Tim Jones's Blog, page 38

Tuesday Poem: The Wall, by Tony Malone

 

The sole guardian of the citadel is he,

the last hope of a billion souls and a billion hearts,

a warrior towering in front of his own Thermopylae -

through him, they must pass.



He stands, waiting, as so many times before,

with the calm of the warrior,

for the approach of the foe…



which comes again

with a fiery catapult

of blazing red

thundering down the pass

finally breaking his resolve,

shattering his defence,

ending his resistance.



The white-clad warriors cheer,

their victory dance mocking the memory

of the heroic struggle. The people roar

as the warrior disappears from view, yet…



In their joy is respect, and the truth that

with the falling of the Wall,

victory is inevitable - and complete.



Credit note: "The Wall" is published here for the first time by permission of Tony Malone.



Tim says: A couple of weeks ago, my Tuesday Poem was Ponting's Genius by Meliors Simms. Meliors' poem was about Herbert Ponting, the photographer who accompanied Scott's expedition to Antarctica, but as I expected, some of my readers saw the title and though that Meliors' subject was Ricky Ponting, Australian cricket captain.



One such was Tony Malone, an Australian writer, reader, reviewer and blogger who, like me, is a participant in the weekly South Pacific and Asia Book Chat (#spbkchat) on Twitter. I told him he was welcome to send me a poem about Ricky Ponting (and he still is!), but instead he sent me one about a cricketer I greatly admire, Rahul Dravid.



England and India have just finished playing a Test cricket series during which England overtook India as the #1 team in the world. In fact, England beat India 4 tests to 0. India were hugely disappointing, and only one of the great Indian batsmen stood up against the English bowling attack: Rahul Dravid, the man they call The Wall. Tony's poem is a fitting testament to his skill and determination.



If you'd like to read some more cricket poems, check out New Zealand cricket poetry anthology A Tingling Catch, edited by Mark Pirie, and the blog he maintains that has carried on the work of the anthology.



You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week's other poems are linked from the right-hand column.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.

October Book Tour To Launch Men Briefly Explained and Tongues Of Ash

 

It's all on! The Interactive Press book tour for my third poetry collection, Men Briefly Explained, and Keith Westwater's prize-winning debut collection Tongues of Ash, starts in Dunedin on Tuesday 25 October and ends in Auckland on Tuesday 1 November. Here is the tour poster:

For the benefit of Google and of those, like me, whose eyesight is not what it was, here are those details again in text format:



Dunedin: Tuesday, 25 October, Circadian Rhythm Café, 72 St Andrew Street, 8pm
Christchurch: Wednesday, 26 October, CPIT, Madras Street, 5:30pm
Wellington: Thursday, 27 October, Wellington Central Library, 5:30 for 6pm
Lower Hutt: Friday, 28 October, Rona Gallery/Bookshop, Eastbourne, 6pm
Auckland: Tuesday 1 November, Poetry Live, Thirsty Dog, 469 Karangahape Road, 8pm


You can also see these, and signal your attendance, on our Facebook events page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=188416554563635



To celebrate the occasion, Keith Westwater has launched his own website.

Dr David Reiter, the publisher of Interactive Press and a noted poet in his own right, will also be in attendance and reading from his new collection My Planets. As he is an international poetry publisher who has a track record of publishing collections by New Zealand poets, he may be someone you want to get to know.



We will be doing lots more to publicise individual events over the next seven weeks, but if you just can't wait that long to get your copy of these books, or if you live where you can't get to a launch event, you can already purchase both books from Amazon in paperback and Kindle ebook formats, as follows:



Tongues of Ash: paperback and ebook

Men Briefly Explained: paperback and ebook



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.

Oh, All Right, If You Insist

 

I wasn't going to. But after spending the past two days reading nothing but pleas from leading media outlets for me to change my mind - "He must tell us!" (New Orleans Times-Picayune), "This has become an urgent matter of national security" (Washington Times), "All Blacks something World Cup something" (Dominion Post) - I have decided to give in. The rumours are true: the three titular brothers of my Tuesday Poem Tres Hermanos are indeed that trio of Hollywood hot-shots, Zack, Jed and Joss Whedon.







Here they are with Maurissa "Mo" Tancharoen at some San Diego Comic Con of distant memory - that's Mo, Joss, Zack and Jed in that order. Since the brothers Whedon got their (uncredited) chance to shine in Tres Hermanos and hence Men Briefly Explained, here is Mo Tancharoen with Fran Kranz in the music video for her and Jed Whedon's song "Remains". It's a video that manages to be beautiful, creepy, sad and feminist all at once.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: Tres Hermanos

 

They're feudin', Mama.

They're rasslin'.



They're camped up in Bozeman

for the party season.



One is a long bore.

Another raids the mini-bar, now sure



his date won't show. The third

defends his diary with a secret code.



A horseman riding by

observes the niceties of outstretched thumbs



(that poor horse,

sway-backed and spavined,



when all it wanted was a better ranch).

Hear that far-off harmonica blow



beneath that far-off sky.

See that second mortgage slip away.



They're fussin' and a–fightin', Mama,

those three sons of yours,



arguing over the script

as wolves tiptoe behind.



Credit note: "Tres Hermanos" appears in my new poetry collection, Men Briefly Explained.



Tim says: The note about this poem at the back of Men Briefly Explained helpfully advises as follows:



"Bozeman is the fifth largest city in Montana, on the route of the former Bozeman Trail. Though this is not stated in the poem, the three titular brothers are named Zack, Jed and Joss, which irresistibly suggested a Western theme."



Times are tough, even in Hollywood.



You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week's other poems are linked from the right-hand column.



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 Meliors Simms

Meliors Simms is a contemporary landscape artist, radical crafter, a science fiction poet and an old-school blogger. She makes icebergs, islands and even whole continents from vintage blankets, wool and thread. Her sculptures look like cuddly landscape features yet carry serious environmental messages about the impacts of our everyday choices on the world around us. This August she is exhibiting art about mining in Melbourne and about Antarctica in Hamilton, where she will be reading poetry as well.



Meliors' poem Ponting's Genius was the Tuesday Poem on my blog this week.



The photo above shows Meliors with a work called Sastrugi. Photo by Jody Saturday



Meliors, a simple question, but one that may have a complex answer: why are you so interested in Antarctica?



It is mysterious, dangerous, vulnerable and beautiful. The lack of flora and fauna (and pigments) focus our attention onto patterns and textures of snow and ice, sky and sea which I find very exciting to interpret visually. Its short, intense human history and its long, surprising natural history both provide thrilling stories that bear endless iterations. And ultimately at this distance, it's a blank canvas for the imagination.



If you had the chance to visit Antarctica, would you?



Um, this is tricky, because if I was offered an opportunity to go I would probably accept. But really I'm ambivalent. On one hand it would be amazing, inspiring and unlike anything else I could do. But on the other hand Antarctica is an incredibly vulnerable environment about which I am intensely concerned. I don't think Antarctica needs me as just another tourist, although I'm willing to be persuaded that I might have something of value to offer in exchange for a free ticket.



I spend a huge amount of time thinking about Antarctica and my imagination seems adequately fed through second hand sources. The compliments about my work that I treasure the most are from people who have spent time in Antarctica, who tell me I've captured the essence of the place.



And besides, its jolly cold and a bit scary down there.



You are both an artist and a poet, and for the Imagining Antarctica exhibition in Hamilton, you are giving a poetry reading / artist's talk as well as exhibiting visual art. How do the practice of art and the practice of poetry work side by side - and for that matter, how on Earth do you find the time to do both?





The Imagining Antarctica exhibition at ArtsPost



Ha! I don't really find time to do both. The past months of intensely preparing my exhibitions has been a poetry drought. Writing seems to be woven through my creative life in an irregular abstract way rather than as a disciplined practice. There are times when I write a lot, but more times when I write little or nothing. Last year was very productive though, and most of the poems I wrote then relate to the art I am showing now, hence the poetry reading and artist talk event.



Reading and looking at the entries on your excellent blog, I am struck by the hours and hours of work that goes into creating them. Can you describe your process of making them, such as the icebergs?



Most of the work I make these days starts with an old woven wool blanket which I cut into contour pieces. I needle felt each layer with a nice plump cover of unspun wool and then attach the layers together using blanket stitch. The icebergs are three dimensional, sculptural pieces so there's a lot of layers and a lot of needle felting to get the three-dimensionality.



I use a similar technique to make wall relief pieces which may use only a couple of layers of blanket and little or no felting, but can be much bigger and even more time consuming to make. My biggest work, 'My Antarctica' a scale relief map of the entire continent, took me about eight months to make. I can make a little iceberg in a week.





Meliors standing in front of My Antarctica. Photo: Marion Manson (ArtsPost)



Over time I have perversely chosen to make my stitching cruder (even though hundreds of hours of practice has made me a better stitcher). I want my work to look unmistakably handmade. With some of my earlier embroidered pieces viewers would assume it was machine stitched, and I decided I didn't want any ambiguity about that. I 'd rather have people saying 'I could make that' and so to consider what it means to stitch something by hand. I want people to contemplate the hours and hours that go into my making.



Why did you choose the craft medium, and these crafts in particular, to make your artworks (and, does the wording of that question imply a dichotomy that doesn't or shouldn't exist?)



Contemporary art is a very broad field in which there are lots of interesting craft practices to be seen. I choose craft as my means of creative expression both for the pleasure and the meaning of my making. Slow meditative hand stitching is very sensual and satisfying. By choosing hand made rather than machine made, and doing it myself rather than farming the work out to low paid women in Asia, my work implicitly critiques the economic as well as environmental impacts of industrialised consumerist culture.



You were recently in Melbourne for the opening of the "F**k Your Donation" exhibition, which includes your installation "Spoil". How was that experience, and is this part of a continuing involvement in the Australian arts scene?





Meliors' installation "Spoil" at "F**k Your Donation"



Melbourne is a fantastic city for the arts, and especially for craft practices in contemporary art. It is a real thrill to show in a gallery there for the first time, and have such an enthusiastic response to my work. I hope to go back for more soon.



One thing I know we have in common is our love for Kim Stanley Robinson's writing, and in particular his Mars trilogy. What's so great about those books?



Well, KSR's novel Antarctica turned me into a fan of Antarctica as well as speculative fiction when I first read it some 15 years ago. That book, and the Mars and Washington trilogies resonate with me as extremely plausible near-future-histories that aren't dystopias. I like his strong, complex female characters; frustratingly rare in the genre. I reread all seven novels reasonably regularly and I appreciate the detail as well as the broad sweep of his vision. But mostly because he's very good at making it seem possible that we 21st century humans could dig ourselves out of the dreadful mess our species has created, and I often feel the need for that spark of hope.



KSR's writing has had a huge influence on my visual, textile arts. For example I've turned again and again to his descriptions of the textures and colours of Antarctica as I've stitched. He's a wonderfully visual writer. In more direct homage, I once made a series of small embroidered 'Mars gardens', visualising the greening of the red planet as practised by Sax Russell and others in his trilogy.





Three of Meliors' "Mars Gardens", after Kim Stanley Robinson



Do you have any writing projects on the go that are separate from your art projects, and how do you see the balance between your art and your poetry developing in the future?



Right now I don't have any particular writing projects. Rather, I'm content to let occasional poems arise spontaneously, most often in very close relationship to the visual art I'm working on, particularly at the early, conceptual stages.



Are there particular artists and poets whose work you enjoy that you'd like to encourage readers of this interview to check out?



I'm pretty excited about sculptors Ruth Asawa (http://www.ruthasawa.com/) and Mandy Greer (http://stonemandy.wordpress.com/). I also recommend the photographs of Edward Burtynsky (http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/), and the fantastic video about his work called Manufactured Landscapes. Two of the poets I am enjoying most at the moment are Janis Freegard and Bernadette Hall.



Where people can see Meliors' work



Until 19 September in Hamilton at ArtsPost Galleries, Victoria Street
Blog, Bibliophilia: www.meliors.net
Etsy Shop: www.etsy.meliors.com
YouTube: www.youtube.com/meliors6
Poetry to be found in Voyagers, the 2010 Rhysling Anthology, and Enamel issues 1 and 3 (forthcoming)


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: Ponting's Genius, by Meliors Simms

 



Ponting's genius was in his cruel portraits

of heroes on their improbable returns.

Emaciated bodies invisible inside the ice armour

of clothes unchanged for many months.

Hollow eyes, blank, bleak, utterly spent;

dirty desperate faces that have looked straight at death

and now gaze without flinching upon the camera.

What is this few more minutes of relief denied, delayed,

after endless weeks of scurvied sledging on frostbitten feet.



Never has a photographer been less loved by his subjects

than Ponting, pointing his slow Edwardian shutter

at men on the verge of respite,

men looking over his shoulder towards warmth and safety,

already smelling the cocoa and toast of their fantasies.

Men still to be cut out of frozen solid garments

whose health will never fully recover from the ordeal

they have only just survived.

The death in those heroes' stares

is murderous.



Credit note: "Ponting's Genius" won the Wintec open poetry prize in 2010, and is reproduced as a Tuesday Poem by permission of Wintec.



Tim says: Meliors is someone I admire a great deal - not just for such fine poems as these, but for the hard work she puts into her art, for the fantastic results she produces, and for her dedication to her artistic career. She is also a really neat person.



You can find out a lot more about Meliors, her art, and her fascination with Antarctica in my interview with her, which I'm aiming to run on Thursday - as long as I get all the great images she's sent to accompany the interview sorted out in time!



And just in case any stray cricket fans are wondering ... the "Ponting" of this poem is not Ricky Ponting, that gimlet-eyed little Aussie battler from Launceston, but Herbert George Ponting, the photographer who accompanied Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica in 1910-11 - and, as far as I know, no relation of the more recent Ricky.



You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week's other poems are linked from the right-hand column.





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.

How To Buy My Books: Men Briefly Explained, Anarya's Secret, Transported And More

 



Books



You can find details of all these books at my Amazon.com author page.



My new poetry collection Men Briefly Explained has just been published, and you can read it before I get my hands on a copy! That's because you can buy it from Amazon.com in Kindle or paperback format.
My Earthdawn fantasy novel Anarya's Secret is available from Amazon.com as a Kindle e-book. It is also available from the publishers in hardback, paperback or ebook format.
My short story collection Transported, which was longlisted for the 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, is now available for the Kindle.
Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, an anthology I co-edited with Mark Pirie, won the 2010 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collected Work. You can buy Voyagers from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle e-book, or buy it directly from the publisher at the Voyagers mini-site.


Recent Anthologies

Slightly Peculiar Love Stories is an anthology of 26 love stories by New Zealand and international authors, available as an ebook from Rosa Mira Books, which includes my story "Said Sheree". Isn't the cover great?
Tales For Canterbury is a fundraising anthology from which all proceeds go to the New Zealand Red Cross Christchurch Earthquake Appeal. It has an amazing lineup of authors - Neil Gaiman among them - and I'm delighted that my story "Sign of the Tui", original to this collection, is included.
For a great sampler of NZ science fiction and fantasy, try A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction, which includes my original story "The Last Good Place".
For the cricket fan, or the poetry fan, in your life: A Tingling Catch: A Century of New Zealand Cricket Poems 1864-2009, which includes my poem "Swing".
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.

Available On Amazon In Paperback And Kindle Ebook: Men Briefly Explained And Tongues Of Ash

 



STOP PRESS: Men Briefly Explained is now available on Amazon in print and Kindle ebook formats!



Print: http://www.amazon.com/Men-Briefly-Explained-Tim-Jones/dp/1921869321/



Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Men-Briefly-Explained-ebook/dp/B005HRYM32/



Keith Westwater's Tongues Of Ash is also available on Amazon in these two formats:



Print: http://www.amazon.com/Tongues-Ash-Keith-Westwater/dp/1921869267/



Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Tongues-of-Ash-ebook/dp/B005HIV6J4/



Now, back to our regular programming:



In late October, Lower Hutt poet Keith Westwater and I are setting out on a book tour to promote our new poetry collections, my Men Briefly Explained and his Tongues Of Ash.



You can use this link to pre-order the paperback versions.



The Kindle versions are not yet available, and so the "Buy Kindle" links on these pages do not work yet. They will be updated once the Kindle versions are available.



Both books are being published by Interactive Press of Brisbane, who published Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand in 2009.



Almost all the events on the book tour are now confirmed, and we'll be releasing the tour details once all events are confirmed - but we start in Dunedin on Tuesday 25 October and end in Auckland a week later, winding through Christchurch, Wellington, and Eastbourne en route. Watch out for more details 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.

Available For Pre-Order: Men Briefly Explained And Tongues Of Ash

 

In late October, Lower Hutt poet Keith Westwater and I are setting out on a book tour to promote our new poetry collections, my Men Briefly Explained and his Tongues Of Ash.



You can use this link to pre-order the paperback versions.



The Kindle versions are not yet available, and so the "Buy Kindle" links on these pages do not work yet. They will be updated once the Kindle versions are available.



Both books are being published by Interactive Press of Brisbane, who published Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand in 2009.



Almost all the events on the book tour are now confirmed, and we'll be releasing the tour details once all events are confirmed - but we start in Dunedin on Tuesday 25 October and end in Auckland a week later, winding through Christchurch, Wellington, and Eastbourne en route. Watch out for more details 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.

Tuesday Poem: Giant, by Janis Freegard

 

I got chatting to a Powelliphanta snail at the bus-stop

a few weeks ago – a nicer worm-eating hermaphrodite

you couldn't hope to meet. Sorry to hear about that

mine, I said. Relocation of your entire species to a

government fridge and all that. State-approved

destruction of the damp tussock home that's been yours

since Maui fished up the North Island.



And isn't it terrible about the coral reefs disappearing

because we've made the sea too acidic? And the tuna

being overfished and the polar bears running out of ice

floes. I'm ever so sorry about it, and you too, you poor

thing, all that time in the fridge. I kept meaning to write

someone a letter about that. Couldn't somebody do

something?



S/he shrugged and said

(with a sigh

waving tentacled eyes

from a glabrous shell):

they tried, you know, they tried

at least some people tried

at the very very least

you have to try.



Credit note: "Giant" is republished by permission of the author and of Auckland University Press from Janis Freegard's first solo collection, Kingdom Animalia: The Escapades of Linnaeus.



Tim says: I finished reading Janis's striking collection Kingdom Animalia on my way back from a meeting about Solid Energy's plans to mine up to six billion tonnes of lignite (low-grade brown coal) in Southland - plans which would not only despoil the Southland landscape, but lead to a massive increase in New Zealand's carbon dioxide emissions. That's the same Solid Energy that, in its rapacious greed, relocated Janis's Powelliphanta and his/her kind to get at the coal beneath.



So I agree that, at the very least, you have to try. But I think, if we and our descendants are going to be around to enjoy poems like Janis's in 50 to 100 years' time, we might have to go one better. We might have to succeed.



You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week's other poems are linked from the right-hand column.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.