Janis Freegard's Blog, page 4

Out Here

The very first poems I had published (apart from the ones at primary school) were in ‘Eat These Sweet Words’, a collection of lesbian poetry (ed Sue Fitchett et al) from Publishing Giant Press in 1999. (If you have a copy, there is a little typo in ‘When You’re Not Here’: “paint lobelias” should be “plant lobelias”). I was very excited at the time about being published in a proper book and excited generally about any kind of book that contained lesbians because there were so few to be found.

By the time the book came out (no pun intended), my long-term girlfriend and I had broken up, meaning the brief bio I’d written was out of date. Things that we think are permanent and immutable sometimes turn out not to be.

Eat These Sweet Words

These days, I am in a long-term monogamous relationship with a lovely chap. It seems that every time I try to settle definitively on a sexual identity, I get it wrong. But the heart travels where it must and we cannot stop it. My best attempt at definition at the moment is “polysexual” which acknowledges that some of my exes are non-binary or various other shades of gender. I use she & her pronouns, but inside, I just feel kind of human.

Anyhoo, I am delighted to find myself in the company of many amazing writers in the fantastic new anthology “Out Here”, edited by Emma Barnes and Chris Tse. Some of us (Chris Tse, Emma Barnes, Stacey Teague, Ash Davida Jane, Sam Orchard, Isabelle McNeur and I) will be reading in Palmie on Sunday 12 Dec 21 2pm at Te Manawa, amongst Jack Trolove‘s amazing artworks (Jack’s work is on the ‘Out Here’ cover). Come and see us if you’re in the hood.

And here I am being a lesbian in public way back in 1993 (top right in black & purple & sunglasses). We were in the newspaper and everything.

International Lesbian Day, Wellington 1993

Verb Festival & LitCrawl 2021

Thanks to the amazing Claire Mabey, Andrew Laking and the team, another Verb Festival has kicked off in Wellington with some great October events, to be followed by the main festival in early November. Full programme here. Hats off to anyone arranging events in these troublesome times, particularly an entire literary festival.

As always, there’s a terrific line-up of writers. I am especially looking forward to the Verb Poetry Showcase on 3rd November and the Verb Gala Night on 4th November.

A highlight of the festival is always LitCrawl (evening of 6th November), where the good folk of Wellington take to the streets and wander from one literary event to the next in cafes, bars, shops and churches across the inner city. This year is a little different and we will need to wear masks and book for LitCrawl events beforehand. Some events are already sold out so you might want to get in quick!

I will be appearing in ‘What We Talk About When We Think About the Future‘ alongside Hirini Kaa, Reverend Raymond Pelly, Romesh Dissanayake and Ash Davida Jane at St. Peter’s, 211 Willis St on 6th November from 8:30pm – 9:15pm, the final leg of the Crawl. You can register here.

A Thank You Letter to my Father

Thank you for being my father. Thank you for keeping me safe, for holding my hand crossing roads or standing at the edge of cliffs, for checking if I was warm enough, for making me feel protected. Thank you for taking me to the school bus stop on the back of your motor bike. Thank you for making me porridge for breakfast (even if I didn’t appreciate it at the time) and for all the Vegemite sandwiches you made for my school lunches (even if I didn’t appreciate them at the time). Thank you for coming to watch me come last in all my races. Thank you for taking me to Star Wars. Thank you for looking after my sister while she slowly declined and our hearts broke. Thank you for making a family in which I always knew I was loved. Thank you for all the adventures, even the camping trips I hated at the time. Thank you for always keeping food on the table and a roof over our heads, even the year that roof was on a caravan. Thank you for waiting up for me no matter what hour I came home from parties. Thank you for giving me your recipe for “shambled eggs” when I went flatting. Thank you for the home buying advice and for changing my locks when they needed changing. Thank you for telling me I was beautiful. Thank you for telling me you were proud of me. Thank you for dancing me down the aisle on my wedding day. Thank you for being the warm, generous, witty man you were, always building a deck or painting a wall, always accompanied by the Concert programme. You left our lives bigger and better than they were before and I miss you.

I.M. Ian Freegard 1945 – 2021

Paula Green’s Poetry Themes

It’s theme season at Paula Green’s excellent Poetry Shelf site. Her latest theme is kindness and the collection Paula has curated includes my poem ‘The Lift’. Previous themes include Breakfast, Home, Food and Edge. Each is a mini anthology and well worth checking out. I’m delighted to be included in Paula’s Walking and Moon themes too.

The New Students

Delighted that my poem ‘The New Students’ is up on ‘Love in the Time of Covid: A Chronicle of a Pandemic’, a site curated by Witi Ihimaera and Michelle Elvy. The site is a cornucopia of photography, poetry, fiction, video and art, with contributors from around the globe.

A Recital of Poems 17 – Agnes Marton, Janis Freegard, Robert E Petras, Craig Santos Perez, James Hall

Love in the Time of COVID

image by Agnes Marton

Every Mask Goes Back To The Jaguar by Agnes Marton

A carving: a man disguised as a jaguar?

A jaguar in the process of becoming a man?

 

Jaguar. Raw material for tone trophies.

Jaguar. Model human warrior.

Jaguar. Mythic lover.

Scroll Jaguar, Bird Jaguar, Moon Jaguar.

Dualistic weapons: claws or fangs.

Prominent nasal bridge, large nostrils.

Jaguar. A less-than-human god.

The New Students by Janis Freegard

1.

It begins with a tiny buttercup
that’s forced its yellow face through
a crack in the concrete steps,
continues when we pause our walk
for a fluffed-up tūī clicking and shouting
from a tarata tree.

2.

Our lessons involve careful distancing,
neighbourly smiles.
A flitter of red admirals
gathers near the macrocarpa stand,
a hefty kererū heads home.
We stop to pat a tortoiseshell.

3.

So many paths we’ve never been down,
monuments we didn’t know were there.

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Happy Easter!

So, this is me (in push chair) with my late mother, her cousin Linda (holding handle) and Linda’s mum, Aunty Pat at the Easter Parade in South Shields, about 1964.

Prism

There’s a lovely review of ‘Reading the Signs‘ on Paula Green’s Poetry Shelf. I wrote the first draft of the book at NZ Pacific Studio in the Wairarapa. This sculpture was in the garden.

Paula says “It is warming to read, this book of dreaming, of signs, of being. I imagine it as a prism in the hand that shifts in the light.”

Sculpture in the garden at NZ Pacific Studio

Dante! Poetry NZ! Anthology Time!

‘More Favourable Waters’, an anthology of New Zealand poets responding to Dante’s Purgatory, is launching on 25th March 2021. Poets were asked to respond to a passage from the work with 33 lines of their own, incorporating the passage they were given. Contributors include Anna Jackson, Vincent O’Sullivan, David Eggleton, Anahera Gildea and Helen Rickerby. I also have a poem in there, that I wrote in blank verse (more or less), to match the passage I was given. I’m very interested to see how others have responded.

Marco Sonzogni’s ‘Quantum of Dante’ is also being launched at the same time: 6pm – 7:30pm, Unity Books, Wellington, this Thursday 25th March.

In other anthology news, the latest Poetry NZ Yearbook also came out recently, edited by Tracey Slaughter, and I’m very pleased to have a poem in there too!

The Year of Falling in Bulgaria

I’m very excited that my novel, ‘The Year of Falling’, has been translated into Bulgarian and published by Bulgarian publishing house, Aviana. Aviana has published other Mākaro Press titles: Becky Manawatu’s ‘Aue’, also came out this year and Sue Wootton’s Strip came out last year (published under the title ‘Fleur’). Here’s the Bulgarian ‘Year of Falling’ cover:

and here’s the Kiwi version:

I’m delighted that my characters Selina, Smith, Quilla et al get to travel to Bulgaria in these restricted times. If you want to read ‘The Year of Falling’ in Bulgarian, you can order it here, or in English here. Thanks Aviana and thanks Mākaro Press for making it happen.

Love in the Time of Covid

I’m delighted to have a piece in Love in the Time of Covid: A Chronicle of a Pandemic, an international online project from Witi Ihimaera and Michelle Elvy. They’ve made a space for writers, artists, dancers and musicians from around the world to share the works we’ve created during Covid. Well worth a browse. My contribution is a flash fiction piece.

The image I chose – toetoe and letterboxes – is a photo I took during one of our lockdown walks. My workplace had set up a regular photo challenge which was a fun way to connect with colleagues while we were all working from home. The four letterboxes made me think of the four Alert Levels. And here we are, moving through them still.

I was at the Kapiti Writers Practice weekend in Waikanae when I heard Aotearoa New Zealand was heading back to Level 2/3. A sobering reminder that even though we are incredibly lucky in this country to be able to have events like a writers gathering, we are not out of the Covid woods yet. Stay safe everyone.