West[wat]ering

I'm really pleased to be interviewing award winning New Zealand poet Keith Westwater today.

First of all, Keith, a big welcome to you – it’s great to have you on the blog – to talk about your first poetry collection Tongues of Ash. 

I want to start by saying I love the jacket design – the very small made landscape. It’s an apt metaphor for your work. And, landscape being the theme, I want to ask what your thoughts are about poetry as travel guide; the tramping poet’s Baedeker? I see travel comes before poetry in the cataloguing entry.

Thanks Rachel but first let me pay tribute to you on the quality of your blog – attractive, interesting, and great posts.

The cover has a story all of its own and is actually a painting by Turi Park based on a photo he took at dawn from Mt Taranaki of Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe. The painting is overlain with a puka leaf, shellac, and bitumen! As I lived for a number of years in Waiouru, I was used to seeing the mirror image at dusk of Mt Taranaki in the distance (minus the mixed media overlay) with the other two mountains in close proximity.

I think the painting also serves as a metaphor for what we remember – with the distance of time, our memories down-size and become fuzzy around the edges.

The use of travel as a descriptor for my work was one that had not one had occurred to me and I was a little startled when the publisher used it. On reflection, I think he has picked up on the journeys that are woven into the fabric of the collection ­ – my personal journey through time and place and my travels within New Zealand and overseas. I think I would have preferred poetry to have come before travel in the cataloguing entry, but hey, if it leads to more sales in these days of the major bookshops big ignore of poetry as a genre, what the heck.

Poetry as a travel guide? Only through the landscapes of memory and the imagination, but take a look at Kerry Popplewell’s work – now she is a real tramping poet.

There’s a line in “Winds and Time” which brought Wordsworth to mind:

“Wind on sand makes seas of crescent moons/ and sand on winds of time all life assails.”

(Westwater, 2011, p19)

And I wondered which poets/other writers influence your work and who are your literary heroes?

I always thought I was borrowing from Shakespeare when I wrote those lines in Winds and Time (though I now can’t source precisely which work), but attribution to Wordsworth will do almost as well. My other favourites from the Romantics are Browning and Hopkins (see River Talk’s first stanza) and the moderns include Eliot (I still can’t believe he was only 23 when he wrote Prufrock), Auden, Hass and Billy Collins. The Kiwis include Glover, Fairburn, Baxter, Dallas, Tuwhare, Adcock, Turner, Hunt, and Hawken. No post-moderns yet, but I have been influenced by them to sometimes experiment with form, for example Petone Beach is both a haibun and a concrete poem.

I get an image of you tramping about the landscape, notebook in hand, arriving back home with a pocketful of stones. What is the process of writing for you specific to these poems; what was the timescale?

I gave the game away in an earlier answer – tramping for me in this collection is largely through memories of landscape and place. The genesis of the poems wasn’t necessarily significant events in my life but ones that seemed to hold a modicum of poetic germ. Sometimes the poems took a long time to write (I think Coming home from leave began life in about 1980) while others got written on waking up in the morning.  The poems were spawned mainly over the period 2003 – 2010 and most were polished with the assistance of others – writing group colleagues, my wife Margret, innocent bystanders.

You write of the land underpinning the poet, but also the geology underpinning the geography as if in search of the ultimate foundation. I’m thinking of “The Love of Rocks and Water”, stanzas four through six:

At times, within their journey’s pitch and fall

Water sets rocks at rest, caresses, waits.

The pair are troubled too

By turbulence and flood, but not for long.

Though finally, when water

Reaches sea, she releases rocks

so the issue of their closeness and rocks

themselves into the depths can gently fall.

At last reposed, they start to bear water’s

Load. In the chrysalis of sea’s weight

Through echelons of time as long

As time itself, they are reborn to

Form sandstone, siltstone, mudstone, to

Begin, with the patience of rocks

That other tectonic feat, the long

Crossing through the passing fall

Of ages that presses, folds, lifts their weight

As mountains above the ocean’s waters.

(Westwater, 2011, p20)

What drives your poetry? Do you see yourself as a poetic environmental activist? (Thinking of “Song of the Climate Canaries” here).

I was a student of geography during my undergraduate degree years (in Christchurch and mainly at the old town site, which has suffered so much in the quakes). Geography (always a jackdaw of a discipline) in those days was still heavily into regional descriptions and analysis and was just beginning to gather the lens of environmental studies to its nest. I think I just missed the wave of early activism in this area and have come late to an appreciation of the issues of climate change and colonisation’s effect on the environment.  When it comes to leading the poetic charge in this area, I think I am more of an organic wine foot soldier than a greenpeace warrior.

Tongues of Ash charts a passage of time for both poet and New Zealand, subject and subject matter: a growing together?

Where do you see New Zealand years from now; onwards to what? Do you think the land can hold its own?

I’m not sure, usually I’m a half glass full person, but we seem to be taking one step forward and two steps back with respect to making progress on global warming, sustainability, and fending off the worst aspects of globalisation. The way things are heading, in 10 years the MacKenzie basin will be one big dairy farm (its half there already) and Mataura will be a lignite-mined hole in the ground. It was good to see Central Otago fight off the environmental values-deficient corporate wind farmers the other day (with the help of Brian Turner and an ex-Army colleague of mine, Graye Shattky).

In “The Sinews of Ohau Bay”, in placing experience – the self – in landscape (such as “The Goose Egg Rock”) you are following the tradition of myth: creation and folk/fairy tale. What are your thoughts on this? (Though I suspect the best answer may be in “Landscape is…”).

Possibly – but I’d like to answer this question and the next together.

How lived is your poetry? Is there a Spark Notes route to writing landscape poetry; can one bluff it with a stack of Craig Pottons*; (I’m being cheeky here – I note the refs to Potton – I have a few myself!) or must it come from a place of experience. For eg, could you have written about anywhere else as you have New Zealand?

I have a theory – some might say half-baked – that when we enter a landscape, even if we are just looking at it, the landscape is also entering us. This reciprocity, the entering of the person by the landscape, is akin to the way in which the terroir of a wine develops. (Terroir is that peculiar mix of soil type, climate, aspect, and water availability which is said to provide a wine with its unique character. Interestingly, terroir broadly means 'a sense of place'.) I think we are all collectors of the terroir of landscapes or places that enter us, whether we are aware that they have done so or not.

When we leave a place that has entered us in this way, it is always with us. Maybe when we return, even in our imagination, we are sampling from the collection of terroir that has accumulated in our memory. In my case, poems (sometimes a bit 'corked'), rather than bottles of wine result.

Also, I am not a great fan of admiration of the uninhabited wilderness for its own sake. I think this approach helped fuel the now out-of-favour landscape and nature poetry writing typical of the Romantics. My leaning is more towards poetically interpreting the human-landscape association, the exploration of the historical ecology of place and people espoused by the late Geoff Park in his seminal work Ngä Uruora: the groves of life.

Whether or not these approaches add up to a guide to writing landscape poetry, I am not sure, but the answer to the question whether I could have written about anywhere else as I have New Zealand is yes and I have (see Facial impressions, a poem about the Florida Peninsula, to which I have never been). My take on this is that ‘experiencing’ a place can happen in the imagination and that a place’s terroir can develop in the mind from experiencing music, literature, movies, etc. relevant to that place.

Finally, the lasting image I have of Tongues of Ash is of a collection of newspaper clippings: obituaries of New Zealand scenery/landmarks. Not quite memento mori but something similar; perhaps an acknowledgement of mortality, of seeing school friends names in the grey pages.

It’s a beautiful and touching book, Keith, where is it available to buy? And what’s next?

Thanks for the compliment, Rachel and I’m glad you can’t see my blushes.

Tongues of Ash is available in hard copy and eBook forms through online booksellers such as Amazon, Fishpond, and The Book Depository. If you want to buy it through your local bookstore, I suggest placing an order for it (it can be sourced by them directly with the Brisbane-based publisher, Interactive Publications, or through Ingrams or Wheelers). If you want to try before you buy, my blog has a number of poems from the collection and the National, Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch libraries hold copies.

What’s next? I actually write other than landscape poetry and am currently working on poems that are more to do with social critique (child abuse, domestic violence) and natural violence (earthquakes – funny that). I have in mind a next collection that will pull together these poems and some others of a more satirical bent that I have written in the past.

I also want to pick up again a fictionalized memoir that I started some time ago and put down when working on Tongues of Ash.

Ah, if there were only more hours…

There are never enough hours, agreed. Thanks so much, Keith, for your generous answers and time.

* Craig Potton is New Zealand's pre-eminent landscape photographer, best known for his powerful and evocative images of New Zealand's wild places. He has photographed extensively throughout and the rest of the world, and more recently, worked as a Location/Stills Photographer on The Lord of the Rings, Peter Pan, and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe movies. (http://www.craigpotton.co.nz/photolibrary)

Crowd of thoughts

I'm workshopping a story over at Fictionaut.  If you're a member or not, I'd love your input either there or here.

Surf training

I found a great way to avoid the sales.

The sand was full of weeny iron bits (iron filings? - a science lesson gone astray?). They stuck to the magnets on my son's train when he buried it. When I dug it up I thought it was a bizarrely similar yet much older abandoned train with anemones clinging to it (...always the most ludicrous explanation is the most obvious seeming one....).

We found the most beautiful dainty shells in bone white and indigo fading to lilac....

...before our attention was caught by a flash of electric blue (photo credit Mike, currently photographer in residence at Muriwai Surf School - my surf pics were tripe).

The beach seems the most appropriate place to end one year and bring in the next; something about

the tide draws me there at the close of the year. And what a year.

I've had a productive one which saw twenty odd publications, starting with Otoliths through Horizon Review, ending in December with The Bactrian Room. I wrote a screenplay, penned a couple hundred poems, got longlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Award and started Escape Behaviours (the poetry for which I wrote this time last year).

Thank you all who've supported me in myriad ways - I feel grateful, and optimistic for the New Year. Here's to a creative and fulfilling New Year for all of you!

Oh Christmas three

Three little baubles of happy news to hang on your tree this December:

Firstly - huge congratulations to Isobel J Hillman for getting her first poem published at Ink, Sweat & Tears - I'm particularly thrilled for her as she's my daughter, and she wrote Avalanches when she was nine (she's the grand old age of ten now!).

Secondly - I have a story up at The Bactrian Room. I'd love your thoughts on this one. My thanks go to Russell Streur who has virtually adopted me this year!

Thirdly - the names have gone into the hat - the person receiving a copy of The Juno Charm is:

Congratulations, Dan - drop me an email at teaforthetiller [at] hotmail [dot] com and The Juno Charm will work its magical way to you.

Thanks to all who've read and or followed the blog this year - your support means so much to me. However you choose to celebrate this holiday, I hope you have a relaxing and meaningful time - and a heap of fun ;) You really are the trimmings on the tree for me.

Tim to dance

I’ve got the tunes on, prehistoric music, bass low enough to get your pulse flummoxed but not so loud as to make your brain feel like the last biscuit in the tin of your head. My dance partner should be here any moment….and here he is!

Hello, Rachel! Thanks for marking me on your dance card! If you hadn't said the music was prehistoric, I would have said it sounded a lot like Warpaint.

Hullo, huge welcome, and thank you for visiting snowlikethought, Tim Jones.

Let me get rid of your jacket – it is waterproof? It’ll still be there when you leave. Nibble? Biscuit? Drink?

Then what are we waiting for? Let’s dance. Mind the toy box, watch out for the rocker leg; not exactly a dance floor but all the world’s a stage, is it not?

As long as there's space for my elbows, I'm happy on the most crowded dance floor.

Now, Tim, I’m so thrilled you’re here to talk about your latest poetry collection, “Men Briefly Explained”.

In a recent radio interview you discussed some of the social pressures men are under to stand “alone” be “staunch”, and “not to show weakness”. ..  that media possibly adds to these pressures by portraying men stereotypically. Could you perhaps give some examples and say how the characterisation of men in “Men Briefly Explained” differs from caricatures of men in the media in your opinion?

The characterization that comes to mind is the "Southern Man" of Speights advertisement fame. I like those ads, but our Speights-loving friend is the New Zealand "Man Alone" stereotype taken to a point just this side of the ludicrous – terse, laconic, giving at most a grudging nod (and a Speights) of praise.

It's a powerful stereotype, because the long-withheld approval of a stern father-figure/mentor is something a lot of boys and men find themselves seeking.

I grew up in Southland, and the stereotype is not entirely without truth – some of those real-life Southern Men populate the margins of a poem like "Men at Sea". But I wasn't born in Southland, or even in New Zealand — I was born in Cleethorpes (that's near Grimsby in Lincolnshire, a fact it's just conceivable some readers won't know), and Cleethorpes Man is a much more emotionally labile beast.

Hopefully you’re warmed up now, Tim, shall we up the tempo?

You began your reading at The Thirsty Dog, in the Auckland leg of your recent tour, by introducing your collection as (paraphrasing) a book for anyone who wants to know about men, including women. You followed “women” with a description that the book is only a slim volume. This struck me as a deliberately provocative comment to make – especially considering your suggestion that more women than men buy your poetry (especially considering I was in the audience!) –  I was instantly aware that my interpretation of your poetry was going to be keener than if I hadn’t had the feminine rag waved at me. So, in light of that altered reception, I wanted to ask you if consider “Men Briefly Explained” a sort of Fight Club for poets?  That is, if it is in any way a defence of masculinity, and do you even think such a defence necessary?

I certainly wasn't using "slim" as an insult, unless it was an insult directed at men — i.e. that it takes only a slim book to explain us – but it seems that didn't come across as intended. So far, at least, women have shown a lot more interest in the book than men, but perhaps that reflects the realities of the poetry-reading audience as much as the contents of the book. In any case, if anyone was offended by my introduction, I apologise!

I don't think of the book as a defence of masculinity — unless to explain is, to some extent, to defend. I do think that the genders are often quite mysterious to each other.

I love the quote from Kathleen Jones on the back of the book: “This poetry is how New Women want their New Men to be – strong, sensitive and empathetic!” Should we add ‘brief’ to that list?

There are so many meanings "brief" could take in this situation, but if it's the meaning I think you intend, that takes us back towards the strong, silent type – the "Southern Man" I started with. There are times when I imagine it's reassuring to have the strong, silent type around, I expect. I hope I am the strong type, at least when that is appropriate, but I struggle with the silent part.

You’ve got some devilish moves, Tim. Right, let’s put something a bit slower on. You can be Björn to my Agnetha.

As an ABBA fan, that's an attractive proposition – but then I remember that my favourite ABBA song, "The Winner Takes It All", was written by Björn for Agnetha to sing, from Agnetha's point of view, about Agnetha and Björn's breakup. Which is very sad, and at the same time, a little creepy.

Of course, the song has now been redeemed by Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon singing it at the end of the best and funniest movie about masculinity I've seen for ages, The Trip.

(Yes, I am a nerd – why do you ask?)

Your poems aren’t just about men, though, are they, Tim? The poetry winks to a start with one of the most startling conception poems I think I’ve ever read. 

Curved over islands, the world

dragged me south in a talkative year

slipping Southampton

as the band played a distant farewell.

It was better than steerage,

that assisted passage: ten pound poms

at sixpence the dozen, promenading

in sun frocks, gathering for quoits,

angling, in an understated way,

for a seat at the Captain’s table.

("Impertinent to Sailors", © Tim Jones, 2011) 

This poem has the rare property (though not rare for your poetry) of being funny, cheekily so, yet transcendental, and ultimately very moving. Could you tell me a little about “Impertinent to Sailors”?

Thank you! Like many of the poems in the first section of the book, "Impertinent to Sailors" is closely based on my own life. As I mentioned, I was born in the UK, and my parents decided to emigrate to New Zealand when I was two – the classic "ten pound Poms" on an assisted passage. I remember nothing of the trip, but I've filled in the details – several probably wrongly – from what I've been told about it. The abrupt and disappointing ending is certainly correct: Dad, having been lured aboard by the promise of a job waiting at the other end of the voyage, found when we disembarked in Christchurch that the job had been given to somebody else.

I find that two-line stanzas are good for poems expressing alienation or disconnection: there's something about the way that the lines in each stanza cling together, with a wide space before and a wide space behind.

This poem has found an unexpected second life. I posted it as a Tuesday Poem on my blog, and it was found online by an Australian composer looking for a text for a choral work he was composing called "Brighton to Bondi" – for which I was very happy to give permission. The work was premiered in Sydney in September, and seems to have to been a success – I hope to hear it one day.

Ah the band is growing faint, I fear, Tim. Too soon, too soon. A slow dance to end? No? Let’s go out with a big bang then!

“Queens Of Silk, Kings Of Velour” I imagine will be the sequin of a poem you will never shake off from this collection forward. It’s playful, flirty. When I first read it I scribbled notes. Marginalia: man is geek; to be man is to know and have the reflux reflex to regurgitate facts. Is this “what it means to be a man”?

That's good to hear, because I usually feel that my best poems are those that arrive more or less fully formed, whereas "Queens…" went through quite a few incarnations before reaching its present form.

Knowing obscure facts about seventies bands is only one of the many ways to be a man, but in my line of work (I work part-time in the IT industry to pay the bills that writing, sadly, does not yet pay) I meet quite a few men for whom the detailed knowledge of the arcane of one aspect of life is an important component of masculinity. There is a certain sense of security in knowing that both Elton John (under his birth name, Reginald Dwight) and Bryan Ferry auditioned to be the lead singer of King Crimson. It helps to make sense of a chaotic world – and yet the women are on the dance floor, wondering (or even worse, not caring in the slightest) about why all the men are sitting on the sofa.

Would you look at the clock; we’ve danced the time away. What a blast. Reading “Men Briefly Explained” is to dance through the ages of man, and man, what a dance! I’ve had a wonderful time, Tim, thank you for humouring me. Please, where can I find more copies of “Men Briefly Explained”?

Can there be More Than This? Well, yes – in an abrupt segue from melancholia to marketing – there can:

Men Briefly Explained is published by Interactive Press (IP) of Brisbane. You can find out more about Men Briefly Explained, and buy it direct from the publisher, on IP's mini-site for the book: http://www.ipoz.biz/Titles/MBE.htm

On my Men Briefly Explained page, there are more options for buying the book, plus latest reader reactions and reviews: http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/p/men-briefly-explained.html

Just before you go, (ah, see, your jacket’s still on the pavement, you won’t get wet feet crossing that puddle) I think I’ve mentioned online before your “Boat People” was the first poetry collection I read when I first arrived in New Zealand four years ago. It felt like I was meant to find that book in particular. It’s wonderful to have another collection from you, Tim, the prequel as it were, I’ll treasure just as much. Thank you very much.

It's lovely to hear that, Rachel! I didn't know that about "Boat People", and that makes your support for my work even more special. Thank you once again! I shall sail out of here with my feet not quite touching the floor…

Nuala risen

Now there are some poetry books which make me want to dash off and write something myself and then there's The Juno Charm which just awed me into submission; I literally could not write for several days after I read it because it's raw and real and surprisingly funny where I didn't expect to laugh ("Mannequin Envy") and moving where I was determined not to cry ("Sons"), and because it's what I've come to recognise as a synonym for superb writing: Nuala Ní Chonchúir.

Born in Dublin in 1970, Nuala Ní Chonchúir lives in Galway county. Her début novel You(New Island, 2010) was called ‘a heart-warmer’ by The Irish Times and ‘a gem’ by The Irish Examiner. Her third short story collection Nude (Salt, 2009) was shortlisted for the UK’s Edge Hill Prize. Her second short story collection To The World of Men, Welcome has just been re-issued by Arlen House in an expanded paperback edition. The Juno Charm, her third full poetry collection, was launched in November in Dublin and Galway.

Welcome Nuala, thank you for coming to snowlikethought to talk about your latest poetry collection, The Juno Charm.

This collection made me think of a pioneer sea voyage, in so much as the moon winking from many of the poems, the varied geographies, and lonely land marks. It’s a work rich with places. For e.g., “Blue House, Magdalen Islands, Quebec”: I read it from the bottom line up and the image of a photograph, my grandma in front of a lighthouse in Canada, came to mind – when I got to it, the title was perfect, and I wondered, how important is travel to your writing?

Travel is really important to me as a writer. It’s the old thing – I’m a hermit because I’m a writer so travel is the big bonus – being invited places to read. But also travelling for the pure enjoyment of experiencing a new place. It jolts my writing to be somewhere new because my senses are on high alert. I love getting away, it keeps me interested in life. I’m just back from four days in Paris and just being there, walking different streets, was fantastic. I have a story in progress set there so I visited the street where one of the characters lives and discovered it has a church on it, which fits beautifully with the story. You don’t get that kind of information sitting at home or poking on the net.

I suppose, at this point, I should mention I read the whole collection in reverse to begin with, but on re-readings, including in the order it’s printed, I felt it had a rhythm which could not be broken, wherever I began reading from.

Journeys, of course, aren’t restricted to crossing continents; you have an ability to bring life, the act of creation, to fresh focus, and there’s a cyclical feel to this collection – again, much like the appearance, disappearance, now returning of the moon – this collection has a pulse. How much conscious thought goes into arranging the poems within the collection – is the effect of the whole something you planned for or even anticipated?

Yes, it takes me ages to piece the whole thing together. I wanted the book to have a narrative that was book-ended with positive poems. I also wanted a thematic flow, so the poems about birth are grouped, as are the poems about pregnancy loss, the ones about marriage, the New York ones are all together too etc. etc. I guess I want the reader to become involved in the story the poems are telling, which is my story over a number of years. I don’t consciously choose to write in themes but I’m possessed with different things at different times and that comes out in the writing.

Finally, I want to ask you about birds. There’s a lot of symbolism in your poems, and references, some obvious, some less so, but they only ever add more to a poem which has already reached satin gloved hands inside you and slipped them off; it’s almost like I had to pull the images, your poetry, back out of myself after the reading, so I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are on symbols, what they bring to your work, what’s your relationship to symbol?

Symbols are really important to me; I get obsessed by things from time to time - the moon, peacocks – and they start to feed into my writing. I’m a fan of Sylvia Plath (which will be obvious to anyone reading the book) and I love her use of the moon. I also love the Irish poet Matthew Sweeney’s moon cycle.

There are a lot of charms in the book – mostly to do with fertility and trying everything to get pregnant. I wouldn’t consider myself superstitious but when life is being hard on you, I guess it’s normal to look for signs and portents (in birds, let’s say) or to turn to any method possible to make things better, like carrying amulets.

And speaking of birds, a little birdie tells me you’re giving away a copy of The Juno Charm to one lucky blogger – readers, pop a mention in the comments if you’d like your name putting in the draw.

The Juno Charm is such a moving work, an utterly stunning achievement, Nuala, thanks so much for visiting New Zealand and talking about it.

Rachel, thanks a million for having me. Next week my virtual tour takes me to the lovely Tania Hershman in Bristol in the UK. http://titaniawrites.blogspot.com/

Words worth

I just came across this over on AUT's facebook page, stuck a sample of my writing in, had it weighed and was very happy with the results: I am one lean writing machine!