Tim Jones's Blog, page 32

An Interview With Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is best known in his native New Zealand for his poetry (his seventh collection, Being of Two Minds, has recently been published by Steele Roberts, Wellington), though he is internationally renowned as an ethnographer, having done fieldwork in Sierra Leone, West Africa, and in Aboriginal Australia (among the Warlpiri of the Tanami Desert and Kuku-Yalanji speaking people on Cape York) over a forty year period.



He has taught anthropology at Massey University, Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, Indiana University, the University of Copenhagen, and is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of 27 books of poetry, fiction, memoir, and ethnography.



Michael's poem Hit and Run was my Tuesday Poem this week.

Michael, would it be fair to call Road Markings an anthropological memoir?



There are elements of memoir in it, but I think of it more as a road book – a journey in present time, focused on conversations with people in the here and now, but with inevitable digressions into the past.



Can you explain the concept of 'firstness' as it refers in Road Markings, and why is it so important both to the book and to you?



The book's perspective is that of an expatriate who, despite having remained faithful to his natal country and returned home every year like a migratory bird, has never ceased wondering what kind of life he might have led had he stayed put. Inevitably, this leads to the question of whether the way New Zealand shaped me as a child still determines the way I think and the way I see the world. In my case, New Zealand has never ceased to haunt me. Much as I have needed radically different places to enlarge my horizons, to challenge me as a person and as a writer, I have needed to sustain a relationship with the place that first nurtured me.



Yet every expatriate knows the dilemma of trying to keep the home fires burning, yet watching them gutter and gradually go out. There is a Maori saying that for as long as you live on the land, a fire burns there (ahi ka), signaling that you have the right to be there. But if you abandon the land, the fires die (ahi mataotao) and you forfeit that right. As we say, occupation is nine tenths of the law. In 2008 I decided that the time had come for me to explore this quandary in more depth, so I hired a car, and hit the road, determined to engage these issues through conversations with old friends and visits to old haunts.



Road Markings emerged as a series of meditations on the power of first experiences in our lives – first love, first landfall, first home, first loss. It touches on the ways that personal stories are interwoven with social and historical events, and explores Maori invocations of toi whenua in making claims for recognition and social justice, the search of adopted children for their birth parents, the notion of childhood as 'the formative years', our current preoccupation with genealogical, geographical or genetic backgrounds, and the allure of myths and models of cause and effect.

Road Markings is structured around a series of meetings with old friends, meaning that their narratives are intertwined with yours in the book. Did you encounter any resistance, or feel any constraint, in including their stories and experiences in this book?



Most people I spoke to agreed to have our conversations included in the book, though there were several instances when sensitive or potentially compromising material was edited out. In a couple of cases, names were changed to protect the identity of my interlocutors.



I don't think I'd call Road Markings a particularly happy book. Many of the life stories you recount are filled with sadness and loss. Would you describe your return to New Zealand, as described in the book, as a happy one on the whole? Are you glad you made the journey?



All my returns home have been happy. But no human life is without its moments of sadness and loss. What struck me constantly as I made this particular journey was the resilience of the people I spoke to, the creative ways in which they had responded to adversity, and the good humour with which they embraced twists of fate and reverses of fortune. True happiness comes not from avoiding the hardships of life but knowing how to affirm life in even the hardest times. This has been borne home to me in every place I have done ethnographic fieldwork, whether in Africa, Aboriginal Australia or Aotearoa New Zealand.



A question that may be related: Do you regret spending so many years of your life away from New Zealand?



I regret nothing. But as I said before, there are dilemmas in life one cannot really resolve – such as maintaining relationships with all the places and people one has met in the course of an itinerant life. The question is how to accept, rather than regret.



One of your chapters, "Distance looks our way", takes its title from Charles Brasch's 1948 poem "The Islands":



Everywhere in light and calm murmuring

Shadow of departure; distance looks our way

And none knows where he will lie down at night.



Brasch was writing during the period in which some New Zealand writers – opposed to a greater or lesser degree by others – developed a (predominantly white, predominantly masculine) New Zealand literary nationalism, and Road Markings revisits both these debates over national identity and the challenging of that constructed identity by Maori and feminists from the 1970s onwards. How important do you think this debate over national identity continues to be in the New Zealand of the 2010s?



Questions of identity – personal, ethnic, national, literary, gendered – have never been of much concern to me. My anthropological work has been far more oriented toward the ways in which identities can be negotiated, blurred, disregarded or transcended, and how it is possible, as a person or an ethnographer, to cross boundaries and develop meaningful relationships with people who, on the face of it, have nothing in common with oneself. I have always striven to realise the truth of Terence's famous dictum: nothing human is alien to me.



Road Markings is an ebook. Is this your first venture into being published in this format, and how have you found it?



Had I not placed my manuscript in the capable hands of Penelope Todd, who also edited the manuscript of my memoir (The Accidental Anthropologist), I might have found e-publishing less satisfying than traditional publication. And though this is my first e-book, I'm gratified to say that word is getting around, and my fears that the book would disappear like a stone dropped into the sea have been allayed.



Road Markings has received good reviews in New Zealand. Have your friends and colleagues overseas read the book, and if so, how have they reacted?



A lot of my students have read the book, and like it. It helps them see where I am coming from. It helps them understand some of my un-American traits, for which I have my New Zealand upbringing to thank – my aversion to hierarchy and formality, my insistence on being called by my first name, my egalitarianism, my naïve curiosity, and a veneer of rustic innocence that, I am happy to say, has never worn off.



How To Buy Road Markings



Road Markings can be purchased from Rosamirabooks.com. It is available in epub, PDF and Kindle formats, meaning that it can be read on most mobile devices, on a PC or Mac, and on a Kindle.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: Hit and Run, by Michael Jackson

 



That absolute

and unfeigned stillness

I can't get used to

even when it's only the family cat

that's dead

hit on the road

carried to the bathroom

on a green towel

lying there now

with a set grimace

a smear of blood

a broken leg

freeze-framed against the curtains

moving in the wind, my own reflection

moving in the mirror,

gone – or what we knew of her –

and that evaporation

of what we know as life

impossible to comprehend

so instantaneous

and irreversible

as in the beginning

a child is suddenly

there

as if from nowhere

and no way back

alive where there was nothing

such passages, so abrupt,

there is no cancelling

as there is with words,

no taking back

a remark that hurt

no revising the manuscript;

these events cannot be

revisited

there is no as if

or only if

it has happened

nothing more

and so you leave

a space on the page, a gap

as the only way of alluding

to this emptiness,

the day that began with

a cat going through a door

and ended with clay

spaded into a hole in the yard

and me trudging back to the shed

kicking earth from the sole

of my shoes

and washing my hands

as if that was the end of it.



Credit note: From Michael Jackson's new poetry collection Being of Two Minds (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2012) - please follow that link for sales information.



Tim says: On Thursday, I will be posting my interview with the distinguished New Zealand anthropologist and poet Michael Jackson.



That interview focuses on Road Markings, his memoir of a recent return visit to New Zealand, published by Rosa Mira Books. But since Michael Jackson is also a well-published poet, I asked if I could feature one of the poems from his latest collection as my Tuesday Poem this week - and Michael sent this fine poem in answer to that request.



One of the many good things about Road Markings is that, though mostly prose, it also contains a number of Michael's poems, included where they fit the narrative. Stand by for lots more about Road Markings on Thursday!



You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the hub poem in the middle of the page, and all the other poems in the sidebar on the right.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.

A Fool For Poetry: I'm Reading At The Metro On 1 April

 

I'm the guest poet at Music & Poetry at the Metro this coming Sunday, 1 April. Here's the lineup:



Guest Musicians: Ramon Oza and Susie Colien-Reid



Open Mike



Guest Poet: Tim Jones



The Metro is at 7 Lydney Place, Porirua, and the session runs from 4-6pm.



I'll be reading from Men Briefly Explained and trying a few newer poems out as well.



If you're on Facebook, you can sign up for the Facebook event and also see the Music at the Metro Facebook page for more news: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Music-at-the-Metro/301841379852705



Here is some more information about the guest musicians:



Black Eyed Susie



Ramon Oza and Susie Colien-Reid are the core sound of four piece original Celtic rock band Blackeyedsusie. Ramon has played electric guitar professionally for 35 years, starting with supporting his family by performing 6 nights a week for a 5 star hotel in India. Susie studied classical violin to diploma level, until her love of 70's rock drew her to develop the freelance raw style she enjoys today. Individually both have performed for major international acts ranging from the Drifters, to the Alabama Blind Boys. As a duo their sound is a blend of high energy Celtic and Funk Blues Rock influence.



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: Fallen / Niedergang

 



Fallen



Driving through Mandeville. Empty windows, empty houses,

a craft shop sprung like fungus from the bones of the dying town.



The cenotaph stands roadside. Blunt, unwearied,

it commends to our attention the names of the anxious dead.



They grew, these Southland towns, on the graves

of the children of Tane. Mandeville, Riversdale -

Myross Bush, Ryal Bush, Gummies' …



the land groaned with the weight of their money.

As the tribes were pushed to the margins, fat lambs

grew fatter. Knives flashed cold on the chains;

eels tumbled and writhed over offal.



Now, thistles nod in the hard-pan fields. Children

are a letter from the city, a ten-hour drive at Easter.

The wealth

went with them. No mirror glass monuments here.



But the Council keeps the graveyard clean; and our dust

settles impartially

on the sign: "Country Crafts - Buy Here!"

and the sign that their dead live on, and will do so,

chiselled in stone,

till new trees and new ferns drag them down.



Niedergang



Eine Fahrt durch Mandeville. Hohle Fenster, leere Häuser,

ein Kunstgewerbeladen wie ein Pilz aus den Knochen der sterbenden Stadt entsprungen.



Das Ehrenmal am Straßenrand. Plump, unermüdlich

empfiehlt es uns, sich der Namen der Toten zu erinnern.



Sie wuchsen, diese Südlandstädte, auf den Gräbern

der Kinder Tanes. Mandeville, Riversdale –

Myross Bush, Ryal Bush, Gummies' …



das Land stöhnte unter der Last ihres Geldes.

Während die Stämme an den Rand gedrängt wurden,

setzten fette Lämmer mehr Fett an. Messer blitzten kalt an den Ketten;

Aale wandten und stürzten sich auf die Innereien.



Jetzt nicken Disteln auf den pfannentrockenen Feldern. Kinder

sind ein Brief aus der Stadt, eine Zehnstundenfahrt an

Ostern. Der Wohlstand

zog mit ihnen fort. Keine Spiegelglassdenkmäler hier.



Doch der Stadtrat hält den Friedhof sauber; und unser Staub

senkt sich unbefangen

auf das Schild 'Einheimisches Kunstgewerbe –

hier zu kaufen!' und das Schild, dass die Toten weiter leben und weiter leben werden,

in Stein gemeisselt,

bis neue Bäume

und Farn sie niederziehen werden.

Tim says: A few years ago, a poem from my first collection, Boat People, was selected for inclusion in Wildes Licht, an anthology of New Zealand poetry with German translations, edited by Dieter Riemenschneider.



I was pleased not only because it always feels good to have work anthologised, but also because I have an interest in literary translation, and a particular liking for books which have the original on one page and the translation on the facing page.



Subsequently, however, due to a change in publishing arrangements, the manuscript had to be shortened, and mine was one of the poems cut. I was disappointed about this, but since Mark Pirie and I had undergone exactly the same process while finding a publisher for Voyagers, I recognised that this is just one of the realities of the publishing process.



Dieter was kind enough to send me the translation of "Fallen" that would have appeared in "Wildes Licht", and give me permission to publish it on this blog. In the year of the Frankfurt Bookfair 2012: An Aotearoa Affair, this is a good time to republish it.



You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the hub poem in the middle of the page, and all the other poems in the sidebar on the right.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: New Live Dates

 

It's a meat market in here.

Why girls as green as grass

Should dance to the songs of a man ten times their age

Climb on their boyfriends' shoulders

Throw their panties and their room keys on the stage

I'll never know.



They wanted to send me out backed by machines

Some guy in a booth somewhere, flicking switches.

I said no: give me a band, the younger and louder the better.

Let the old man have his Zimmer frame of noise

His crackling fire of guitars

His beating heart of bass and drum.



I've lived; no, not lived, let's say survived

To hear my music cut to pieces, used to sell

Everything from shoes to car insurance

Everything from fried chicken to retirement homes.

It doesn't matter: nothing matters

But the lights, the noise, the stage



And my women. I drink them up.

I leave them pale and drained.

In the morning, they don't know themselves

Waking with a shiver to the memory of pleasure

The scents of whisky and old leather

And the sound of curtains flapping in the wind.



Credit note: "New Live Dates" was first published in my second poetry collection, All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens (HeadworX, 2007) - signed copies still available from me for $10 (plus p&p) - email me at senjmito@gmail.com if you'd like one.



Tim says: The third of my poems about music and musicians from All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens, following An Adventure and Norah Jones and System of a Down. This one is pretty much the ageing-male-rock-musician-as-vampire metaphor, and I think it explains quite a lot about one Michael Philip Jagger, especially SuperHeavy.



I first posted this poem on my blog in 2008, but as the Tuesday Poem wasn't going then, I have given myself free rein to repost it here.



You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the hub poem in the middle of the page, and all the other poems in the sidebar on the right.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.

Of Tania Hershman, Men, and Middle Earth

 

Men of Middle Earth sounds like a good idea for a calendar, actually - although Dwarves of Middle Earth would be more appropriate in this year of The Hobbit.



But no, this is an orc-huntin', mead-swillin' odyssey through the geographically coterminous worlds of Middle Earth and Men Briefly Explained. Your guide is the distinguished UK writer of short and short-short fiction, Tania Hershman:



An Interview with Tim Jones in which Men are Briefly Explained.



The interview includes my photos of used movie locations! And I encourage you to find out more about Tania, her writing, and her new collection of fiction on her website.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: Beige Keeps Being Born, by Madeleine M. Slavick

 

        The first appearance was a pair of tall pants that came all the way

from Germany, with two fashionable legs of beige suede standing up a strong and tender woman,

and the balance of beauty was wanted



                                                     instead of Maine teenage

      faces foundationed a false brown, and Imedeened Hong Kong women lightening

      their born color, not to be touched, just looked at, like

                  an advertisement for a certain chosen future



                                                                        not found in the house's one hundred

and twenty seven shelves of careful literature, some Southern, most modern, and the

contemporary having creamy pages, thick, the edges feathered, pretending

              to be just as natural



                              as a trillion grains of policed sand in Santa Monica and Rio de Janiero,

two open oceans trying to bring answers to people with or without money, homes,

                 minds - no poverty, begging, allowed



                                                              in the anytime clicking of mah jongg on the table,

eight hands moving the batter, wild cards, private line drawings, and following

          the boxy ivory or plastic tiles go where they go



                                                                                                                  like a lover, traveling

along the body, making a home, rich as Indian tea, empty as sunned bamboo.



Poet's note: Imedeen: a beauty product to lighten skin



Credit note: This poem is from Madeleine M. Slavick's collection "delicate access", poems in English with translations into Chinese by Luo Hui, and is reproduced by permission of the author.



Madeleine M. Slavick is a writer and photographer. Madeleine has several books of poetry and non-fiction and has exhibited her photography internationally. She has lived in Germany, Hong Kong, the USA, and New Zealand. She maintains a daily blog: touchingwhatilove.blogspot.com - and Madeleine has a witty visual reference to "Beige Keeps Being Born" on her blog here: http://touchingwhatilove.blogspot.co.nz/2010/12/extras.html.



Her books include Something Beautiful Might Happen (Tokyo, 2010), My Favourite Thing (Beijing and Taipei, 2005), Delicate Access (Hong Kong, 2004), Round - Poems and Photographs of Asia (Hong Kong, 1998) and Fifty Stories, Fifty Images, forthcoming. Her photography has been exhibited in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.





"Beige Keeps Being Born" image courtesy of Madeleine M. Slavick.

Tim says: This poem took quite a bit of effort to format, but I think it's well worth it. I love the elegance of the language and the way the poems twists and turns around its central metaphor and its many vivid images.





You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the hub poem in the middle of the page, and all the other poems in the sidebar on the right.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.

Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part Four

 

There are some things to dislike about summer nearing its end, but one of the good things is that, as the days draw in, the monthly poetry reading sessions in Wellington resume.



Earlier this week, I went to the first sessions for the year of two of Wellington's longer-running poetry reading sessions: Poetry at the Ballroom Cafe in Newtown on Sunday afternoon and then the New Zealand Poetry Society (Facebook | Twitter | Web) at the Thistle Inn on Monday night. The respective lineups were:



* Ballroom Cafe: open mike (good mixture of performance and "page" poets), musician (jazz pianist Gilbert Haisman), and guest reader (poet Pat White). I had to leave before the end of Pat's reading as I had something else on immediately afterwards, but there is a quiet power to his poetry that becomes evident as he reads it.

* New Zealand Poetry Society: open mike (one of the best I've heard at the NZPS), guest reader (poet Teresia Teaiwa).



I enjoyed both sessions very much, but the absolute highlight from me was hearing Teresia read. I'd heard her read a few poems before, but the way she put the reading together and wove her poems in with a narrative was an absolute treat. If you get the chance to hear her read, I advise you to take it!



All being well, I'll be doing some more guest readings this year, partly on the back of Men Briefly Explained. The first of these will be in Porirua in April as part of the monthly Music at the Metro series - I am looking forward to it.



I don't believe I will be required to sing, but if I was, I would naturally sing this, since it's referenced in the Men Briefly Explained poem Queens of Silk, Kings of Velour:



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: Landlines (a re-post from February 2011)

 

Note: This is a poem I wrote in response to the Christchurch earthquake of February 22, 2011. I thought it was appropriate to re-post it today.



Landlines



It began with a tremor in the wires,

a voiceless howl of anguish.

Within minutes, the waiting world

has heard the worst — but there's no news of you.

Amanda Palmer, an Olympic rower, former neighbours

are online. But you depend on landlines,

and the lines are down.



Were you at home when it struck? Were you

trapped on a fatal cross-town bus,

walking a hill track bombarded by boulders? Were you

unlucky under verandahs? I strategise

with relatives I barely know, plead on Twitter

for tiny clues, ask Google for your name.

I lift, and set down, and lift the phone.



At last we hear you're safe at home,

barely touched, offering neighbours shelter.

My voice explodes with joy and messages.

I'm gabbling. I slow down. The bigger picture

presses in: so terrible, a city centre

crumbled into bone. I lift the phone.

It rings. You speak. I know, at last, I'm not alone.



Credit note: "Landlines" was first published as the Thursday Poem in the Dominion Post newspaper in Wellington on 3 March 2011.



Tim says: When the Dominion Post asked me to write a poem about the Christchurch earthquake of 22 February, I was on the verge of saying "no", because as a non-Christchurch person, I didn't think that I could do justice to the subject. Then I decided I could write a poem about my reaction in the aftermath of the earthquake, and the search for information on what had happened to my father and stepmother, who were living in a Christchurch retirement village at the time of the quake.



You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the hub poem is in the centre of the page, and the week's other poems are linked from the right of the page. Several other Tuesday poems this week, some by Christchurch poets, address the quake and its aftermath.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 Apex Book Of World SF Volume 2 Now Available For Pre-Order - Including My Story "The New Neighbours"

 

A while ago, I blogged about how pleased I was to have my story "The New Neighbours", first published in my second short story collection Transported, included in The Apex Book Of World SF, Volume 2, edited by Lavie Tidhar.



Things went quiet after a while after that, but I am now delighted to report that The Apex Book Of World SF, Volume 2 is now available for pre-order. Take a look at the cover below, then check out this impressive list of contributors from all over the world. I am really looking forwards to reading this!

Apex Book of World SF, Volume II: Table of Contents



Rochita Loenen-Ruiz (Philippines)–Alternate Girl's Expatriate Life

Ivor W. Hartmann (Zimbabwe)–Mr. Goop

Daliso Chaponda (Malawi)–Trees of Bone

Daniel Salvo (Peru)–The First Peruvian in Space

Gustavo Bondoni (Argentina)–Eyes in the Vastness of Forever

Chen Qiufan (China)–The Tomb

Joyce Chng (Singapore)–The Sound of Breaking Glass

Csilla Kleinheincz (Hungary)–A Single Year

Andrew Drilon (Philippines)–The Secret Origin of Spin-man

Anabel Enriquez Piñeiro (Cuba)–Borrowed Time (trans. Daniel W. Koon)

Lauren Beukes (South Africa)–Branded

Raúl Flores Iriarte (Cuba)–December 8

Will Elliott (Australia)–Hungry Man

Shweta Narayan (India)–Nira and I

Fábio Fernandes (Brazil)–Nothing Happened in 1999

Tade Thompson (Nigeria)–Shadow

Hannu Rajaniemi (Finland)–Shibuya no Love

Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexico)–Maquech

Sergey Gerasimov (Ukraine)–The Glory of the World

Tim Jones (New Zealand)–The New Neighbours

Nnedi Okorafor (Nigeria/US)–From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7

Gail Har'even (Israel)–The Slows

Ekaterina Sedia (Russia/US)–Zombie Lenin

Samit Basu (India)–Electric Sonalika

Andrzej Sapkowski (Poland)–The Malady (trans. Wiesiek Powaga)

Jacques Barcia (Brazil)–A Life Made Possible Behind The Barricades



Since I wrote my initial post, I have got to know several of these authors a little over Twitter - so, as well as the stories by Ekaterina Sedia and Nnedi Okorafor, whom I mentioned in the post linked to above, I am also especially looking forward to reading the stories by Joyce Chng and Fábio Fernandes, plus the many other authors whose work I don't yet have the pleasure of knowing.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.