the red room

A Poem to Text to your Friends #1

This is a long winded way to say / how bird song clear your voice / bounds singing / out the window like sixty winged acrobats / that spin flips and cartwheels.

A Poem to Text to your Friends #2

The new sky is blue /a pale blue with icy aquamarine edges / a sapphire, midnight, electric blue / a royal navy steel slate cyan blue. / I just had to tell you.

A Poem to Text to your Friends #5

Agnes likes clouds. / Their coloured cones cloud out common colder thoughts / she considers: do clouds have faces? / A dewy dream of cumulus carries her away.

Happy New Zealand Poetry Day, everyone. I wrote these poems as part of a set of six for the 2011 edition of the Kiwi Diary – a beautiful diary, year book and planner that is curated with New Zealand art, writing , jokes, recipes and general inspiration. I have to confess the idea to write text poems came from one of the students I tutor at the last creative writing contact course where he read his poem (called “160 characters”) to the class from his phone. I have tried to make each of these poems 160 characters. Text them to your friends!

One of my goals this year is to make most of the presents I give my friends and family.  This is a way to learn some new sewing skills, save money, and not add to consumer waste by up-cycling materials and avoiding packaging. I also think hand-made gifts are the best. My friend Meg gave me a mosaic heart last year and it is one of my favourite gifts because she made it for me. This tea cozy is a present for my Mother and was not intentionally meant to look like a pink version of the American flag but somehow ended up that way. All those American poets I am reading? Maybe. Thankfully Mum lived in the U.S. for a number of years so the country is close to her heart. I also think America should be able to share this pretty colour combination.

I’ve never made a tea cozy before or fabric roses so there was quite a bit of trial and error. The striped fabric is a heavy weight cotton/canvas and the blue polka dot / rose fabric is 100% cotton. I would love to say I washed both first to pre-shrink them but I didn’t! The cozy is stuffed with a thin batting fabric and the inside is lined with the dots and stripes. Trying to figure out how to sew the lining so it came out right side up was like fabric string theory. I followed two very good online tutorials to make the tea cozy (although changed the shape somewhat): Tea cozy on Rusty Bobbin and Fabric flowers on Calamity Kim. I just have enough material left over to make another cosy for my Grandmother who turns 90 this year.

Sam Sampson was born in Auckland, New Zealand and grew up in South Titirangi, next to Little Muddy Creek. Everything Talks, his first collection of poems, was published by Auckland University Press (NZ), and Shearsman Books (UK) in June 2008. It won the Jessie McKay NZSA Best First Book of Poetry at the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

As Sampson’s work is so much about sound I found reading the poem while listening to him recite it on Radio New Zealand (just click this link to listen) really opened the poem up for me, as well as hearing him speak about his work. You can also find out more about Sampson’s work on his website.

I have become one of the thirty editors for the Tuesday Poem which is an blog curated by Mary McCallum and Claire Beynon. The blog is a “hub for poetry, highlighting a single poem every week as worthy of reader attention, and then sending readers off to discover a host of other poems in the blog list.” I hope being an editor will push me to discover new poets and poetry and also provide a way to meet other writers, which usually only happens through workshops or launches. Writing is like running in the sense that it is an endeavour performed alone . So thanks to Mary and Claire for making writing a team sport!

Last night I went to the launch of the American and New Zealand poetry duets which was held in a cosy room at the Southern Cross Bar. It was launched by Bill Manhire who read snippets of poetry by Walt Whitman and R. A. K. Mason and in both poems the poets offered advice to future writers. Whereas Whitman was encouraging and hopeful, Mason was a little doomesque which I think is a wonderful generalisation about the differences between New Zealand and American poetry. More importantly Bill’s implied link between historical and contemporary poetry made me realise that I need to spend more time looking back.

At the moment I am writing long narrative poems (LNPs) with varied characters – The Holiday (recently published in Sport) is about how the relationship between an older woman and a young man mirrors the relationship between Picasso and Matisse. Marathon Men, my longest poem at twelve pages, is about the unlikely friendship between a garbage man and a wealthy but agoraphobic prosthetic limb painter. At the moment I am writing a long poem about the impact of a transgender revelation between a father and daughter while they set up an orienteering course. What I am wondering is what makes a LNP? How do I define “long” and what differentiates a long poem from an epic poem? What elements make a poem narrative compared to lyrical, conversational or experimental? When does a poem stop being a poem and become a short story?

Writing LNPs was a mostly unconscious choice; the voice of my poems started to lengthened out. When I first started writing, my poems were spare and compact but once I experimented with short stories (which were passable but not publishable), my poetry started to change. As an aside to my doctoral research I want to write an essay about LNPs in New Zealand poetry as a way to inform and place my own work. When I met superstar poet Simon Armitage I asked him if he had any advice for new writers.“Read,” he said. If a new writer asked me the same question today I would tell them to “Read and write critically” because I find the process of investigating other poets eventually elucidates my own work.

If you are a reader of New Zealand poetry and can suggest a poet who writes long narrative poems, I would love to hear from you.

My foray into the craft world is going well after only a week of my live and kicking Felt shop, RobotLove. As well as purchases I have had a few enquiries about what other designs I am going to make. Tonight my partner suggested a cartoon bomb (he also suggested he might become a craft widower!) and I like the idea of a conceptually ticking cushion. I’m also keen to try and make a diamond with different coloured felt for the facets: geometric but playful. The new gift gathering website Wrapped featured my cushions in one of their recent posts, thanks guys. The blog ‘curates’ gifts available online and seems to be aimed at shoppers who live outside of the main New Zealand cities where there are less shopping options. I have also found that it is also a lot more expensive to post to smaller towns and rural locations which I didn’t realise before having to post my wares. I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of my craft-selling learning curve. Anyway, any advice on how to minimise postage (both for myself and my customers) would be welcomed. Any stellar and modern ideas for designs are welcomed as well.

Book launches are really a good way of discovering new writing and also hearing writers read their work. There is one coming up that I am quite excited to attend. Later this month Bill Manhire will launch three books of ‘duets’ between American and New Zealand poets that have been edited by New Zealand poet and essayist Alice Miller and Americans Zach Savich and Mark Leidner. While I am a fan of many New Zealand poets, a particular type of North American poetry sparks for me (out of the three poets I am studying for my PhD only one is a New Zealander), so I’m quite interested to see how these New Zealanders and Americans have been paired by the editors.

The New Zealand poets featured in this series include well known Wellington poet James Brown who is paired with American poet Dora Malech who taught creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters a few years ago. I am especially interested to read this collection because, from my perspective, their work appears quite different. Brown’s poetry seems to purposefully work against lyrical tradition whereas Malech, from what I have read, can be quite lyrical. Both display a pointy sense of humour in their poetry which I think will tie their work together.

The next pairing is Sam Sampson, an Auckland poet whose book Everything Talks won the NZ Society of Authors award for the best first book of poetry last year, and Andrew Grace who I haven’t had the pleasure to read. I scanned some of Sampson’s work last week while browsing in a bookstore and was surprised to find complex and constructed shape poetry that I haven’t seen in recent New Zealand publications (see this poem in Best NZ Poems 2008). His lexicon reminds me of Christian Bok in technicality and tone so I am intrigued to read his work.

The third duet is between Joan Fleming, a good friend of mine and one of New Zealand’s brightest new poets, and Emily Toder who I also am excited to read. Fleming’s work can be wistful and dreamlike and I think she uses this light touch to draw the reader into poems that show the world in a new way. Her most recent work has been mostly prose poetry and short narratives and is really very good.

I encourage you to come along and listen to some New Zealand poetry. Duets will be launched on Monday 12 July, 6pm at the Southern Cross Bar on Abel Smith Street. Please RSVP by 8th July to ackmiller@gmail.com. You can find out more about these poets on the duets website.

After a successful poetry reading and then a 5.30am start to fly to my godfather’s funeral in Christchurch on Saturday, I have finally succumb to the cold that is going around Wellington. I’ve been on the couch for a few days (I went for a walk this morning and after half an hour was very wobbly!) and as I am not one to be unproductive I’ve finally sorted out my Felt shop. Felt is a really great online resource for crafters who don’t have the funds or time to start up a business but would like to sell some of their crafts.

My shop name is “Robot Love” because my most recent design is of a robot with a heart detail. Cute. I like transforming what are usually hard objects (robots, tanks) into soft furnishings. Anyway, please check it out and if you would like a robot cushion, or any other sort of crafting, let me know.

Winter has settled into Wellington. I am still walking into town most mornings but I often resemble an eskimo and I’m sometimes stiff and cold by the time I arrive. I’ve been working from the central library with its high ceilings and glass walls (and easy access to oh-s0-trashy magazines). It is an open and airy space, warm and inhabited, and I look out over Civic Square. My office at university feels isolated. My head is too loud in that space. Life has been loud recently as well. I went to visit my friend and fellow poet, Joan, down in Takaka, have had stage one marking to finish and I am running two creative writing workshops next week for Massey in Palmerston North. Tomorrow I have to go to a funeral.

Above is a found poem on the lighthouse at the tip of the Mirimar Peninsula that my friend and I discovered while scouting for graffiti. Yes, we were walking on the dangerous causeway. I am five months into my doctorate and last week I submitted a ten thousand word essay on Christian Bök’s book Crystallography (1994) and twenty pages of new poetry to my supervisors. I have to admit to a fan-girl crush on Bök. His poetry is precise and constructed and he has interesting theoretical reasons for his work. At the moment some of my poetry could be accused of riffing his style but I see that as part of the learning process. I’ve had to redraft my thesis proposal (for the confirmation at the beginning of next year) because my topic, as expected, changed its focus once I started the actual analysis. For those dear geeks out there who want to know, this is my current research question,

“Is a new ecocritical examination valuable to reading of selected poems by Robert Hass, Hone Tuwhare and Christian Bök? Specifically, using a new ecocritical approach that considers “nature” to be both human and nonhuman and does not have a “green” objective, in what ways do selected works of poets Robert Hass, Hone Tuwhare and Christian Bök break down the traditional conceptual division between human and nonhuman and reconceptualise nature? Can their work be considered a new nature writing?”

It is hard to say how my work is progressing in terms of quality (that is really for my supervisors to judge) but I can say that the doctorate has transformed my writing practice. It took five months to relax into regular writing and develop an agreement with myself to write when I feel ready (I don’t like the word inspired because it suggests an outside actor and I see the feeling as a combination of being rested, focused and knowing where I want the poem to go) and to trust that those times of readiness will arise. There are few things I dislike more than trying to force out a poem.

That doesn’t mean that the process of writing hasn’t included hard work and frustration. A few weeks ago I spent five plus hours writing a poem but, at the end of the day, I only kept five lines. Five lines! The next day the poem came together into something that I really like which wouldn’t have happened if I’d beaten myself up for being unproductive. Another example is the poem I am writing at the moment about my relationship with my father. It is about two and a half pages (and will probably end up around six) and I’ve been working on it for the last three or four weeks. It has been this length for some time even though I am putting a lot of time into editing and being patient. While it doesn’t get much longer it is becoming clearer; it is revealing itself.

I think one of my previous posts talked about trust and I suppose I am discussing it again because trust seems an essential part of being a successful writer. When I say successful I don’t only mean producing quality poems but enjoying the experience of writing. You have to enjoy your life and be proud of your work. This is the main reason I agreed to give a reading tonight at the launch of the journal Hue & Cry. I am going to read The Holiday, the long narrative poem that was published earlier this year in Sport. It will take me around fifteen minutes to read. I am introverted and shy by nature which means that I will avoid speaking in front of large groups (by large I mean more than two people) with the same zeal that I avoid dental work and internal examinations. But at some point I have to publicly own my work and say, hey, this is worthwhile.

For the last year I have been making cushions from an incredibly simple pattern which I will eventually post to this blog once I draw it up. If you can sew a straight line and measure correctly (measure twice, cut once!) then you can make this cushion. I have been taking different fabrics (such as upcycled 1970s curtains or kimono fabric) and combining them with vintage New Zealand wool blankets in oranges, pinks, greens and grey. These types of cushions are pretty popular at the moment and you can find them in most craft-friendly gift stores (I think it is because each one is snuggly and unique). A month ago I made my partner a pair of Tiananmen Square inspired cushions, one with a tank and the other with the man holding his shopping who stopped the procession of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Last week I bought two very smart orange checked blankets and I am going to make some cushions and attempt to sell them. For the designs I have drawn up a robot, a diamond, my tank and a big blooming flower. These seem like designs that are slightly out of the ordinary (apart from the flower) but I can really do any sort of design a customer would want. This is really a labour of love (as most craft is) but I need to start selling some of my wares to finance future experiments with new fabrics and designs. This Christmas I am going to make packets of handmade decorations in both paper and fabric which I hope to sell as well. How much I should charge for these goodies is still a mystery to me because the prices I find online are quite diverse. But that is something I presume I will learn with time once I figure out my costs in time and materials. Mostly I would just be happy if other people enjoyed my crafting. Wish me luck.