Tim Jones's Blog, page 64
May 10, 2009
An Interview with Iain Britton
Iain Britton had his first collection of poems, Hauled Head First into a Leviathan, which was a Forward Poetry Prize nomination, published by Cinnamon Press (UK) in February 2008. Interactive Press (Australia) is about to publish his second collection, Liquefaction.
Iain, let's start with Liquefaction, your new collection. What would you like readers of this blog to know about it?
Liquefaction is a collection of 35 poems following no specific theme, although I would like to think my work does have
May 3, 2009
J G Ballard, 1930-2009: A Man's Man?
The British writer J G (James Graham) Ballard died on 19 April. Many excellent obituaries of J G Ballard have been written, and I don't intend to try to emulate them here. Instead, I suggest you check out the obituaries by Harvey Molloy and Jack Ross, and also the entire special section devoted to Ballard from the Guardian.
My experience of reading J G Ballard has been remarkably similar to Jack Ross's experience. Like Jack, I was already an SF fan, though in my case it was the YA SF novels of Jo
April 29, 2009
The Cover of Transported: It's Embossed, I Tell You! Embossed!
When I posted my list of ten reasons why Transported makes a great present (for another, or yourself), I forgot the best reason of all: the cover is embossed. Some of those funny little creatures on it are slightly raised above the surface. You can run your hands over it and feel the difference. Check out this post on Meliors Simms' blog if you don't believe me - see the third picture down. Is that little flying fish embossed, or what?.
The cover of Transported is based on the painting "Castaway
April 26, 2009
An Interview with Trevor Reeves
I have known Trevor Reeves for many years, firstly through our joint involvement in environmental activism and the Values Party during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and later through his work as a poet, publisher and editor of the literary magazine Southern Ocean Review, in which I had several poems and a couple of short stories published during the course of its 50 issues. When I heard that Trevor was bringing Southern Ocean Review to a close, I thought it would be a good time to talk with hi
April 22, 2009
The IPL, Tishani Doshi, and the Forward Poetry Prize
The IPL (Indian Premier League) is back for 2009. The first edition of this Twenty20 cricket tournament, featuring eight teams based in Indian cities, with a mixture of young Indian players and top Indian and world cricket stars, took place in 2008 in India and was a great success - even if it did provoke occasional satirical remarks.
Then came the Mumbai and Lahore terrorist attacks, the latter an attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team. Because the Indian Government could not guarantee security (and
April 19, 2009
Eat, Pray, Love, Emit
The Saturday edition of Wellington's Dominion Post newspaper carried a lengthy article about American author Elizabeth George and her latest book, The Last American Man. Elizabeth Gilbert is most famous for her previous book, Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold more than six million copies worldwide..
They sound like interesting books, but what really struck me about this article was a sentence in the final paragraph of the article, which says that Elizabeth Gilbert and her husband run a small import
April 15, 2009
Five More Good Things: Website, Video, Book, Blog, and Fanzine
It's only a week since I did my most recent post of congratulations and good news, and there are already more good things to report.
Several of them have some relationship to JAAM, the annual literary magazine based in Wellington. I guest-edited Issue 26 of JAAM in 2008, and since it appeared, I have enjoyed seeing various writers who featured in the issue - as well as some who didn't - achieve greater prominence. I was also pleased that the issue sold well enough to be reprinted - copies are sti
April 12, 2009
A Suitable Anthology for Easter
Helen Lowe alerted me to the following competition and anthology, which seems like a suitable one to post about at Easter:
Spiritual Writing Competition
Closes: End of May
Judged by a church-based panel led by Pleasant Point writer Karalyn Joyce
Prizes: 1st $500; 2nd $250; 3rd $100
Up to 50 submissions are to be published in a new "Spiritual Anthology" launched in November 2009
Calling for all non-published poems/fiction/non-fiction work with a "words to inspire" based theme; i.e., life; death; creati
April 8, 2009
Go You Good Things: Several Congratulations and a Writing Workshop
Congratulations are in order: plenty of them. If I've forgotten someone who deserves congratulations, please let us all know in the comments!
So, congratulations to:
April 5, 2009
The Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors: Getting Paid for Copies of Your Books in New Zealand Libraries
Are you a New Zealand author? If so, did you know that you can be paid for each copy of your books that are held by New Zealand public libraries - as long as the books meet certain criteria, and provided you apply? You can, by applying under the new Public Lending Right.
The most important of the criteria is that there have to be 50 copies of your book in New Zealand public libraries (which do not include school libraries) for it to qualify. Unfortunately, this isn't cumulative - if you have had
