Fire, rain, and Erasmus
This is the sort of day that I love. I have no immediate commitments; it’s cold enough so that I can (and have, and did) justify lighting the fire; rain is plinking away on the roof of the conservatory; and having recently crossed a couple of numerological milestones, I have a lovely, luxurious pile of books to completely lose myself in. As my favourite Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian, Erasmus, was wont to say:
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
God, I love that man.
Rain, fire, a comfy chair, a pile of books and a whole afternoon to spend with them. I can’t think of anything that would make this any better. Bliss!
Ooh, I hadn’t noticed before (and it could be the hot chocolate talking), but the word ‘bliss’ even sounds a bit like pages turning – bliss. Can’t you hear that? The pages sliding against each other, across each other, making that crisp little kiss sound as they kick off from each other to turn. Bliss. Bliss. Bliss, bliss, blisblissbliss [speed reading], bliiiiisssssssssssss …
Now excuse me while I go wallow.
Magazine De-clutter 3 – giveaway and contest
Once again, it is time to give away magazines. Up for grabs:
- The Atlanta Review XII:1 (Fall/Winter 2005) – an American mag
- Poetry CLXXVI:4 (July 2000) – another American mag (yes, that one)
- Poetry London 51 (Summer 2005) – a British mag
- Poetry Wales 40:4 (Spring 2005) – a Welsh mag
- Takahe 73 (2011) – a New Zealand mag (the most recent issue!)
As threatened, and in honour of tomorrow being International Talk Like A Pirate Day, your challenge is to write a short(ish) poem in pirate. Minimum length is 8 lines, maximum 24. The poem should use, or be in some way a response to, the following line:
there was no dark-haired girl, at any rate
pillaged from Grevel Lindrop’s poem “A Perfume”, which appears in this issue of Poetry London.
If you need help with writing in this fascinating language, you might like to check out the aptly named (look at the address after you’ve clicked it to see what I mean) Pirate Speak website, or the US-based English to Pirate translator.
Post your entry in the comments section, as usual. Assuming we get entries from more than one person, voting will be open for 24 hours, starting on the morning of Saturday October 1st. The winner will be announced the following day. Again, I’m willing to post these anywhere, so non-NZ readers, this is open to you as well.
Micro-review: Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?
Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?
Edited by Dianne Donnelly
(Multilingual Matters, 2010)
ISBN 9781847692689
Part of a series of books on the analysis of creative writing, Does the Writing Workshop Still Work? is a variably interesting collection of essays surrounding the question posed by the title. It’s unfortunate that the foreword is technical and abstruse to the point of being almost incomprehensible (and certainly not a good example of ‘creative writing’, unless the aim was to create the desire to run as quickly as possible in the other direction). For the most part, the essays reflect the personal responses of a number of creative writing teachers less to that question (i.e. ‘Does the Writing Workshop Still Work’) than to the broader issue of where the teaching of creative writing fits within the academic spectrum, and what are the peculiar challenges facing creative writing pedagogy, now and in the immediate future. Although there are contributions from teachers in Australia and the UK as well as the USA, I found the focus (especially in the recurrent references to ‘composition’ and ‘rhetoric’ studies) a little too heavily biased towards the approaches in the latter. There are historical as well as numerical reasons for this, but it did make for slightly distanced reading. This may also have been the reason for the fairly theoretical lit. crit. tone of many of the pieces.
Having said that, there are a number of essays that had me reaching for my teaching notebook, and a number of interesting and practical suggestions for ways to work around some of the problems raised. (Some examples: the need to actually teach students how to go about the business of making an intelligent and informed critique of others’ work; strategies for dealing with the discomfort many students have of sharing incomplete work in class; the importance of actually examining the basic ways a writer goes about constructing a poem (or whatever), even (or especially) with students who already know how.) I personally would have liked more of this approach – I come very much from what Dianne Donnelly describes as the “untrained creative writers (… not [having] had any formal teaching training in our field) … teaching ‘by the seat of our pants’” side of the equation, and was hoping for practical suggestions for concrete (rather than theoretical) things I could incorporate into my teaching. Large amounts of literary, academic and/or pedagogical theory did have me yearning for some excuse – housework, even – to stop reading.
But all in all, an interesting collection of essays, various enough in scope and approach to provide something for virtually every kind of creative writing teacher. It created more questions than it answered, but I suspect that was the point. Cautiously recommended.
Conjugating the verb “to munt”
I’ve finished my experiments with the various conjugations of the verb “to munt”. If you ever watch the Discovery Channel program MythBusters, you’ll know where I’m coming from when I say that this has been one of those “and I do this for a living?!” helpless-giggling experiences. (Tragically, I’ve just spent twenty minutes trying to find the exact quote. And couldn’t. Sigh!) The poem is completely silly, and not even slightly important. Which is good, because I’ve been getting a bit neurotic (again. Still.) about whether poem-in-progress Y is worth it, is it important, did it need to be written etc etc. And those questions are worth asking, but not until you’ve written the thing and are deciding what to do with it. There’s nothing wrong with five-finger-exercises, as long as you do still employ the skills that go in to making a good poem. Which I guess is a long-winded way of saying that a disposable poem is fine, as long as you treat it seriously in the writing. (To use a topical sporting metaphor: when you practice your serve, you should still concentrate on making the ball land in the court.)
The poem as the current draft stands:
Declining the Real Estate Agent
with apologies to Bill Manhire and the English language
This three bedroom character villa
is munted.
This three bedroom character villa
with great outdoor–indoor flow
was munted.
This three bedroom character villa
with great outdoor–indoor flow,
sunken lounge and water feature
will be munted.
This three bedroom character villa
with great outdoor–indoor flow,
sunken lounge, water feature
and imaginative use of windows
has been munted.
This three bedroom character villa
with great outdoor–indoor flow,
sunken lounge, water feature,
imaginative use of windows,
and gradual split levels, creating interesting ceilings
had been munted.
This three bedroom character villa
with great outdoor–indoor flow,
sunken lounge, water feature,
imaginative use of windows,
gradual split levels and interesting ceilings
has had no expanse spared and
will have been munted.
This three bedroom character villa
with outdoor–indoor flow,
sunken lounge, water feature,
imaginative use of windows,
gradual split levels and interesting ceilings
with no expanse spared
and motivated vendors
is,
was,
will be,
has been,
had been,
and will have been
munted,
and is no longer for sale.
Believe it or not, almost all of the descriptions of the house (which isn’t based on any particular house, in case you’re worried) were lifted from various real estate advertisements. The ‘no expanse spared’ is a particularly glorious Freudian error. (At least, I hope it was an error …)
I’m also hoping that the last long stanza plus punchline ending helps to take the poem beyond being just a game. I guess I’m trying to do two things here – play with the conjugations of ‘munted’, but also pile up the descriptions of the house. I think that last stanza, repeating the various conjugations, anchors both of those aspects of the poem more coherently – without them you wouldn’t be aware of the modifications to the verb, and would only hear the accumulating descriptions.
I’ve decided against reading it at the Putting Words to the Feelings session next weekend. In part because I was a little worried it might come across as condescending, or poking fun at people who are dealing with all sorts of grief regarding the government’s Red Zone buyouts. I’m going to go with another poem written at the same time (and in a fairly similar style) as a bit of light relief at the end of what may otherwise be a pretty grim reading. (What poem? Come along and see!) (Well, hear.)
Did I mention that I’m also a bit nervous about the appropriateness or otherwise of reading the earthquake-esque portion of “The City and the City” in Christchurch, to people who are dealing with this every day?
I know, I know – neurotic. But I’m a poet! What did you expect? Rational‽
One year on (where have all the answers gone?)
I was awake for an hour or so yesterday morning before I remembered what day it was the anniversary of. One year since the first earthquake. One year since our lives were first tipped upside down and given a hell of a rattle. One year since the silt, since the cracked chimneys, since the world we thought we knew turned out to be something entirely different.
How does it feel? Weird. Odd. Because it isn’t really one year since – the quakes are still happening, and I don’t know that any of us believe any more that there aren’t big ones to come. Before February? Yes. Before June? Yes, although slightly less confidently. Post June? No. Definitely no. The slider is sagging in a combination of tiredness and resignation over the line marked “when” rather than “if”.
So much has changed, it’s mad. It’s as though that first enormous heave of the earth was some kind of gigantic labour pain, and the people of Canterbury have been reborn en mass into this new, unstable and frequently frightening world.
And earthquakes are so incredibly other. A storm is one thing: you can understand them, and usually get some warning of their arrival. And a storm feels somehow more alive and aware than a quake. You can fight a storm: yell at it, grit your teeth and ride it out. Swear at it. Shake your fist and hiss defiance into the wind. Even drought – soul-destroying as it is – isn’t like this. Ok, you’re just as powerless against it, but you can at least see it coming, and you can understand what is going on.
But an earthquake is different. There’s no warning. There is no sign that you can look out for. There’s nothing you can prepare for; or estimate a duration of; or even fight. And one thing that I never realised before (and which I’d be willing to bet body parts on most people in New Zealand also not realising yet) is that it isn’t an earthquake. Not just one event to survive: one nightmare to endure. Not even one very long, grueling, backbreaking slog to get out of. It is thousands of repeats, at utterly unpredictably-varying levels of severity. (29 shocks of magnitude 5 or greater since September 2010.) Every time the house starts to rattle, I don’t know if it’s going to keep building and building, or if my life is in danger … or if it’s nothing. Just a truck going past. And there is a huge range of misery in between those two points, and it’s something that people in Canterbury are going through every single day. And I’m one of the lucky ones – Southbridge has managed to ride out the worst of the shakes without much damage. So I know that I have not experienced so much as the ante-room to the misery of people who have been living with silt every day; or without power for weeks at a time; or still with no sanitation.
And I also know that I am just as vulnerable: and that the next rumble could be a new fault-line running under my indecently comfortable life.
One year on, this is my appeal to those of you from outside Canterbury. Your support, and messages of love and comfort have been a lifeline. But we still need them. We haven’t even begun the work of rebuilding our city yet. I know you’re all getting sick of hearing earthquake stories – trust me, we’re just as sick of telling them. But we still need so much help to get us through this. So if you’re reading this, please, we still need your help. What you do is up to you. It could be as simple as donating money. Or the next time you buy something, make it from a Canterbury business. Or book a holiday here – yes, we’re still having shakes. But believe me when I say to you that there is no place on this planet as well practiced at dealing with the after-effects.
Or the simplest thing of all – reach out. Community is the one gift that the earthquake has given us. A reminder that most people are decent and kind, and that when everything else falls apart, help and support can come from absolutely anywhere. Looking back on the last twelve months, I am so damn proud of the people of this province. Amazed, and fiercely proud. And so grateful for the compassion of strangers – all of y0u who have helped, who have asked, who have offered, who have listened.
So mark this anniversary, send a postcard to someone you know in Canterbury. Send a cyber-hug. Phone a friend. Let people know that you haven’t forgotten, that you’re still there, and compassion-fatigue hasn’t won. That we’re all still standing, and standing together.
Aroha nui,
Joanna
