Southern Sojourn

Been working down south recently, with lots of adventures to report (which is of course why I haven't reported on them, duh). Maybe some of them will prove poem-worthy and eventually appear on these pages. But in an attempt to show that I haven't been a total slacker on the writing front, here's the link to my latest Lumiere article, Sea Cruise. A little conceit of mine over the summer - I am Lumiere's roving 'Southern Correspondent'. Though I'm not sure how "Southern" the upcoming Palmerston North segment of my travels will seem to people who are not Aucklanders....

Creative types (like poets) have more sex

Seeing as this comment attracted so much interest when I mentioned it at a recent Poetry Live, here's the link so that all may benefit from this valuable information. The news article doesn't mention how exactly this study was carried out (one has visions of earnest scientists shadowing poets in shady bars), but I might try to track down the original article.

Also disturbing is that the researchers are careful to state that they don't know why this is. Is it just that creative types are hornier, have looser standards, or are generally more morally corrupt? Or is it what we all prefer to believe, that creativity makes us sexier? And what about weird sciency-creative hybrids like me - currently my "score" rate is falling on the non-creative side of things, so maybe the nerdy side of me cancels out the poetic sexiness... something I've long suspected, damn...

It's Warm Down South

Been working down in Invercargill this week, and one of my off-duty pleasures was meeting up with the local writers and poets down here. The cold and mostly southern climate breeds famously tough people, and there was much to appreciate about the tenacity of being a writer in the South. (There are, of course, many famous literary names associated in some way with Invercargill.) It was such a pleasure to find like-minded people to swap poetry with, yarn about the business of writing and later, share a beer and dessert at the local watering-hole!

Birth

I

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

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

II

I sift and sort words
read pages, feel the breath of my pager
drawn contracted on my hip.
There is a square of blue sky, a tree
shaking its head and laughing
through my window. The sea
is very far away.

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

III

My mind turns lazy in warm liquid
squeezes out of salt-slung ocean
spreads gasping on a towel
after. There is sand in my mouth, sky
licks me warm. The shrill
page pulls me feet-first
back to life.

He (for now we can see
that it is a boy) lies naked
on my towel. His tongue lies unmoving
scarlet on white
lungs stunned, heart on snooze.
He is an unfolded nautilus
still dreaming under
the sea
listening to the slow
crash of his mother’s heart, the pulse
of the mask on his face. I push
each square digital second
into his chest. Time
clings like mucus to my fingers.
At last he coughs and breathes.
His heart flutters, caught
under the membrane
of my stethoscope.


IV

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

Beach offerings

a speckled egg
sunwarmed on one side,
seawater-cold on the other.

a deconstructed crab.

a spiral shell, its insides
an interrupted flower.

a white shell
with grooves like a record.

sea spit wobbling
defiant in wind.

a green seed, tongue
between lips.

running pensioners caught
by the tide.

a striped moth tasting my words
with its feet.

two blue jandals
pulled toewards by the sea.

Ohope Beach, pm

Buried words

for Rae Varcoe

today I took your book to the beach
tore up the pages
flung words into
gasping pink foam

and watched the tide
bring them back.

then I scattered your words
among orphaned shells in rock pools
couching the slow suction
of salt water,

saw the small crabs
scurrying to build them into houses.

I turned them into paper planes
threw them at indignant seagulls
tangled strings of them
on burnt pohutakawa tongues

it was no use,
they always came back.

at last I dug a deep hole
in dunes, reaching
to the very core of the hill.
I stamped on, burnt
the body of your words,
poured the ashes
into the heart of the hole,
filled it in with sand
and sat on it.

your words came up again
as lupin seeds,
rounded embryos
in a sac
held beating
against the sun.


7.30 pm Ohope Beach

Peace and Literature

Been reading links from the internet written by Israeli writer Amos Oz and about a speech given by 2006 Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, a Turk.

Both of them talk about the power of literature to enhance understanding between people and nations. I particularly love this quote from Amos Oz:

If you are a mere tourist, you might stand on a street and look up at an old house, in the old part of town, and see a woman staring out of her window. Then you will walk on.

But if you are a reader, you can see that woman staring out of her window, but you are there with her, inside her room, inside her head.

As you read a foreign novel, you are actually invited into other people's living rooms, into their nurseries and studies, into their bedrooms. You are invited into their secret sorrows, into their family joys, into their dreams.

Which is why I believe in literature as a bridge between peoples. I believe curiosity can be a moral quality. I believe imagining the other can be an antidote to fanaticism. Imagining the other will make you not only a better businessperson or a better lover but even a better person.

It's a heady feeling to imagine that you might be influencing others' thoughts, emotions, even their long term mindsets. I think that maybe this is one of the "drivers" of writers (given that there are few other obvious material benefits... certainly not money or even fame!) To create, initially, person-to-person understanding, even if one of those persons is fictitious. And then to extend that to groups of people (as in Pamuk's gorgeous flying couches image), nations, and then the earth... what better feeling can there be? Maybe that is why the possibility of being published (even for no monetary gain) brings a hopeful glint to the eyes of even the most cynical, "I-don't-go-in-for-that-vanity-bullshit" writer.

This is a warming sentiment, and gives me hope at a time when people are starting to have even their private poetry scrutinised for "terrorist" sentiments and are convicted of murder partially on the basis of unpublished manuscripts. From what I'm reading on message posts, here is an increasing nervousness within the writing community. The task many of us set ourselves is to plumb the depths as well as the heights of the human experience, and sometimes that means getting into the mind of a terrorist or murderer, or in Lloyd Jones' case, the mind of a paedophile in his novel Choo Woo, which I am reading at the moment. Even just declaring yourself a writer appears to be hazardous. Worryingly, it seems to be increasingly normal for courts to admit the line, "he's a writer, so he's a pathological liar" as an actual valid argument.

But there is a huge difference between wearing the shoes for the sake of "Art" (discussing what Art is is a whole other topic!) and wearing the shoes for real. I've had to struggle with this in my own work, as many of my characters have attitudes which would not be appreciated in the outside worlds in which I move. And not everybody, apparently, understands the difference between fiction and reality.

If my novel ever gets published, I figure I will have to deal with lots of questions about what my novel *might* indicate about my internal milieu -despite the fact I have made efforts to make it entirely "fictional." At times during the writing process I discarded chapters, even entire plot lines and characters, that might seem too "autobiographical". But after a while I found I couldn't do it and that certain things kept creeping back in. Discarding things were against the "emotional truth" of my characters, and ignoring this risked turning my work into mere PC drivel.

They don't tell you you have to be brave to be a writer. Yet it takes a lot of guts to "Write the truth, publish and be damned."

Poetry Slam

The last poetry slam of the year was held at Poetry Live on Tuesday night - although this was an "informal" slam there was fierce competition with no less than 5 previous slam champions taking part and some fiesty newcomers taking to the stage. A great example was set beforehand by our Guest Poet Jane Griffin with poems of great sensitivity and emotional range.

A touch of media glamour was added by the presence of ALT TV who came to film segments to be aired over the coming months on their show The Verona Sessions (Sky 65, Sundays at 5) and our very own poet-photographer Gus (whose photos you see above) who also took part as a competitor.

I'm always left amazed and impressed after these nights, at the edgy new material being aired. I notice the lyrical/classical forms are being tried out more (as opposed to the US-led autobiographical narrative slam style), and they often work very well on Kiwi audiences. I'm a little that way inclined myself, as a performer. As always there was a good proportion of new faces - some of the value of the slam format is that it draws people who normally wouldn't dream of coming to a poetry reading - and sometimes they realise how much they love it and keep coming!