Tim Jones's Blog, page 30

Tuesday Poem: tusitala of white lies, by Iain Britton

a million blackbirds




     
fling full stops at the horizon







but who do I prefer to believe –




  the lady in black feathers




           who
owns and occupies




                  
a fig tree




or the slothful bugger




     who
lives in the letter box




posting mail to himself           




          or the
toilet roll author




                   
of Kingdom Street




           the
tusitala of white lies

        

                   
of uninhibited wafflings /       







the view from here




           
is global / inviting







                  
extinct frogs




      
continue to purse their lips




to chirp (bird-like) through solitary séances







                
the moon’s /          a cold lump




stuck hard




and helmeted




         

              but I prefer             
the brunette




                      
her feather cloak




                   
her moulting shadow         her strut







          I coax her
to come in




              
share the dilated vista of another’s reality







I’m the tourist guide bus driver jesus janitor / the son

reorganising the future footprints of a family yet to cement

its language in stone in grubby layers broken like old teeth




another thing?




I walk through my house every day




to the sound




               
of water music




               
a forest shuffling its roots




               
doors opening shutting




               
a mango melting at the altar of my mouth







but then




              
not all is at right angles




                            
all isn’t the perfect hideout




                         
for this fresh-air junkie




                  
contemplating




              
a dreamtime jaunt

            


              
an astral flight /    

              
with no strings dangling







loose-limbed haloes




                       break
down

                      
dissolve




           
reviving an animal magnetism







      I
retreat into the hood of my consciousness




                     
groping for the lady’s




                           
anatomy




            
her tightening grip – this flesh




                        
and blood




                              
mix of polarities





Credit note: "tusitala of white lies" is the title poem of Iain Britton's latest collection, a poetry pamphlet published by Like This Press in the UK. It is reproduced here by permission of the author.



Tim says: Iain Britton is a fine New Zealand poet whose work deserves to be better known. I interviewed Iain in 2009 for this blog, and since then, he's continued to have success publishing his work both in Aotearoa and internationally, as his bio shows:

Oystercatcher Press published my 3rd poetry collection in 2009, Kilmog Press my 4th in 2010. The Red Ceilings Press and the Argotist have recently published ebooks. A full collection with Lapwing Publications is out now, plus a pamphlet from Like This Press. Beard of Bees (US) chapbook in now online. Forthcoming  - poems in Peter Hughes' Sea Pie: a Shearsman Anthology of Oystercatcher Poetry. Also, Department Press and The Gumtree Press will be publishing collections later this year or in 2013.

The Tuesday Poem: Check out today's hub poem, and all the individual Tuesday Poems linked from the sidebar to the left, on the Tuesday Poem 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.

An Interview With Claire Browning

Claire
Browning is a former lawyer, author, editor and
policy analyst, turned conservation advocate for Forest & Bird. She has
also written regularly for blog site Pundit
on environment and conservation issues, and green politics. Beyond Today is her first book, although
she’s been published on a number of previous occasions, as co-author of Adams on Criminal Law: Sentencing, and
in law reform reports and law journal articles. Wairarapa-based, she is renovating
a cottage, growing a food forest, and cultivating wildness in her garden.








How
did you come to write Beyond Today: a
values story?




Well ... there’s a bit of a story there. I’d
been blogging for a while on Pundit. Jeanette Fitzsimons was leaving
Parliament, and I wanted to write a valedictory post – and to do that, I wanted
to see the trajectory of her political career. Jeanette lent me her two Values
Party manifestos: Blueprint for an
Alternative Future from 1972, and Beyond
Tomorrow (1975).




They were what I’d been looking for from
the Greens: the key to the policy puzzle. And so, I wrote some blogs about
Values, and about Green policy, nagging the Greens about their story. That’s
where it started, and in the end, I wrote the story myself. The result is Beyond Today.




I worked hard to boil it all down to its
essentials; to keep it short and clear and simple; to make it approachable; and
beautiful enough to do justice to an amazing political story, and a compelling
policy one. But so much more could be written, about the history of the Values
Party, and the green movement, and the way forward.







If
you don’t mind me asking, what led to your personal decision to join the Green
Party?




It was a – I won’t say reluctant – but a cautious
decision. I joined with a personal commitment not to participate in any of the
party processes, as an inside observer, for research. I couldn’t find out what
I needed to know or wanted to understand about the party, without a better
sense of who its members were and how processes worked internally.




At the present time, my membership’s
expired.











Beyond Today is in part a
history of the Values Party, and in part your thoughts on the future of the
Green Party. Was it always the intention to cover both these aspects, or did that
combination develop as the book progressed?




It was always the intention to cover both -
to take a perspective on the Greens by looking back at Values, to move policy
and politics forward. But I want to correct this idea of the book as a
“history” of Values. It isn’t, and it’s title – Beyond Today: a values story – is values with a little “v”.




It sketches out how the Values Party started,
and some of the things that it achieved. I wanted to pay tribute to the Values
movement, and say to the Greens: let’s celebrate being 40 years out in front. It’s
a plea: don’t let that story get lost. The green movement was grounded in
values, and values are what need to change. So I’m less interested in the
history than the story for today: what being green really means, and why.




I wanted to challenge the Greens, too: to
shake out a bit of the righteousness.







Given
the often-tempestuous history of the Values Party, did you find that former
Values Party members were keen to talk with you for this book?




I gather that a few more of them wanted to
talk to me than I had realised! Perhaps it’s a consequence of the tempestuous
relations and different perspectives that people wanted the opportunity to
offer their own views.







In
contrast to the Values Party (of which I was a member from 1977-1980), the
Green Party seems for the most part to have maintained a high degree of unity,
and when splits or potential splits have occurred, they seem to have been well
managed. What do you think accounts for that contrast?




I think that the party has learned from its
history. Its first co-leaders Jeanette and Rod were former Values members, as
were others. But also, I suspect it’s been attained in large degree by simply
muddling, as a party, along through the issues; I don’t mean by that to belittle
anyone’s political management, or the care that’s probably from time to time
gone into political management, but there’s been muddling, too, on policy in
particular.




There’s always going to be a risk that in
becoming more definitive, it’ll alienate some people. One description that
resonated with me was of the party as a sort of Rorschach blot, on to which
members, candidates, voters project their own perceptions, and their different
(though not incompatible) priorities, and can rub along quite happily together
for quite a long time, in a culture of respect and tolerance. But when it comes
to a broader audience - and winning hearts, forever, not just a vote and power
for a few years - I don’t know if that’s enough.




I may be wrong. But it became important to
me to write the story down again, in 2012 not 1972 - to say what it is that
green politics actually represents, not just a cleaner environment. By far the
largest part of the challenge – and it’s the same challenge – is the economics.







In Beyond Today, you appear to be arguing
that the Green Party would be better served by not being identified with the
left of the political spectrum. Is that a fair statement of your position?




Yes. And I think there are both political
reasons, and reasons in principle.




Values dismissed the politics of both the
right and the left, and others share Tony Brunt’s hunch (Brunt was Values’
founder): that there are a lot of voters with a collection of values that
coincide with the mix of policies that you would find, and have always found,
in a green manifesto – voters who don’t and won’t identify with the left –
because they aren’t intrinsically left-wing values. Green politics hasn’t
tapped into that movement yet. It might be starting to.




In the end, I think you can express it very
simply. This is not about two-dimensional opposition politics. It’s about all
of us, and all of the kinds that it takes to make a world. It’s about
supporting and demanding individual responsibility and freedom, just as much as
supporting a strong social structure, and regulation to protect those without a
voice in society: nature and the disenfranchised. And it will take all of us.




There are right wing values that are not
admirable – they’re disastrous – but there’s ideology of the left that will see
this project fail, if we can’t practise inclusion and diversity, instead of
just talking about it.







In
my view, our core problem as a species is that we are living beyond the
planet’s means – we are using up the Earth’s natural capital faster than it can
be replenished. I don’t think that it is possible to establish a global
economic system that allows us to live within the planet’s means under
capitalism, because capitalism depends on economic growth. Does the Green Party
share that position, and if so, doesn’t that make the Greens an anti-capitalist
party?




I think you need to ask a spokesperson for the
Green Party! But the best response to that which I’ve seen to date, about a
managed transition to something else – as yet undefined – would be Jeanette
Fitzsimons’ on Pundit:




If you were designing a system to live
within the limits of the planet and care for all its people you certainly
wouldn't start with capitalism. But given that's what we have, and the only
thing most people know, and change is desperately urgent, like in the next 5
years - what do you do with it? What happens to the corporates which currently deliver
the goods and services we buy and in which many small people have invested
their life savings? They aren't going to just go away and there's no appetite
publicly for recolution and confiscation and nationalisation. I'm afraid that
if we have to wait to change the whole economic system and grow a form of
democratic eco-socialism that has never been tried anywhere let alone succeeded
in leaving us a blueprint, we will still be designing it when the oceans close
over our heads and food wars break out all over.




Of course it would be better to run society
as a participatory, democratically controlled egalitarian economy that plans to
meet human needs sustainably, but the big problem remains. What seem like the
obvious priorities to us - quality food and shelter for everyone, products that
last for ages and can be repaired, renewable energy, local production - just
aren't the priorities most people would choose. We assume a democratically
controlled socialism would give us the answer we support - where is the
evidence for that? And if the people, given all the facts, choose more shopping
malls and one trip packaging and junk food and waste, because they have endured
generations of advertising and corporate culture that inculcates those values -
what then? and how likely are they to choose to limit their own consumption
even more severely so that people in developing countries can get enough food
and fresh water?




It was in the context of a discussion, and people
might want to read
the whole thing. I don’t think we know yet exactly how a functional green
economy would look.







The
current relationship between the Green Party and the Labour Party is a curious
mixture of cooperation and competition. To what extent do you think the two
parties can – or should – find common ground? How about the Greens and other
parties?




Yes, “hugging”
or “mugging”? I was intrigued by Grant Robertson’s recent speech: the
latest in a series of indicators that Labour, as it has always been, is quite attentive
to the Greens’ approach, and green ideas. He gave the speech on June 28 - it’s
a thoughtful speech - and like Beyond
Today, it’s about values. Labour values, starting with the Labour
constitution.




But Labour’s also missing, or not fully
addressing, a very fundamental point, and I suspect this is a consequence of
the point having been so obscured – the key point I try to tease out in Beyond Today. There won’t ever be common
ground, until the economic paradigm of growth shifts. The environment part
can’t be done, without the economic part. Anyone who says it can is lying.




There are parts of green thought that
express both left and right wing ideals, which the politics chapter of Beyond Today explores a bit. And there
are parts so incompatible with both that the ground is not common. It’s not
common at all, in any sense: it’s not shared by anyone else yet, politically,
and it’s an elusive, radical (transformational) thing.




I guess that means by definition, it can’t
be the centre ground.







As
someone who’s both an environmental activist and a poet, and who finds that the
two roles don’t always fit neatly together, I am intrigued by your statement,
echoing Paul Kingsnorth, that “we need the quants, and the poets, both” (p.
107). Who do you mean by “the quants”? And how can the poets help without
losing their poetry, and turning into mere propagandists?




“The quants” is Kingsnorth’s term. It comes
from a blog
that he wrote, I’ve quoted from it in the frontispiece of the book, and the
whole thing is among my favourite blog reads.




My understanding of what he means by that
term is: people – well-meaning people, politicians often, but not exclusively –
who have lost sight of, or forgotten, or never understood what lay at the heart
of green thought. People who are focused on making the $ and the carbon cuts (and
the votes) add up; less focused, if at all, on confronting the whole economic
paradigm, and confronting ourselves.




He rightly pinpoints the fact that we need
a whole culture change, a total change of heart. And that one of the ways,
perhaps the only way, to achieve that is by changing the stories we tell
ourselves, about ourselves. Which is where the poets come in. The Club of
Rome’s saying the same thing (the Club of Rome, a high-powered think tank,
first published the Limits to Growth in
1972).




I’m both: quant and poet, both. Not,
literally, a poet - but I analyse (law and policy, usually), and when I get
tired of that, I dream. Perhaps that’s an uncomfortable mix in the book, I
don’t know, nor care really. It is what it is, and how I wanted it to be. It’s
the story, according to me.







Finally,
are more books by Claire Browning on the way?




I kind of half-accidentally ended up
writing this one, so... I think not. But you never know...







Book
availability details




For a copy of Beyond Today: A Values Story, which costs $15 (plus p&p), email
values.story@gmail.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.

IP (Interactive Publications) 2012 Reading Tour of NZ with Sugu Pillay and Karen Zelas

IP (Interactive
Publications) 2012 Reading Tour of Aotearoa/New Zealand




IP have just published two more collections by New Zealand poets: Flaubert's Drum by Sugu Pillay and Night's Glass Table by Karen Zelas - and, just as they did with Keith Westwater and myself last year, IP publisher and poet Dr David Reiter is touring the country with Karen and Sugu.




Here is the tour schedule:




Sugu Pillay, Karen Zelas, Dr David
Reiter







Dunedin




Monday 27th August: Circadian Rhythm Café, 72 St Andrew Street. 8pm.




Timaru




Tuesday 28th August. Timaru District Library. 12.30 pm.




Christchurch




Thursday 30th August. In Association with the Christchurch Writers Festival. 4.30pm The
Little Dome, Hagley Park, Christchurch.




Wellington




Sunday 2nd Sept. Poetry & Music at the Metro, Porirua. 4 pm.




Monday 3rd Sept. Wellington Central Library. 6.pm.




Auckland




Tuesday 4th Sept. Poetry Live at theThirsty Dog, 469 Karangahape Rd, Auckland.
7.30pm




Tauranga




Wednesday 5th Sept. Tauranga Campus, Waikato University, Durham Street, 6 pm.











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.

An Interview With Jan Hutchison

Jan Hutchison was born in Petone and educated at Victoria University and the New Zealand Library School. She has worked in the Justice
Department, spent time overseas, and been a librarian in Wellington,
Dunedin and Nelson.



Jan lives in Christchurch with Hamish and says
that poetry is a significant part of her life. She wrote constantly as a
child and she returned to writing poetry after her own children left
home. David Howard encouraged her and she joined the Poetry Collective
where she appreciated meeting others with similar interests. She belongs
to a poetry group which meets regularly and values its lively exchange
of views.



She writes for Amnesty International and at present is
improving her skills in Maori language.



Her poems are represented in many anthologies and publications and more
recently in Snorkel and Quadrant (Australia). Steele Roberts published
her three collections: The Long Sleep is Over, Days Among Trees, and The Happiness of Rain. Recently, she won first prize in The Takahe
International Poetry Competition, 2011.



Tim adds: The title poem The Happiness of Rain was my Tuesday Poem this week.




Jan, why did you choose "The Happiness
of Rain" as the title of your latest collection of poetry?



I chose the title The Happiness of Rain as I wanted one
which connected with New Zealand landscape and, despite the precarious
environment, would reveal joy in the present moment. I remembered, in
particular, a day I spent at Stewart Island and many visits to bush on the hills of Wellington. 













How is the collection organised? Is there a
unifying theme, or are there unifying themes, which run through it?




Much of the first part of the book is concerned with experiences in
Canterbury, and in particular, visits to Darfield and Banks Peninsula.
The second part of The Happiness of Rain includes poems which show the creativity of the human or animal spirit under adverse circumstances.



I don't write the poems in a systematic order but try to arrange a collection of poems - after I've finally completed them - in a way that allows them to engage with others on the page opposite or near by. Nor do I plan a particular poem.  I stop what I'm thinking and expecting
and stay present for the poem as long as it takes.



My poetry is an
expression of faith in the integrity of the senses and faith in the
imagination.  I want my poems to be connected with the natural world,
with myths and animals, dreams and erotic life. 




Do your three collections represent a
continuum, or will readers familiar with your first two collections notice a
different Jan Hutchison when they come to read The Happiness of
Rain?




I think The Happiness of Rain differs from the earlier books but I’d prefer others made their own comments.




Do you write in forms other than poetry, or
do you concentrate solely on poetry?




I write solely poetry.




This is probably a question you are getting
sick of – so please feel free not to answer! – but what has been the effect of
the last two years of earthquakes and disruption on both your own writing, and
on the poetry community in Canterbury?




The earthquakes have had a major effect on me and everyone I know.



I have three poems on our September and February quakes in the first
part of The Happiness of Rain. As well, I’ve included a found poem on
the telephone book which was written a few years earlier and published
in JAAM in 2007.




Which poets have been a strong influence on
your own poetry?




Nearly all my reading, one way or another, influences my
poetry. I think of stories collected by Grimm, and as well, many myths
and legends. I like poems in translation. I admire Chinese poems from
the T’ang Dynasty. I like work by Rilke, Anna Akhmatova, Mandelstam and
Chekhov. I’m influenced by poets such as Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop. I often read W. S. Merwin.



Others whom I read and reread are John Clare, Hardy, the later Yeats,
Edward Thomas, Charles Causley, Kathleen Jamie, Michael Longley, many
contemporary Irish poets - the list never ends. Poets in New Zealand who
spring to mind are Fiona Farrell, Michael Harlow, Cilla McQueen, Bill
Manhire, Jim Norcliffe, Gregory O’Brien, C.K. Stead and Brian Turner.




Finally, and if you don't mind me asking,
what are you working on at the moment?




I am working on another collection with the working title “Sand and River Time”.




Book
availability details



The Happiness of Rain can be ordered from book shops or from Steele Roberts' web site: www.SteeleRoberts.co.nzYou 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 Happiness Of Rain, by Jan Hutchison

This lanky child runs along the shore

cooling her feet in tidal pools.



Wherever she treads in spring

grasses are more tender.



On sultry days, she rides a pony

inland

then with quick hand-slaps

divides its mane in two.



Sometimes she perches in forest

trees among pellucid ferns.



Their fronds are shining whorls

she tunes with her little finger

to any wayward wind.



Far down, the stream shimmers,

and the child sings a promise

to the weeks to come.



water   water

stars are winter’s flowers.



Credit Note: "The Happiness of Rain" is the title poem of Jan Hutchison's new collection, published by Steele Roberts. Watch out for my interview with Jan, which I'll be publishing here later this week.



The Tuesday Poem: You can check out the other Tuesday Poems for this week on the Tuesday Poem blog:- the hub poem at the centre of the page, and all the other poems to the left.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: Touchdown, and some Cool News

Touchdown



The engine ceased and silence fell.

We had made it. Nine months,

nine months in a metal womb

drinking recycled urine

eating recycled crap

watching our dosimeters glow.



I earned my place as captain. Sure,

there was the PR angle: Venus flies to Mars!

Great for the ratings, all that sort of thing.

But a dream born in girlhood

honed through years of preparation

had fitted me to take command.



"We're down," I said, "we're clear and down."

Fifteen minutes later

they would be cheering the news in Houston

but for now we had the planet to ourselves.

I looked at my companions. Dazed, exhausted,

but a spring of joy flowed in every one.



A human was about to step on Mars.  The moment

I had dreamt about had come. I crawled into the airlock.

I waited till it cycled. I stepped outside

and felt the Martian sun.

The cold air chilled me. The red light was eerie.

The great deed of my life was done.



Credit note: "Touchdown" was first published in my second poetry collection, All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens (HeadworX, 2007 - contact me if you'd like a copy), and republished in Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, ed Mark Pirie and Tim Jones (2009). In All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens, it forms part of the "Red Stone" sequence about the colonisation of Mars.



The Cool News: I've just heard from IP, the publishers of Voyagers, that the Frankfurt Book Fair has requested Voyagers for its upcoming Books on New Zealand exhibition at the Fair. After all the hoops that other authors have had to jump through to get their books on display at the Fair, I feel just the tiniest smidgeon of guilt about this - but mainly, I feel very pleased!



A little bird tells me that, since the Voyagers concept worked so well in New Zealand, it might be repeated in a neighbouring country ... watch this space!



The Tuesday Poem: You can check out the other Tuesday Poems for this week on the Tuesday Poem blog:- the hub poem at the centre of the page, and all the other poems to the left.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.

Poetry Readings Coming Up In Palmerston North, Takaka And Nelson

Just before I get onto the news of forthcoming readings, I have had another book review published in Landfall Review Online:



Tim Jones reviews Hilary and David by Laura Solomon.



(I have a lot of trouble with links to Landfall Review Online, so if this link does not work, look for the review entitled "Friends on Facebook".)



Forthcoming Poetry Readings



August: Palmerston North



Keith Westwater and I read at the Ballroom Cafe in Wellington in June - our first joint reading since last year's book launch tour for Men Briefly Explained and Tongues of Ash - and next month we're heading to Palmerston North to read: Here are the details:



When: Wednesday 15 August, 6:00pm

Where: Palmerston North Central Library, Palmerston North



Here's the writeup from the Eventfinder site:



Wellington poets Tim Jones and Keith Westwater read from their new collections.



Keith Westwater's new book 'Tongues of Ash' won Interactive Publishing's Best First Book Award.

"There is a no-nonsense specificity about Keith's poems, a refusal to privilege the smooth over the roughnesses of human experience....the book begins with an annotated map of Wellington as a special insert - which has room for romantic and family love, weather, landscapes, rocks and history." - Jack Ross, poet and academic



Tim Jones's new book 'Men Briefly Explained' was described by writer Mary McCallum as:

"Tim Jones' new collection holds men up to the light with poems that are intimate and playful, smart and satirical. He focuses on the rituals and carapaces of men and the relevance of that gender in the future. Men Briefly Explained is an engaging and provocative read."



I've read once before in Palmerston North, and enjoyed it very much - I'm looking forward to reading there again.



September: Takaka and Nelson



It's been many years since I have been to Nelson, and I have never been to Golden Bay, but I am planning to remedy both oversights in September. Though details are still to be confirmed, this is how things look at the moment:



Thurs 20 Sept, 7.30pm: Bay Lit Awards presentation ceremony, The Mussel Inn



Fri 21 Sept, 1pm: Reading at Takaka Memorial Library



Mon 24 Sept, 6 for 6.30pm: Reading at Nelson Live Poets, The Free House, 95 Collingwood Street



Watch this space for further details, Facebook and other events, etc. If you live in Palmerston North or the Top of the South, I hope we'll get the chance to meet at one of these events.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.

IP Inside Track Consultations: Coming to NZ in August-September

News from Dr David Reiter of IP that he will be available for Inside Track Consultations for New Zealand authors during IP's next book tour of New Zealand from 27 August to 6 September. Here are the details:



Dr David Reiter, Publisher, IP (Interactive Publications) will be offering Inside Track Consultations (ITCs) to aspiring authors interested in publishing with IP. Regarded as Australia's most innovative independent publisher, IP has an expanding list of New Zealand authors, and publishes titles for adults and children in most genres in physical and digital editions. Your ITC can be for 30 minutes ($70) or an hour ($130), and he encourages you to send a sample of your work, plus a synopsis, in advance of the meeting. ITCs will be scheduled in concert with his tour of New Zealand from 27 Aug - 6 Sept, which will include stops in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland and Tauranga, to promote new work by Karen Zelas and Sugu Pillay, as well as his own. For further info, please send an Expression of Interest to him ASAP at reiter@ipoz.biz
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: Hub Cap'n

I'm the editor for the hub Tuesday Poem this week - check out what I've chosen as this week's Tuesday Poem on the Tuesday Poem blog, and remember to check out all the other Tuesday Poems in the sidebar on the left, too.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: Flash Fiction: The Giant Space Iceberg

Then the giant spaceship hit the giant space iceberg. The passengers all rushed to the poop deck with their smart phones and their digital cameras. "Look," they said, "a giant space iceberg!"



"It's called a comet, dummy," said the other passengers.



The giant spaceship began to list dangerously. People ran around in the foreground, while other people ran around in the background. The lifeboats, suspended on giant space davits, listed dangerously too.



The well-drilled robot crew put the emergency plan into action. "Everyone to the lifeboats," they cried. "Robots and little robots first!"



After the robots were seated in the lifeboats, there was still room for some passengers.

"I am not sharing my lifeboat with a crew of mechanicals," protested one dowager. "They stink of machine oil."



So she didn't.



The lifeboats were launched. The remaining passengers aboard the giant spaceship looked a little anxiously at one another. Then they jumped.



The captain was the last to jump. He waited until the flash-frozen corpses were out of sight, then he got his spacesuit out of his locker, put it on, and jumped himself.



As luck would have it, he landed on the comet, the outer layers of which were now ablating severely. A chunk of ice the size of a fist broke off the comet and smashed through his faceplate. As the air poured out of his suit, the bacteria who had been inhabiting his body leapt onto the comet's surface and began to burrow inward.



“I wondered when you guys would turn up,” said the comet, and set a course for the third planet from the sun.



Tim says: Friday is National Flash Fiction day, so in honour of that, I have posted one of the flash fictions I've written recently, some of which have been published in the excellent Flash Fiction. (Not this one, though - this one is new.)



The Tuesday Poem: You can check out this week's flash fictions and poems at the Tuesday Poem 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.