Tim Jones's Blog, page 49

A Short History Of The Twentieth Century, With Fries

By the time they got to the Finland Station, Lenin and his posse were famished.



"What'll it be, boss, Burger King or McDonald's?" asked Zinoviev.



Lenin rustled up the kopecks for a quarter-pounder and fries all round and they set to chowing down. By the time he finished, Lenin had had a better idea.



"I'm tired of this revolution business," he said. "Let's set up a chain of family restaurants instead."



It took a while to convince the Mensheviks, left-SRs, and other petit-bourgeois...

Tuesday Poem: Losing Weight

Losing Weight



Losing weight, you

lose your tether to the ground.



The moon awaits, a plate of bone

atop an empty table.



You pass it on its trailing edge

and rise to join the stars.





Tim says: "Losing Weight" was first published in Astropoetica (Summer 2009). Astropoetica is an excellent online journal which I recommend to anyone interested in the stars and poetry.



Continuing that theme a little, "Losing Weight" has been selected for inclusion in Dwarf Stars 2010. Dwarf Stars is an annual ...

Getting Science Fiction And Fantasy Published In New Zealand. Part 1: Short Fiction

This is a post for NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week.

At Au Contraire, I gave a talk about getting speculative fiction published in New Zealand. This and the following post are an attempt to capture what I said at the workshop, and later said I would write up for SpecFicNZ. Part 1 focuses on short fiction. Part 2 will look at novels.



I am sure to have missed various things, so please give details of additional publishers and markets in the comments.



I'm in no way suggesting that...

Tuesday Poem: Love In A Nutshell, by Renee Liang

This follows my interview with Renee Liang last week.

Love in a nutshell



For Roseanne and Stephen



I wanted to tell you how love grows from a tiny seed

sown at random

like drifting seed pods in summer

you catch and wish upon



how the clash of swords in a gym

sometimes sounds like sudden laughter

and why taking the hit

is better than ducking



I wanted to say

why losing car keys on a black sand beach at midnight

is no problem

if you have each other



and of the warmth of the moon

embraced by p...

An Interview With Renee Liang

Renee Liang likes to call herself a 'writer' as the best description for her disparate activities, which so far include poetry, plays, fiction and non fiction, blogs (for The Big Idea and The Tuesday Poets), librettos and recently, screenplays. She has been part of the Auckland poetry community for a number of years, serving from 2005-9 as a Poetry Live MC. She also organises other arts initiatives focussing on community building and collaborations.

Renee, what impresses me most about...

Tuesday Poem: Down George Street In The Rain

Down George Street In The Rain



I talked to the shop signs

down Cuba Street

down Cashel Street

down George Street in the rain.



I sidestepped the shoppers.

Take that, Phil Bennett!

Take that, old lady with a limp

and orthopaedic shoes.



We were as Gods

as eighteen-year-old Gods

who wore our Gore High jerseys to the bottle store —

they wouldn't let us in.



We smiled upon our people.

People, we said, we walk among you.

Don't bow, don't scrape, don't even step aside.

In gratitude, in wonder...

Short Reviews: Enamel 2, Bravado 19, and "You And Me And Cancer Makes Three", by John Irvine

It's review time again, with two literary magazines and a poetry chapbook to consider: all three of which I enjoyed.



Enamel 2






which concentrates on the poetry, and lists the contributors, so instead I want to say a little bit about the t...

News From A Foreign Country

I've already blogged about new NZ short story collection

A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction, edited by Anna Caro and Juliet Buchanan. But now there's more news worth sharing, courtesy of the anthology's indefatigable publishers Random Static:



Au Contraire Competition



Many of the stories in A Foreign Country were selected via the open competition run in conjunction with Au Contraire.* Entries were judged by author and Au Contraire Guest of Honour Sean Williams, who...

Blogging Au Contraire: Day Three, Part 2: So Many Panels So Close To Home

Normally I'd be posting a Tuesday Poem around this time - but I've decided to get my Au Contraire blogging finished instead. Normal poetic service will be resumed next Tuesday.

I put up a rather bleary-eyed post in the early hours of Monday morning expressing my happiness at Voyagers winning a Sir Julius Vogel Award - but a whole lot of other good stuff happened on the Sunday of Au Contraire. Here are some personal highlights from the day:



Jay Lake Kaffeeklatsch



Though I moderated two...

Blogging Au Contraire: Day Three, Part 1: The Sir Julius Vogel Awards

I'm a tired but happy little Tim tonight, 'cos I got one of these on the mantelpiece.



Of course, I can only keep it for six months: it's the Sir Julius Vogel Award for "Best Collected Work" which the anthology Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand won at Sunday night's awards ceremony at Au Contraire. Voyagers was co-edited by Mark Pirie and I, so Mark gets to share the award - as should all the poets whose work is included in Voyagers.



For all the Voyagers winners and nominees...