Tim Jones's Blog, page 54

An Interview With Vana Manasiadis

Vana Manasiadis was born in Wellington in 1973. She studied English and Classics at Victoria University, and later completed an MA in Creative Writing there. For the last few years she has been living in Crete, and travelling whenever possible, but she plans to be back on Wellington's South Coast at the end of the year. Her poems have been published in a variety of journals, and her first collection of poetry, Ithaca Island Bay Leaves, was recently published by Seraph Press.





What was...

Tuesday Poem: Icarus, by Vana Manasiadis

Icarus

This is the truth of it: Icarus was dead set on seeing whether the Wa Hine
existed – that's why he took off one day.
His father had said: If you go, you'll need the constitution to match –
a strong will, a top navigational ability.
If you are successful, you can be whoever you please – discoverer, inventor.
Then again, should you fail, you'll fall into the sea and drown.
You could breathe some life into these though,
glue new feathers into the empty spaces –
kiwi will do, moa would be better.

Should New Zealand Have Its Own Section On The Poetry International Web?

I've been looking through this week's Tuesday Poems, and thinking about poems - mine and others' - I plan to post on forthcoming Tuesdays.

While doing this, I visited the
The website is organised into national sections, each overseen by a national editor, each with its own wealth o...

Tuesday Poem: Honey Moon

Honey Moon

When you moved through the cold
a fierce essential flame

I warmed myself at your altar.
Night

ate the afterbirth of day.
Birdsong wrestled with silence.

You covered me in stolen light -
this new and secret skin.

"Honey Moon" was originally published in the New Zealand Listener on 18 March 2006, and is one of the poems I plan to include in my forthcoming collection Men Briefly Explained.

See the Tuesday Poem blog for lots more Tuesday Poems!You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF...

Book Review: Cornelius & Co, Collected Working-Class Verse 1996-2009

I posted John O'Connor's poem A Left Hook as my Tuesday Poem this week, and now it's time to review the collection from which it comes, which is published by Post Pressed in Queensland and costs NZ $25.00 from its New Zealand distributor.

This is the eighth book of poetry from Christchurch poet John O'Connor, and it consists of a selection of poems from John's previous collections, plus a number of new poems, and is a generous 144 pages long.

I have to confess (and I'm not saying it speaks...

Tuesday Poem: A Left Hook, by John O'Connor

A Left Hook

an early experience
of the left hook (admirably

tight if open-handed) came
at the beatific hand of

Monseigneur O'Dea - too
old to be a parish priest - who

about to impart the very
body & blood of Christ found I

was not holding the paten
correctly. a few years later

an equally irascible boxing
coach imparted impeccable

advice on how to throw it,
though he didn't know the bit

about feinting with Jesus.
when the good monseigneur

had his final photo taken
he bestowed a copy on our family

- old friends s...

How To Submit On The Government's Mining Plans

I blogged a couple of weeks ago on my opposition to the New Zealand Government's plans to allow mining in our National Parks and other areas of high-value conservation land. Submissions on these proposals are open until Friday 4 May, and the Green Party has prepared a very helpful submission guide, including a link to the official online submission form.

You can find it here: http://www.greens.org.nz/submissions/submission-guide-mining-schedule-4

Making submissions is necessary, but not...

Tuesday Poem: Tuesdays

Tuesdays

On Tuesdays
when we should be making love
we sneak off to the movies instead.

You hold my hand.
I eat an ice-cream
that I don't need and do not deserve.

It isn't art: Van Helsing.
Hellboy. Harry Potter 3.
But it's what you like

and I tag along, looking
for the joins in the CGI
and enjoying this escape

from the sunlit outer world.
Where we blink. We kiss.
Adult again, we go our separate ways.

I couldn't really pass up an opportunity to go all meta for my second contribution to the excellent Tuesday...

Tuesday Poem: Shostakovich In America

Shostakovich in America

1959, November. The plumed De Soto
hammers on, freshman driver
burning up the plains.

Freedom! The Kappa Gamma Beta boys
can never catch him now. They're back east
in the studio, where Ormandy

shrugs and starts recording.
Dmitri has better things to do. This is
his jazz age, his lost weekend.

An upstate college, denuded branches
scrawled across the moon. He nestles
in a co-ed's bed. Dreams

drag him back to the Kremlin:
always the bottle of Georgian wine,
always the black telephone.

Ada Lovelace Day Post: Nancy Adams, Botanist and Botanical Artist

Today, Wednesday 24 March, is Ada Lovelace Day. Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.

Ada Lovelace, for those who don't know her, was the world's first computer programmer (true) and one half of a celebrated pair of crime-fighting superhero mathematicians (true in a less truthful way).

Ada Lovelace Day began in a celebration of women in technology, but has...