Tim Jones's Blog, page 50
August 25, 2010
Getting Ready For Au Contraire
I'm looking forward to Au Contraire more than I've looked forward to a science fiction convention for a long while.
My convention-going extends back to 1980 and the second New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention (Natcon) in Wellington. I have been to a couple of World Science Fiction Conventions - Aussiecon Two in 1985, and ConFrancisco in San Francisco in 1993, where I was daunted by the sheer scale of the event - and I've attended other conventions in Melbourne and Edinburgh.
But ...
August 23, 2010
Tuesday Poem: Lockdown
Lockdown
Turbid sky,
uneasy ground.
The face of a guest
turned away at the door.
His hands like roses
hunch a cigarette.
I hear his boots
make full confessions to the rain.
Tim says:"Lockdown" was my contribution to the Winter Readings Poetry Wall in 2007. It is as yet uncollected.
Check out all the Tuesday Poems.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.
August 18, 2010
Status Report! Status Report!
Unless I'm spruiking a new book, this blog sails along in parallel to my writing, sometimes close but never together.
So it feels like time to give an update on what's been happening with my writing, and what's coming up.
The Immediate Past
I started this year aiming to finish two manuscripts: my third poetry collection and my second novel. I've met one of those two goals: my third poetry collection, the one I'm calling "Men Briefly Explained", has now been completed and sent out to its...
August 16, 2010
Tuesday Poetry Review: Bartering Lines (2009) and Daybook Fragments (2010), by Michael Steven
Reviewed: Michael Steven's Bartering Lines (2009) and Daybook Fragments (2010), published by Kilmog Press.
Book availability: Currently the books are available at Parsons Books in Auckland or Dunedin Public Art Gallery in Dunedin, and online from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery: Bartering Lines and Daybook Fragments. The RRP for both books is $45.00.
Dunedin's Kilmog Press has built an excellent track record of producing high-quality, limited edition poetry collections. These two books by...
August 11, 2010
The Hole Where The Sun Goes
Mummy wouldn't talk to her, so Katie went to play in her sandpit with her toys. There was a digger and a car. The car used to live inside, then it got too sandy.
Katie played with the digger and the sand for a while. Then she got bored. She looked up in the sky and saw the moon. Mummy said the moon only shone after Katie went to bed, but sometimes Katie could see it during the day. Katie loved the moon. Daddy used to love it too.
It was getting a bit dark. Katie thought it might be going...
August 9, 2010
Tuesday Poem: As you know, Bob
As you know, Bob
As you know, Bob, our numbers are dwindling. Genetic factors are to blame: our Y chromosomes, fragile to begin with, have proved uniquely vulnerable to the combination of pollution, rich food and grain alcohol. Only in the pristine environment of space can we truly flourish — but that is the preserve of a lucky few. The rest of us dwindle in protected enclosures, pacified by large-screen televisions, released only to be the subject of scientific research, the unexpected...
August 4, 2010
Books In The Trees
Books in the Trees
As soon as I understood what a book was, I resolved to become a bookkeeper. To the dismay of my parents, I was forever climbing trees in hopes of catching an unwary volume. Of course, I never did; they were far above me, flapping unmolested from branch to branch.
My proudest achievement was to bear back to earth a whole egg, but my pride turned to dismay when my mother scolded me and insisted that I put it back in the nest immediately. "That might be another Calvino or ...
August 2, 2010
Tuesday Poem: The Fasting Season, by Tishani Doshi (video)
Tim says:This poem comes from the collection Countries of the Body, which won Tishani Doshi the 2006 Forward Poetry Prize. Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers, drawing on her own experience as a person of Indian and Welsh heritage, was published in 2010. And, as if all that wasn't marvellous enough, she also blogs about cricket.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.
July 29, 2010
NZ Poetry Day: Zoetropes, by Bill Manhire
Zoetropes
A starting. Words which begin
with Z alarm the heart:
the eye cuts down at once
then drifts across the page
to other disappointments.
*
Zenana: the women's
apartments
in Indian or Persian houses.
Zero is nought, nothing,
nil - the quiet starting point
of any scale of measurement.
*
The land itself is only
smoke at anchor, drifting above
Antarctica's white flower,
tied by a thin red line
(5000 miles) to Valparaiso.
London 29.4.81
Reproduced by kind permission of the a...
July 28, 2010
An Interview With Kathleen Jones
Kathleen Jones is a biographer, poet and journalist based in the English Lake District. Her partner is a sculptor working in Italy, and several members of her family live in New Zealand, so she spends quite a lot of time travelling.Kathleen started writing as a teenager, contributing to local papers and teenage magazines. She wrote a lot of bad poetry, married very young and went to live in the Middle East where she started working for the Qatar Broadcasting Corporation as a presenter and...
