Tim Jones's Blog, page 21

Tuesday Poem: Chrome Yellow Hypothesis, by Iain Britton

the house isn’t what it was
the voice of a radio predicts a storm /
it mimics a politiciancommentates on cricket
the radio possesses the eye of an orchestraanthems on walls / flags and coronation stuff / a platoon
route marches to Hill 44 /      

the family has taken furnitureits god particles and disguised itself in bundles
the house isn’t what it seems ...
a square brick object at the mercy of orthodoxiesdousing gentiles in holy water / theychant / play / sing / love thine enemies                                                                                                                                     Te Hahi o te Whakapono
the church (sermon-bloated)
hunches its white skull
beside the lake

passers-by are pulled in to drool
on historical grounds
where prisoners in wood
hug others in wood
where the lake laps music against stained-
glass windows / a flute’s voice
breathes on naked skin
a woman smiles
undoes her soul
for the cost of a camera’s sharp bite

life i observe is a sulphuric cloudraw and exposeda matter of confessions

this woman this mother

approaches                                                                                                                                    the miracle makerswho each year split atomsby walking on air

she’s fascinated by silica
its crystals / this geothermal fragility
which  domes the town

she opens herself to parklandfantasiesany stuntman would exploit
             beside the lake
birds scrap
over chrome-plated godsendsplucked from moonstones

this mother this woman
goes into the house of
 one room one kitchen one radio
a solitary figure clothing                                                                                                                                    legends in bright garments                                                                                                                                     what if
i place my lips on her lips / would forests buckle up / would ghostsreturn to their shelves to rest

she speaks to each gnome in her garden / paints
their hats gold
handles them carefully

each night they rough and tumble
squabble like her children
where invisibility is an asset
where in her house
love battles
love charges up a hill / e hoashe calls
and the radio responds
with the news / the weather
a boy scoops up a ball
and runs with itthrough a yellow cloud


Credit note: "Chrome Yellow Hypothesis" is from Iain Britton's collection photosynthesis, now available from Kilmog Press. This version is published, and reformatted to work better on a blog, with the permission of the author.

Tim says: After my hiatus, I'm back in the world of the Tuesday Poem, where I will try to get back in the routine of posting a Tuesday Poem every fortnight. It's a pleasure to (re)start with this fine poem by Iain Britton.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.

The Stars Like Sand - Canberra Launch: Orbital Separation Achieved

Well, I'm back - back in Wellington from my trip to Melbourne and Canberra, where my co-editor P.S. Cottier and myself launched the anthology we've been working on for almost two years, The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry.

Each of us (Penelope | Tim) has already blogged about the Melbourne launch. The Canberra launch last Thursday, held at historic Manning Clark House, was also a success, with 40-50 people in attendance. The photos below show poets Lizz Murphy and John Jenkins reading their poems from the book, although most of the crowd is out of shot in these photos.



I enjoyed my trip to Australia a lot, thanks in very large part to the hospitality of my co-editor and her lovely family. Now I have a couple of solid weeks ahead of me as the judge of the Open Section of the 2014 New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition, and then I have some writing to do!



Finally, watch out for some more publicity for Lost in the Museum this coming week - that's the new fantasy anthology with a touch of horror, set in Te Papa, that includes my story "The Big Baby".You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.

The Stars Like Sand: Awaiting Second Stage Ignition

The first launch of The Stars Like Sand has happened - and very good it was too! As my co-editor reports on her blog, we had a good group of poets from the anthology reading at the Melbourne launch - a double launch with poet Gemma White' first collection Furniture is Disappearing.

About 70 people attended the launch at Melbourne's Collected Works bookshop - you can see part of the crowd below, including one of the poets from the anthology, Sean Wright (with hat); publisher's representative Breanne Rodda (seated on floor) and Collected Works owner Kris Hemensley (at right) (image courtesy Satya Helen Patrice).



Now we're gearing up for the Canberra launch tomorrow night, and expecting another good crowd and another set of anthology poets to read!

If you'd like a copy of the book, it's making its way into bookshops such as Melbourne's Collected Works, and you can also buy it from the publisher and from Amazon.com.




You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.

"Lost In the Museum" Now Available As Ebook and In Bookshops

UPDATE: Ebook now available from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KTV5K0U

I mentioned in my previous post that I have a story, "The Big Baby", in the recently published anthology Lost in the Museum, which has just received an excellent review by Lee Murray in the widely-read Beattie's Book Blog.

Lost in the Museum is now starting to become available in bookshops. You can buy it from Retrospace in Auckland and Children's Bookstore in Wellington, and it should soon be available from Unity Books as well. The ISBN is 978-0-473-28320-9.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.

"Lost In the Museum" Now Available In Bookshops

I mentioned in my previous post that I have a story, "The Big Baby", in the recently published anthology Lost in the Museum, which has just received an excellent review by Lee Murray in the widely-read Beattie's Book Blog.

Lost in the Museum is now starting to become available in bookshops. You can buy it from Retrospace in Auckland and Children's Bookstore in Wellington, and it should soon be available from Unity Books as well. The ISBN is 978-0-473-28320-9.

An ebook version is due to be released next week, so if getting to New Zealand bookshops is a bit of a stretch for you, you'll still be able to get hold of the anthology. I'll post details of the ebook when they become available.You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.

We Interrupt This Hiatus For A Publication Announcement

While I'm still training a couple of dragons and therefore not quite ready to resume posting regularly, I couldn't pass up the chance to let you know that The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, the anthology that I have co-edited with P.S. Cottier, by has now been officially published, and I have recently received an early copy. (Penelope has lots of info about the book up on her blog - such as who is in it!)



You can buy the book as a paperback or ebook from the publisher or from Amazon.

Here's the Facebook event for the Melbourne launch on Friday 6 June: https://www.facebook.com/events/1502760696619431/ - all Melbournites and visitors welcome!

(Note to authors: we'll be posting out author copies after the Melbourne and Canberra launches next month.)

I should also mention a couple of recent short story collections I have stories in:

Fresh Fear: Contemporary Horror (sales link to Amazon)Lost in the Museum (link has info about the launch)

... and I'm pleased to say that I have a story appearing in the next issue of JAAM as well.

Normal hiatus will now be resumed, for another month or so - and then I might get around to put a fresh lick of paint on this dear old blog.



You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.

It's All Fun And Games...

... until someone loses their dragons. I have three fierce dragons to chase at the moment - or are thy chasing me? There's the finishing stages of proofing for The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry - that stage when a book seems to be interminably 95% finished, but never quite done. There's the ever-extending Basin Reserve Flyover Board of Inquiry - as the co-convenor of the Save the Basin Campaign, quite a lot of my energy is going on that. And there's a major work project which is about half complete.

If they don't succeed in burning me up or out, all those dragons should be caught and trained by about July, but in the meantime something has to go, and I've decided that thing will be blogging. When the Seven Kingdoms are reunited under the flag of peace, freedom and the Westerosi Way - when the sun also rises - when at least two of those three projects are out of the way - I'll be back. Till then, au revoir!



>You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.

Book Review: Sidelights, by Mark Pirie

Sidelights: Rugby Poems, by Mark Pirie (Wellington: The Night Press, 2013), available via Mark's website.

Sport, a big area of New Zealand life, has formed a surprisingly small part of New Zealand poetry. Mark Pirie has done a lot to remedy that lately, with his NZ cricket poetry anthology A Tingling Catch receiving a lot of very favourable press, not least from the prestigious Wisden Cricketer.

Mark is currently editing an anthology of New Zealand and international poems about football (that is, the round-ball variety). But when I was growing up, the world game was still called 'soccer' in New Zealand, as 'football' was reserved for use to describe the sport that all New Zealanders, and in particular all New Zealand males, were supposed to be obsessed by: rugby union.

I grew up in Southland, where rugby's hold was arguably as complete as anywhere in the country - at Gore High School, it was a source of great embarrassment that those half-despised, half-pitied sooks who played soccer had actually managed to string together a few winning games, while the school's rugby First XV, supposedly the bastion and exemplar of teenage masculinity, was completely useless.

(If women's rugby was played anywhere in New Zealand in the 1970s, it most certainly wasn't played in Gore.)

I only ever played one game of rugby, during which I invented the kicking No. 8 long before Zinzan Brooke had thought of the idea. And, despite my Pommy background and odd haircut, I did eventually get interested in the game and used to watch a lot of it - right up to the point at which the All Blacks won the 2011 Word Cup, at which point, to my surprise, my interest in the game evaporated almost completely. I still watch the occasional All Blacks match on TV, but no longer pay any attention to the domestic or Super 15 competitions.

But I remember those provincial passions, which is why I enjoyed Mark Pirie's Sidelights, and why my favourite poem from it is The Divided Country, which explores the eternal duality between Hurricanes and Highlanders supporters. "School Days at Wellington College" has a great last line which it sets up perfectly, and I also particularly enjoyed the sequence "Five All Blacks poems", which ends with a poem celebrating the moment All Blacks' captain Richie McCaw lifted the Webb Ellis Cup at the end of the 2011 World Cup tournament - that same moment that something in my brain appears to have decided that enough was enough.

Even in 2014, it's hard to be in New Zealand for long without rugby starting to seep into your life: Sidelights is a good first step towards an understanding; or a valedictory to an era, long lost or recently ended, of liniment, the Sideline Eye, and the crowd rising to "E Ihowā Atua".



You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.

Tuesday Poem: The Divided Country, by Mark Pirie

Walking to the dairy
to buy milk is no easy
thing when you're in Dunedin.
Like this morning, I was
walking down Great King Street
when a car pulls up
and someone screams out the window,
"OTAGOOO!!"
I couldn't help myself. I yelled
back, "HURRICANES BEAT YOU, MAN!"
The guy was stunned. He hurled his can
at me, beer spraying
across the street. Then, he tore off
and I walked into the dairy. It seems
the Dunedin mornings
are the saddest. "Just wait," says
the girl at the counter, "for the rain!"

1999

Credit note: "The Divided Country" is published in Mark Pirie's collection of rugby poems, Sidelights,, which I'll be reviewing on this blog soon.

Tim says: When I think of a country divided by rugby, the first thing that comes to mind is the 1981 Springbok Tour. But this poem is about a different sort of division: the eternal divide between New Zealand's five Super 15 franchises. I reckon I've walked to that dairy a few time, too.

The Tuesday Poem: Is the 2013 Takahē Poetry Competition winner.You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.

Stars. Sand. Cover. Coming Soon.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.