Helen Lowe's Blog, page 98

Tuesday Poetry: “the rough sea” — a Haiku by Matsuo Bashō

the rough sea —
stretching above Sado Island
the Milky Way

by Matsuo Bashō, 1644-1694

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No consideration of sea poetry (my current theme) would be complete without at least one haiku — and this one, by the great Matsuo Bashō is among the most famous. The haiku is from the classic book, The Narrow Road To The Deep North.

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Prior ‘Sea’ Poems include:

“The Sea” by Tim Jones

“Dover Beach” (Excerpt) by Matthew Arnold

“Breathing You In” by David Gregory

“We are more than half water” by Helen Ricker...

Canterbury Earthquake Update

Never say never…

I thought I should reassure followers and those who have not been able to get through via text or phone (the systems have been somewhat overloaded) that I and all my family and friends are OK following the severe earthquake overnight.

Although considerably larger than than Christchurch earthquake of February 22nd, 2011 that did so much damage here in Christchurch, it was centered approximately 95 km to the north and consequently felt considerably less violent than the Februar...

Buckle Up for A Week (or Two!) Of Book Reports!

“I know” — how can this be? But I’ve been a mad reading loon of late and chomped my way through not one but five books!

Although to be fair, I’ve been reading one of them for months. In truth, I could not “grok” it and although I shall discuss some of the reasons why that was the case, I was determined to finish it.

Now you may be thinking, is Helen going to break her own rule and talk about a book she didn’t enjoy? The answer is “yes”, but also “no” since I didn’t hate it by any means and I...

Nice! Feedback from a Writing Friend on “Daughter Of Blood”

“What a fabulous story. Your best yet!! So beautifully written; such a fabulous, well-realised world (it really deserves some novellas). Lots of new stuff revealed – wow, what a BIG story. Some wonderful new characters, as well as growing depth in the old ones (am really liking Kalan’s development!)”

The above is not an official review, but feedback from my friend, Charlotte Kieft, who is also a writer (her short story Chiaroscuro featured in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014...

All About the Characters

USA

Yesterday I talked about the SFF phenomenon where worlds become characters in their own right.

Yet New Zealand Maori, the indigenous first people of this country, have a whakatauki or saying:

“He aha te mea nui o te ao?
He tangata! He tangata! He tangata!

What is the most important thing in the world?
It is people! It is people! It is people!”

For me, this is very true of reading and writing fiction, although I would substitute “characters” for “people”, as not all great characters in Fan...

When Worlds Become Characters

Part of the magic of SFF, aka speculative fiction, is world building, a part of the genre that I really love. And in some cases I believe the world itself can be so vividly realized that it becomes a “character” in its own right.

This is certainly true of both China Mieville’s overlapping cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma in The City & The City and Catherynne M Valente’s Palimpsest.

Recently, too, I talked about the SciFi world of Dune, which definitely infuses the story at every level, rather th...

Tuesday Poetry: “The Woman Who Swims with the Jellyfish” by Janis Freegard

(Jellyfish Lake by Dorothy Cross, from ‘A Duck for Mr Darwin’ exhibition)

you can see right through them
99 parts sea to 1 part alien

…………………….her hair wafts out
…………………….moving in time with the water

there are thousands of them –
all gut and tentacles
pulsing through the sun-shot shallows

…………………….she breathes, keeps her chin up

they are upright, sideways
upside down
they palpitate
towards and past her

…………………….her tresses move like they do
…………………….val...

Just Arrived: “Commonwealth” by Ann Patchett — With A Riff To “Bel Canto”, Inverse Correlations & Pascal

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett is one of my favourite books — it took me by surprise when I first read it and I absolutely loved it from about, oh, page one…! (Don’t you love it when a book does that?)

Now, here’s the odder thing—well, I think it’s odd anyway, even though the observation is at my own expense—I loved Bel Canto so much that I actively avoided reading Ann Patchett’s other novels because I was afraid of being disappointed. There was definitely an inverse correlation at play between th...

Six + Years: Six Posts You Seem To Have Liked A Lot

Yesterday I posted about having been blogging for six and a half years now. And about relooking at some of the considerable depth of material in the blog backlist.

I thought I’d start today with six posts that you have particularly liked over the past six years — one for each year (but not necessarily from each year since this is about what has proven the “most-read”) of “…on Anything, Really’s” life. So without further ado…

Kristin Cashore

1. Without question, readers have really liked and k...

Blogging for Over Six Years — Who Would’ve Thought?

I realised recently, when asked how long I had been blogging, that it will be six and a half years at the end of this month — which is, you know, a “thing.”

Because that’s actually a not insignificant period of time. Looking back over the years, I can see that I have built up a huge body of work in terms of articles on a number of key topics, chiefly speculative fiction books and book related topics but also poetry, as well as interviews with other authors — again, chiefly those writing specu...