Simon Sweetman The Death of Music Journalism The Cuba Press, 2020

Music was such a booster shot in 2020. So many occasions where I had an album on constant replay or, when all else failed, music provided the escape hatch, the hammock swing, the blue skies and the goosebump skin. This Christmas eight of us went on a music loop picking favourite tracks in turn as we played a Norse throwing game outside. It was music warmth and chill and delight.

To begin 2021 talking about poetry that has music as its spark plugs, its honeyed fuel, seems perfect (goodness knows where this car talk came from, maybe because my car died yesterday, and I live miles from anywhere). Simon Sweetman’s The Death of Music Journalism is so good; so full of music life and verve and fascinations. I read it on the last day of 2020 and finished it on the first day of 2021. A bridge-between-years book. A book of poems that takes you behind the scenes in the life and musings of a music critic; in the scenes, between the scenes – you take your pick. It is funny and moving and immensely diverting. You get nostalgia and you get riveting anecdotes. You get family and you get confessions. I reckon you have to read the whole thing in one or two sittings because it works so well as a complete package.

The Death of Music Journalism is another one of those poetry books where I either want to sit in a cafe and discuss it with you and use music as our own personal hooks, or go to a poetry gig where Simon reads a good chunk of the poems. Safe bets that this would be a very cool occasion. Some of us will be taken back to the times we played Lou Reed, Prince, Talking Heads or Bob Dylan. Remember when. Remember how. Remember who.

In the longish opening poem, ‘Simon Sweetman, this is your life’, the speaker (well let’s say Simon) has to sell CDs to pay the flat electricity bill so he can keep playing CDS, and then later when he is a father he sells LPs, which gets him wondering how it will work for a streaming generation.

I thought you had to have it all, every

album – the good and the bad. The terrible,

the silly, the magical, the miserable.

And then a guy in a shop told me that

a collection was like a garden, it would

only bloom after a good prune.

I am thinking I have rarely pruned my album or CD collections.

Part of the magic of Simon’s poems is in the shifting notes, like he’s putting a new album on the turntable. In one poem we are reading about his connection with a Sam Hunt poetry performance (and a shared love of Lou Reed). Simon later gets to be Sam’s opening act, swap poems and drink wine together. There is an underlying story of fanship but it is all in the telling. The story twists include crosswords and cross words, Wordsworth, and Sam avoiding the fans and showing Simon his son’s photo, and Simon with his signed book lost but the coveted snapshot still looked at, stepping up to be a poet too.

A year after taking this photograph of

Sam shaking the poems from his shoulders

I was his opening act. Nervously I read a

poem about how ‘history’ and ‘opinion’

were both seven-letter words, but only

one fits correctly into the crossword- and

this was inspired by the cross words

me and my wife had been having

as she focused on completing

the newspaper puzzle, and I

became Sermon Sweetman –

going on about how Elvis really

was the best, the greatest, the first, the one.

from ‘I took a photo of Sam Hunt in Upper Hutt / 20 years ago’

Simon highlights his favourite album (Prince’s Batman soundtrack), a favourite Bob Dylan album, the time he saw two Simon & Garfunkel concerts in a row, had a dreadful phone interview with Mark Knopfler, mused on antipathy towards the Beatles, and how great the Beatles are, on getting nervous before talking about a book with Kim Hill, or the time his bad review of a Robbie Williams concert went viral and got Robbie tweeting and apologising and putting it in his biography. It’s poetry as story, as music anecdote, as free-flowing lyric. Feels like this is performance gold.

But The Death of Music Journalism also goes behind the family scenes – usually with a music hook. His mother, father, grandparents, wife and son make appearances, sometimes centre stage, often reached by way of particular music. I especially love the layered and somewhat moving ‘Father and Son’. Music binds a relationship, it can carry multiple messages that alter depending upon the listener. The dad plays Cat Stevens constantly. The son says he likes ‘Father and Son.’ The dad looks for the hidden message. The son no longer likes ‘Father and Son’. Families, hey.

The 13-year-old Me struggled

to convince him it was just a

good song. And in the process of

doing that I fell instantly out of

love with it. Never to have

any interest in it ever again.

The curse being I would play in

a covers band on and off for

about three years – that song

was part of the nightly repertoire.

My mum told me that

the reason I got out of the

car and Dad stayed in the

car that night was because

he sat and listened to

the song three times to

try to understand what he

thought was being said

to him.

This is poetry that will divert you on so many levels: get you trawling through your own music archives, your memory banks, and simply loving the behind-the-scenes tour. Stories unfold unpredictably, relationships will move you, acerbic comments satisfy. With this book and with music, I toast the year to come. Glorious!

Simon Sweetman is a blogger, reviewer, podcaster, and author of On Song: Stories Behind New Zealand’s Pop Classics. The Death of Music Journalism is his first poetry collection. Simon has been writing poems since he was first listening to bands on his Walkman, but then began sharing them via social media and open mic nights. Word got around and he was a sleeper hit at LitCrawl’s Lit-Sync For Your Life and the 2020 Variety for Fierys. He blogs at Off the Tracks, and lives in Wellington with his wife, Katy, and his son, Oscar.

The Cuba Press page

Simon talks with Jesse Mulligan @RNZAfternoons

Poetry Shelf audio: Simon reads from Death of Music Journalism

***Calling all UNPUBLISHED POETS***

For the first time ever, we are running a Phantom Poetry Open Mic contest!One winner will see their poem published in a campaign across the Phantom network.We want to give a voice to the unheard. An audience awaits your creativity.

*Must be a previously unpublished poet living in NZ.

*Submit as many poems as you like until January 15, 2021.

*Use this link to enter

*Share with your poet friends*

This is my equal favourite review of the year (along with Selina Tusitala Marsh’s review of Tusiata Avia’s The Savage Coloniser Book – also at ANZL site).

Here is a taster of Anna Jackson’s review of Wow (VUP:

This is a collection full of birds and full of song. It opens with a ballad telling the story of the huia – ‘I was the first of birds to sing / I sang to signal rain / the one I loved was singing / and singing once again’ – and the last section of the collection ends with a poem almost in prose, ‘After Surgery,’ in which ‘A small bird flies out of the body, out of a blink perhaps, / maybe out of the lungs.’ This poem is followed by the final poem in the collection, ‘Little Prayers (15 March 2019)’, which is both a lament and a hymn, and a kind of a round, in which the closing line is also the opening line. A boy and girl sing, terribly, in another poem in the collection; in another, a robot, who also has a narrative function, makes music from deep within its machinery (and poetry out of typos); omens and similes sing together in another.

Bill Manhire’s poetry is always lyrical whether the lyricism is the lyricism of the ballad or the lyricism he finds in ordinary, unmetred New Zealand conversational speech. Sometimes it seems as if you can hear a poem tuning up, finding its rhythm before it turns itself into song. As it lifts into song, it lifts, too, into meaning.

Full review here.

There was an important event in Ōtautahi Christchurch last night (Thurs 10th December) at the Sign of the Takahē. The 100th issue of takahē magazine was unveiled, with new poems from David Eggleton, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Bernadette Hall, James Norcliffe, Tony Beyer, Jess Fiebig, Oscar Upperton, John Allison to name a few.

Also the winners of 2020 Monica Taylor takahē poetry competition were announced, and the winner read at the launch.

Poetry editors Gail Ingram and Jeni Curtis read “Striking the pounamu”, a 100-line poem compiled of lines from 84 poets from Aotearoa, including Elizabeth Smither, Albert Wendt alongside new names.

Fiction writers include Paula Morris, Sue Wootton, Anthony Lapwood and others.

takahē website

The writers in residence in the University of Canterbury’s (UC) College of Arts will be Vana Manasiadis and Behrouz Boochani. They will both join the University’s English department for the first half of the year.

Senior Lecturer Erin Harrington says the University’s English department is thrilled to be able to support these two talented writers. 

“They bring with them a wealth of expertise, and impressive track records that connect the local with the international. Their mutual interests in the power of language and translation, and the experiences of migrants and exiles, are an important way of demonstrating the power of the creative arts. We and our students will be lucky to have them join our community.”

Dr Harrington notes the writers have some fortuitous overlap and points of intersection in their work.

“Both writers have international connections and networks, are multilingual, and have an interest in translation – which includes making work available in other languages, and in language revitalisation. Both are interested in the stories of migrants and exiles. Both are interested in indigeneity, and Behrouz is interested particularly in the relationships of indigenous peoples globally.”

Ursula Bethell Writers in Residence 2021:

Vana Manasiadis is a New Zealand-Greek writer and translator whose collection of poetry The Grief Almanac was launched in May 2019.

For the residency, Vana’s project draws from her interest and expertise in translation, and the way that it can withhold, bridge, restrict and embody dialogue. This poetic work, like her other hybrid works, will combine poetry, prose, script and visual art, offering a series of dialogues and monologues from migrants, exiles, and voices from Aotearoa New Zealand.

Vana says: “As well as providing support and space, the residency will be contributing significantly to the community of the project – and I’m beyond thrilled”.

Award-winning author, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani, who spent six years detained by Australian authorities on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, was granted refugee status in July 2020. He is currently a Senior Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Canterbury’s Ngāi Tahu Research Centre.

Behrouz’s proposed work is a short story collection named Ghobad, which is the story of indigenous generations in pre-modern Kurdistan. The work will be written in the Kalhori dialect, which has been systematically suppressed and is in danger of dying out, and it will then be translated into English.

“The residency also offers precious space for exploring writing in a context outside of Manus Island,” he says.

The Ursula Bethell Residency in Creative Writing, jointly funded by the university’s College of Arts and Creative New Zealand, was established by the University of Canterbury in 1979 to provide support for New Zealand writers and foster New Zealand writing. The residency allows authors of proven merit in all areas of literary and creative activity an opportunity to work on an approved project within an academic environment.

Since the inception of the Writers Residency, UC has been home to dozens of fiction-writers, poets and dramatists, many of whom have made valuable contributions to the development of young writers studying at the university. Since 1979, UC has hosted many renowned writers, including Keri Hulme, Kevin Ireland, David Eggleton, Eleanor Catton, Owen Marshall, Fiona Farrell, Tusiata Avia, and Victor Rodger.