Tim Jones's Blog, page 33

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.

Tuesday Poem: Norah Jones Or System Of A Down

 

I'm visiting Lemmy from Motorhead.

"Lemmy," I say, "how did you get that

bass sound in 'The Watcher'?"

He shows me the fingering on his Zimmer frame.

He's forgotten most of Motorhead

but he's frighteningly lucid on Hawkwind.



Unasked questions throng my head.

Lemmy, who was your favourite band?

Lemmy, what drugs do they still let you take?

Lemmy, when did you start growing old?

"Lemmy," I say, "are you cold?"

He is. I wrap him in my coat.



Visiting hours are over.

I shake the maestro's hand.

The warts on Lemmy's ravaged face

stand out like sentinels

defeated by the beat of time.



There's music piped into the rooms.

It's Norah Jones or System of a Down.

I take my leave.

I brace myself against the cold.

I embody the presence of silence.



Credit note: "Norah Jones or System of a Down" was first published in papertigermedia 04 (October 2004) and included 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: Another of my little run of poems about music and musicians from All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens. Ian Fraser "Lemmy" Kilmister is, as far as I know, still alive and kicking up merry hell, and not in an old people's home. The last line of the poem is adapted from a remark by Lemmy's near-contemporary, but complete opposite in temperament, the guitarist Robert Fripp.



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.

Flash Frontier, Frankfurt, Two Kinds Of Monster, And The Octacon Reunion

 

I've decided this year that writing comes before blogging, and that, while I'll always aim to put up one blog post per week, I may not always put up a second post.



That means that, when I do put up a second post, there will be lots to talk about - as there is today.



Flash Frontier



Michelle Elvy is a new - to me! - and energetic figure on the New Zealand literary scene, and I have enjoyed becoming involved in a couple of projects in which she is a prime mover.



Firstly, I have a story in the first issue of Flash Frontier. This is a new New Zealand literary magazine, edited by Michelle Elvy and Sian Williams, that specialises in flash fiction - very short fiction, which in the case of Flash Frontier means an upper limit of 250 words. I don't often write flash fiction, but I can tell you that it is lots of fun to write, and that Flash Frontier is looking for more of it!



My story "The Beginnings of America" is one of 16 stories in the first issue, which also carries this interesting interview with Graeme Lay, who edited several NZ anthologies of short-short fiction.



Frankfurt



Another Michelle Elvy initiative, this time with Dorothee Lang, is the Frankfurt Book Fair 2012: An Aotearoa Affair - A Blog Fest from Kiel to Kaitaia.



It's an excellent blog which brings together work from New Zealand and German writers, some translated, in the leadup to the Frankfurt Book Fair - and you can join the blog and get involved in its many projects.



I was very chuffed that my poem The Translator was selected as the first of the blog's Weekly Highlights, and it has since been joined by work by Marcus Speh, Emma Barnes, and Patrizia Monzani, with more to follow!



Helen Lowe also mentions this Blog Fest on her blog - with good reason, as the German translation of her novel The Heir of Night is being published in 2012. Congratulations, Helen!



Two Kinds of Monster



The blog tour for my 2011 poetry collection Men Briefly Explained is not quite over yet! Bookiemonster has published a pair of interviews on her blog this week that form part of my and Keith Westwater's blog tours:



Keith Westwater Interviews Tim Jones About Men Briefly Explained



Tim Jones Interviews Keith Westwater About Tongues Of Ash



The Octacon Reunion



In 1982, a science fiction convention was held in Dunedin that changed lives and changed underwear. It went down in history as Octacon, and now, thirty years later, those who experienced Octacon for the first time are condemned to relive every agonising moment. What's more, it is even possible for others to join them in their communal madness. Look upon the mighty Octacon Reunion Poster, ye mortals, and despair! (Or, if your motto is 'nil desperandum', contact 2012octacon@gmail.com for further details.)



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: An Adventure

 

He put his Steely Dan CDs

in a box under the bed

bought three pairs of baggy shorts

wore his cap backwards

learned to swear like Fred Durst

(or was it Kirsten Dunst? He could

never be entirely sure.)



Took to clubbing. He sought out

young women with black hair

(or auburn — almost anything but that particular

shade of bottle blonde)

and more money than good sense.



For a while it all went well.

With the little blue pills

bought cheap online

he gave them a good time

every time.



Then, in a private moment

one of his conquests

caught him listening to the Moody Blues.

When she spread the word

the good times were over. He hung up his cap

gave the shorts to charity

and subscribed to Sky instead.



Credit note: "An Adventure" was first published in JAAM 22 (November 2004) and included 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: There are a few "midlife crisis" poems in my latest collection, Men Briefly Explained, but this is my first attempt at the genre, from my previous collection. This is Fred Durst. And this is Kirsten Dunst.



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 - free rein, I say! - 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.

Tuesday Poem: Zoopermarket

 

Big cats patrol the aisles.

At the checkouts, baboons preen and groom

while parrots chatter through the speakers.



Sloth and sun-bear

peccary and panda

lie snoring on the shelves.



Wolves in the warehouse.

In the freezers, walrus and penguin

cherish the ice and cold.



The manager's a mongoose

and was that a rhino

pushing trolleys to the trolley park?



At the zoo, there's trouble.

Visitors want chimpanzees, not cereals

and who put tinned fruit in the tigers' cage?



Corn chips in place of cheetahs

lightbulbs for lizards

elephants replaced by Edam cheese.



Only the zebras remain.

Their stripes are barcodes

scanned by the winter sun.



Credit note: This poem was published in Poetry Pudding, an anthology of poetry for children edited by Jenny Argante.



Tim says: I have rarely tried to write poetry for children, other than the occasional reassuring ditty for my son when he was young (sample: "There's No Volcanoes Here"). This is the only published exception, and I'm still quite fond of 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.

I Only Read It For The Interviews

 

I run round about one interview (usually, but not always, an interview with an author) on my blog each month. My own interviews this year were augmented by Johanna Knox's fascinating interview with Mandy Hager.



Here are the interviews from my blog in 2011 - and you can check out interviews from previous years as well.



2011: Interviews with:



Owen Bullock



Mary Cresswell



Tracie McBride



Laura Solomon



Janis Freegard



Anna Caro



Barbara Strang



Michael J. Parry



Meliors Simms



Mandy Hager interviewed by Johanna Knox - Part 1 and Part 2



Johanna Knox



Penelope Cottier



If that's not enough interviews for you, you can also check out the blog tour interviews with me about Men Briefly Explained - and the tour's not quite over yet!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: Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21, by Kathleen Jones

 

Kathleen Jones is a noted biographer and poet whom I have previously interviewed for this blog, in particular about her excellent recent biography of Katherine Mansfield, and who is one of the Tuesday Poets. She was also kind enough to provide an endorsement for my recent collection Men Briefly Explained.



Reviewing books by people one knows and likes is both easier and harder than reviewing books by complete strangers. Easier, because this knowledge might give the reviewer a little more insight into the writer's work - not that I am claiming any special insight!; and harder, because it is always possible that, despite liking the writer, the reviewer might not like the book.



I'm delighted to report that I don't have this problem with Kathleen Jones' latest book, her first full poetry collection, Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21. I like this book a lot, and furthermore, I liked it more and more as it went on.

If I was asked to say what this collection was about in three words (one of which had to be a conjunction), I'd say 'landscape and character'. My favourite poems in the collection are those which bring the two together, and since almost all of them do this, I was a happy and engaged reader throughout.



Many of these landscapes are harsh. Kathleen Jones has spent much of her life in Cumbria, in the north of Britain, and many of these poems bear the harshness of that northern landscape, the sense that the flesh over the bones of the earth is thin. But the collection begins even further north, in the glacial north of Russia, where



From the lake's edge the land seems

to go on forever - beyond politics,

into the impossible distances

of history, where women still



wash their clothes in the stream

and sleep above the stove.



("Aiming for Archangel: Lake Onega")



Winter is even more to the fore in "Winter Light", which Helen Lowe recently featured as a Tuesday Poem on her blog, and intimate relationships are described in terms of snow and winter too:



Under the duvet's white drifts

we trespass unconsciously —



a sleeping thaw that threatens

waking separation.



("The Silence of Snow")



Many of these poems feature a woman choosing, or preparing to choose, wintry solitude over warm entanglement - or having solitude imposed on her by circumstance, as in the title poem.



All the same, I think my very favourite poems in the book are those which are not (ostensibly, at least) about the narrator of the poems, but about an external figure. I chose "'To the Gods the Shades'", about a 1st-century Roman occupier of Britain guarding the Empire's northern border, as my Tuesday Poem this week because I admire the way in which Kathleen Jones evokes the man, his times, and the country in which he serves, all in 24 economical lines, not a word wasted, nothing flashy (which would be inappropriate for this poem), everything achieved by the skilled deployment of language. The high point of this poem for me is



scouring the Tyne gap through this bleak

border town where everything closes at five —



lines that bridge the gap between historical and modern times with the complaint of a cosmopolitan traveller, a complaint such as ancient Roman or modern Briton might equally make.



Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 is full of such deft touches. Worth reading, worth re-reading.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: 'To the Gods the Shades' by Kathleen Jones

 

Inscription on a 1st century Roman tombstone in Hexham.



The wolf and wild boar wintered here

where Flavinus' impetuous latin blood

felt the unkindness of snow



and the granite hardness of the Wall

whose builders he defended against

the brutal insurgence of Pict and Celt.



Days of cracked leather, blistered hands,

the horses' breath rising like bath-house steam,

a northern mist obscuring the sun's retina;



remembering the soft, olive-perfumed

flesh of southern lovers in the rough,

hessian coupling of Celtic women —



the wire-boned, woad-stained, spoils of war,

who worshipped alien Gods and stank

of semen and ambiguous politics.



Flavinus, Standard-Bearer to the Troop —

speared by the carved barbarian

trampled under his horse — killed



by the cold driven in on the east wind

scouring the Tyne gap through this bleak

border town where everything closes at five —



his final dread — to leave his bones

to winter north in the sour peat, covered

by the same grey stone he died for.



Credit note: "'To the Gods the Shades'" was first published in the Lancaster Lit Fest Anthology and is collected in Kathleen Jones' 2011 poetry collection Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21, published by Templar Poetry. It is reproduced by permission of the author. Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 can be ordered from Templar Poetry.



Tim says: I will be reviewing Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 later this week. I'll say more then about why I like the collection so much, but let me say now that many of the poems I like best in this collection skilfully evoke both character and place, as this poem does so well. I thrilled to stories of the Roman conquest of Britain, like The Eagle of the Ninth, when I was young - these days, I have a rather different take on imperial adventures and the grandeur that was Rome, but this poem revives the shades of that harsh borderland and its harsh inhabitants.



Kathleen Jones is one of the Tuesday Poets. 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.

What I Listened To In 2011: Brought To You By the Letter W

 



I listen to a lot of music (though not when I'm writing, funnily enough), and I think a comprehensive list is beyond me, so here's a look at my two favourite bands of the year.



Note: I chose not to embed videos in this post because it slows down loading time so much - but there are copious links to YouTube videos below.



Warpaint



At the top of my list of 2010 listening, I put Warpaint. I'd only just started listening to them then, and I have listened to a lot more of their music in 2011, including their first release, the 2009 EP Exquisite Corpse. Here is a clip of them playing one of the songs from that EP, Krimson, in Auckland at the start of 2011 - a show I wish I'd seen live.



One of the many things I like about Warpaint is their willingness to reinvent their songs in live performance: here are links to extended live performances of the two songs they use as the basis for improvisation, Elephants and Beetles. (One of the things these live performances showcase is what a wonderful rhythm section they have in drummer Stella Mozgawa and bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg - check out Elephants in particular to see this in action.)



Wild Flag and its forerunners



In September, a new band called Wild Flag released its self-titled debut album. The band was new, but the members came from such prominent '90s bands as Sleater-Kinney, Helium and the lesser-known (to me anyway) Minders. While Warpaint, at least in their recorded incarnation, is music for thinking and dreaming, Wild Flag makes me want to get up and jump around the room. Sometimes, imperilling the cat and the furniture, I do.



Here are Wild Flag's entertaining videos for Romance and Electric Band, plus a live-in-the-studio version of my favourite song of theirs, Black Tiles, and an extended live workout of Racehorse.



My enjoyment of Wild Flag led me to check out Sleater-Kinney and Helium. 2/3 of Sleater-Kinney, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss, now form half of Wild Flag, while Mary Timony, the prime mover of Helium, is now co-frontwoman of Wild Flag with Carrie Brownstein. (The fourth member of Wild Flag is Rebecca Cole, whose keyboards keep the band sounding as harsh as Sleater-Kinney often do.)



I'm finding Sleater-Kinney to be an acquired taste that I haven't fully acquired yet, but I do like this live performance of the epic Zeppelinesque song from their final album The Woods, Let's Call It Love, which segues into Entertain.



But Helium are great! I now have their 1995 album The Dirt of Luck (I don't have any idea what that means, either), and here are a couple of my favourite tracks from it, Skeleton and Honeycomb.



What else?



Here are a few other songs and pieces of music, old and new, that have been particular favourites of mine this year.



Kylesa, Don't Look Back (album version - I can't find a live version with good enough sound) - and here is a live performance: Kylesa covering Pink Floyd's Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun



Arcade Fire, Intervention



Motorhead, We Are The Roadcrew (studio version)



The Real Thing, You To Me Are Everything



Smokey Robinson, Cruisin'



Gustav Mahler, Symphony #5 In C Sharp Minor - 4. Adagietto (the "Death in Venice" theme)



Frederick Delius, Walk To The Paradise Garden



Dmitri Shostakovich, Festive OvertureYou 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.