large as to make people resort to meanness to get an advantage. I may be speaking too soon.. and there are always the cold shoulders and the false assurances... but optimism blended with healthy realism seems to work well at the moment.

Anyway, back to the play I'm supposed to be writing....

Amy Tan speaks on the root of creativity and truth

2009-04-10T21:59:00.004+12:00

Yes, I am an Amy Tan fan. As a girl I spent hours with her books and still have them on my bookshelf today - at the time, there were few other textbooks on how to grow up Chinese in a Western world. I came across this lecture on a local website and it gave me some ways to approach a play I am writing at the moment... so I thought I'd preserve it here.

Jessi's film is on the way!!

2009-03-17T17:44:00.001+13:00

Last year we were visited by Jessi Mariglio, travelling the world collecting poetry and the stories of poets. Here's the preview... so looking forward to the doco, it's going to be amazing!!

WOMAD Day 2

2009-03-15T23:38:00.008+13:00

"Oh," said my roomate Maite, "do you know they are thinking of having you in the show?" And so it was that five hours before we were due to go on stage, I was asked to perform as part of the big show that they'd been heavily rehearsing for weeks. The reason for my last minute inclusion? The show fell 10 minutes short of the 50 minutes it needed to be. And so they'd looked around and seen that they already had the components of another song: a poet who hadn't yet earnt her keep and some 'idle' (yeah right) musicians.

Thus it was that at 10 am on Saturday myself, Yao the guzheng (chinese harp) player and Steve the violinist from the Urban Soul Orchestra took over one of the hotel's conference rooms. Normally it would be difficult to write, arrange, rehearse and rebalance the complicated components of a piece for voice, gusheng and violin, all in around 2 hours. Add to this the fact I'd never rehearsed or performed a poem to music before. But somehow we pulled it all together (musicians are amazing people - have you heard me say that before? I shall say it again. Musicians are amazing and talented people and they're good at making poets sound good.)

After a rushed brunch and catchup in town with friends Tom and Paul, I had myself waved through security and pushed my way importantly through the WOMAD plebs to the dressing room with my newly minted backstage/VIP pass. I'd borrowed a dress from the tour manager, Natasha,and 'borrowed' makeup from Maite. So I thought I was sorted - but I wasn't prepared for the attack of nerves that hit as I got up on stage for the sound check and noticed people were already reserving spots.

We were on the Brooklands stage, the second biggest stage of the festival, and by the time we hit the stage after a very busy and complex soundcheck, the crowd streched back beyond the trees - estimates range from 6,000 to 10,000 people. By this time I was feeling wheezy, nauseous and wondering if I should go take a precautionary shit. I wasn't the only one striding around backstage nervously waiting but I was probably the most surprised, as it had been a while since I was nervous before a performance. But this was WOMAD. This was BIG.

Luckily, despite disastrous visions of freezing on stage or having a vocal chord twang, I managed to pull the poem off and was surprised at the warm response afterwards. I'd really tried to 'act' my poem - there's this thing of inhabiting the 'character' of the poem, then of pushing your emotions out at the audience. Musicians do the same thing with their instruments - it's as if the brain inhabits your fingers. For me, I was pushing my mind out across that huge crowd while trying to ignore the fact they were a huge crowd. But really, it felt amazing, in retrospect. Probably the only time I'll ever feel like a rock star. And we even had a CD signing and media interviews afterwards!

WOMAD day 1

2009-03-15T22:31:00.006+13:00

Last year, I met a guy called Gareth at a 'creative entrepreneurs' event and swapped cards (as you do at such things - promising to get in touch and then usually forgetting as other things rush in to occupy the mental space). Gareth however followed up with an email the next day, and soon I found myself recording 'Chinglish' (the poem) at his studio.

A few months later a rough track appeared in my inbox, and then notice of meeting about the People In Your Neighbourhood project. I wasn't part of the live stage show, but my track (voice mixed with violin and chinese guzheng)was on the CD, and so I was invited to go along for the ride when the band went to WOMAD. And so it was that this weekend I found myself in a van full of musicians on a 7 hour (that's with LOONG breaks)drive to Taranaki.

The drive down was fun mainly because, if you are going to spend 7 hours on the road with a bunch of complete strangers, having a professional DJ in the back of the van helps a lot, as does a flamenco guitarist. As does, er, a Navy musician with lots of 'blue' jokes. Around an hour in I got over introducing myself as "hi, I'm track number four" and really started to chill out.

We reached the 'Naki well before dark, checked in at the Devon Hotel, offloaded gears (easy for me - the only instrument I needed was my voice, and even that I didn't need I thought). I met my roommate Maite who's almost the same size as me but whose powerful voice had so impressed me at the Auckland concert the night before. Then it was time to head on down to see WOMAD's opening acts.

WOMAD is an institution in the 'Naki. I went for the first time last year, and remember sitting in the audience soaking up the ambience and plotting how I could come back this year for free or at least for less than the full price. (I'm so Asian). At the time I thought I might be able to wangle a media pass or somesuch. I never dreamed that I could be part of an actual show. So you can imagine the thrill as I hung that little artist pass round my neck, only to have it taken off me ten minutes later - we were short, and someone who actually needed to perform needed it more than me. Never mind. I still got my wrist bracelet, guaranteeing me entry into the smorgasbord that is WOMAD...

Picture this, then.

A huge sweeping park. 7 stages, large and small(ish), all with different "feels" because of their setting. Food. Craft stalls. And lots of people who are revelling in the relaxed vibe (or in the case of the teenagers, positively buzzing and hyperactive in that way that only 14 year olds can be). And as the sun goes down the lights come up on the stages and some of the world's best musicians come out to play.

And late, late, after the musicians on stage have finished, it is time to jump on the artist bus back to the hotel for more hanging out with those rare birds, musicians, jamming, singing, flamenco dancing....

signing in from WOMAD

2009-03-14T09:48:00.002+13:00

I'm at WOMAD in Taranaki, an annual feast of music, arts and dance from around the world. Spent most of yesterday in a minibus with some crazy musicians (rapper/DJs/flamenco guitarist among others), stopping for kai in Otorohanga, and a sunstruck jam session in Te Kuiti, before finally reaching the 'Naki where we spent all evening soaking up the vibes at the festival.

In 10 minutes I'm due at a rehearsl for our show, People in Your Neighbourhood. Will try and backwrite some of this blog later.

People In Your Neighbourhood CD out

2009-02-25T23:28:00.003+13:00

Check out track four on this free-download album, the People In Your Neighbourhood, a flagship project of the British Council in NZ.

Funky Oriental Beats - tickets on sale yay!!

2009-02-25T01:05:00.001+13:00

http://www.the-edge.co.nz/Event-Pages/A/Auckland-Fringe-Festival-(1)/Funky-Oriental-Beats.aspx

Little Rain

2009-02-24T21:49:00.003+13:00

Been collaborating with my friend Cat again, and a new friend Karena. It's a really neat process, working out how to combine and blend our thoughts. For me it's very much a feeling process - kind of like the thought surfing I usually do when I'm writing, but in company, which makes it much nicer. And unpredictable. And as with surfing, which I'm only guessing at as I have little actual knowledge, the bigger the wave, the more you have to trust one another. Anyway, it feels really really good to be peeping across the divide to where the grown-up artists play.

Anyway as with all my deadlines the dates seem to creep up on me. Once I got back from Japan it didn't take long before I was running from deadline to deadline again, though these days it's such a normal state that the stress aspect seems to have disappeared. This week for example, apart from the writing for Little Rain (completed, hurray!) I have the latest draft of Lantern to finish (tonight), a contract to sign (last week), a blog to write (tomorrow), and a video/poetry performance (Friday). Then there's the preparation for the upcoming Fringe show next weekend, another funding application, and my tax is due....