Poetry Shelf Review: Diane Brown’s Taking My Mother to the Opera – a rollercoasting, thought provoking, detail clinging, self catapulting, beautiful read

Leave a reply

otago115898     otago115898

Diane Brown Taking My Mother to the Opera Otago University Press 2015

Otago University Press is producing beautifully designed poetry books with striking covers and internal designs that are both fresh and inviting. Diane Brown’s new book is no exception. The nifty look could be out of the fifties or sixties with its limited palette, the oval shapes and the time-pinning, parental photograph. Gorgeous. Being a child of the sixties, there is a nostalgic hue that draws me in. Plus the book is that rare poetry species – hard cover with a yellow ribbon. The book is about to be reprinted.

Diane’s new work could be flagged as narrative poetry, poetic narrative or as poetry as memoir. The writing is fluid, fluent, daring, exposing, moving. Diane steps back into her earlier self, the daughter-self, as she builds portraits of both her mother and father, and her shifting relations with them. Yet the adult writing self is never far away. The memoir is in debt to hand-me-down anecdotes, photograph albums and the potager plot of memory. We read of memory’s failings and fadings, in the light of mother, father and poet-daughter. Over lifetimes, memory has been weeded and fertilized to suit, unwittingly in the main. The poet is acutely aware of how tough and provisional a recuperation of the past is:

 

Too late to ask permission,

it’s up to me to tease out

some sort of narrative

 

from the missing story,

to add the words

I never thought to ask.

 

 

This memoir is like a poetic version of family archives; the hidden box where a cluster of things unlock family stories. What makes this family box retrieved from the dark so potent is the unsparing eye. Diane delves deep into parental enigmas. How can we ever know the adult? Stepping back into the shoes of the child, Diane steps back into things done and not-done, said and not-said, observed not-observed. Forbidden from the beach on Sundays, her mother is ‘alone in a studio/ in her velvet dress, blue/ possibly, with sunburst// embroidery, wishing/ she wasn’t.’ We get physical details, but then the melancholy arm’s length:

 

She’s maintained this one-way

conversation all her life, keeping

 

her own counsel, allowing

no disclosures, either of anger

or of love to husband and children.

 

Diane’s memoir, then, transcends the photograph album and exposes miniature wounds (the mother not at the school gate, the fact you cannot eat poems), mysteries (mother) and allegiances (with father). The poet has lifted veils and allowed space for rankles, reflections, sympathies. As detail and miniature stories accumulate, the memoir sharpens. It is as though we intrude on a personal endeavor to get to the truth of the past (for each participant). Lots of billowy white space to explore. Admissions. It is hard not to bring your own luggage to the scene.

The memoir is a sharply rendered portrait of time and place — haunting in the detail that drags me back to my childhood and adolescence. I loved that. Yet what makes this memoir stick is the complicated, heart-trembling knot that is on the one hand mother and on the other hand father. It carries you across generations to a time where parental expectations were different (as both mother/father and of daughter). It reminds you of the elusiveness of mother/father. We know what they shown us, less so what they have not. In the final part of the book, the parents age, become frail, face death. This introduces new questions, new writing drives, different parental versions:

 

I want to call him back,

have him describe changes

 

in the town and tell me

all the things I never thought

to ask. But too late,

 

he’s swimming downstream

with flowers in the current

and not looking back.

 

To enter so deeply into behind-the-curtains stories of family life is brave. That the family portrait depends on economy rather than over-statement heightens the emotional kick. You get the arc of the poet’s life where it intersects the parents, but there is so much that flickers in fleeting traces. Absence heightens the focus. As writer, daughter and mother, the book raised many issues for me, issues that I explored in great detail in my doctoral thesis, issues that I want to return to in my new book. For now, Diane’s new book is a beautiful read — a rollercoasting, thought provoking, detail clinging, self catapulting, beautiful read.

 

 

from ‘A Black and White Story’

 

Not the opera, Dad says,

we never went to the opera, but the flowers sound right.

 

I’ve always bought your mother flowers, why wouldn’t I?

Best woman in the world.

 

Mum, who doesn’t believe in poetry

or any other form of declaration, mutters,

Actions not words, behind his back.

 

Not tuned in to cynicism, Dad refuses to hear. It doesn’t occur to him

his memory might be fading.

 

 

*

 

 

There may have been a time

when they attended Madame Butterfly,

Mum wearing her good dress,

 

the green tulle with a flared skirt; behind her ears, a dab of Evening in Paris, from the deep blue bottle.

 

Dad in white shirt and striped tie, heart soaring. There are no photos of this so perhaps I am spinning

 

the parent tale we all want to read at bedtime—love uncomplicated and just for you.

 

© Diane Brown 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf, Poets’ Choice: Cilla McQueen and Brian Turner make some picks

1 Reply

418MHC3lAEL._SX346_BO1,204,203,200_

My pick is Emma Neale’s Tender Machines (OUP). Emma’s poetry is resonant on many levels and repays close reading. In her supple, expert language, she takes a loving look at the human condition in a collection which has depth, wisdom and insight.

Cilla McQueen

 

Being_Here_cover__66009.1423089464.140.215  Being_Here_cover__66009.1423089464.140.215   Being_Here_cover__66009.1423089464.140.215

Mostly I read poetry and non-fiction, and a lot of the latter is to to do with environmental issues in an effort to understand and do something about the disgusting rate at which we’re destroying the place. Recently I read Michael McCarthy‘s The Moth Snowstorm, which Helen Macdonald termed ‘a deeply affecting memoir and a heartbreaking account of ecological impoverishment’. I concur. Much of what McCarthy writes about mirrors what’s happened and continues to here, in NZ, and elsewhere.

Three of the volumes of poetry that I’ve read and liked most in the past year are Robin Robertson‘s The Wrecking Light, Vincent O’Sullivan‘s Being Here, and Emma Neale‘s Tender Machines. Robertson doesn’t pussy-foot around, covers a lot of ground, can be caustic, blunt, wry and shattering. O’Sullivan ranges widely both in tone and content. Apart from the wry and sly ways he approaches things I like the ways in which he highlights human absurdities. As I hear him, it’s not as if we’re too much troubled by human absurdity, it’s that we’re not troubled enough. In Emma Neale’s Tender Machines she grapples with long-standing human predicaments, the difficulties we have personally keeping a lot of the ‘ongoing human symphony’ playing while trying to work out how to silence our dreadful ‘inner racket’.

I’d like to be able to buy and read far more NZ poetry than I do these days. Back in the 1960s, when I began trying to write poems, it was possible to be familiar with nearly all of the volumes of poems by NZ writers. Not now; the result is great gaps in one’s reading. Does it matter? I don’t know.

Brian Turner

Poetry Shelf, Poet’s Choice: Rachel Bush makes her pick

Leave a reply

c52510c0-ccf5-4568-88dc-14eed8f6eafe     c52510c0-ccf5-4568-88dc-14eed8f6eafe

 

I was hooked by the couplet that begins the first poem in Ocean and Stone by Dinah Hawken (Victoria University Press 2015).

‘Here I am an old woman, sitting alone / on an outside chair in Maoriland,’ she writes. I am captivated by this concise and evocative sketch of herself. That word ‘Maoriland’ with all its nuances and baggage still turns over and over in my mind.

Dinah  writes beautifully about children, particularly in this book  about her grandchildren. There is none of the cuteness that can mar writing about little children. Hers are tiny in stature, but total and convincingly human beings.

She can be very funny, for instance when she writes about ‘the bloke’ who disrupts the lake and everyone peacefully round it by tuning a loud speed boat for hours on end. We all know him, alas.

She writes particularly well about the natural world. I find it difficult to say without sounding as though I am attributing to her some wise conventional pieties. And the very last thing she does is write things that sound good and ‘nice’. If I had to pick a favourite poem, today  I might choose ‘A screen is a screen’. Partly it’s a poem about climate change, but there is no hefty lecturing about it. The ubiquity of screens in our daily lives is countered with the strength and vitality of one bare tree, and with a the way a sense of community and family can  enrich our lives.

Rachel Bush

Poetry Shelf, Poet’s Choice: Emma Neale’s favourite poetry reads 2015

Leave a reply

 

otago108004   7485719

 

My poetry treasures for this year:  Some people say they’ve travelled, or fallen in love, or moved house, as the measure of a year’s alterations: for me, 2015 was the year I read Iain Lonie’s A Place to Go On From: The Collected Poems. The depth and frankness with which this plumbs love, grief and staring into the void is so unstinting that reading it has felt like a life event. As an act of scholarship from the editor David Howard and the author of the introduction Damian Love, it deserves to be celebrated.
I also loved seeing the fresh direction Joan Fleming has gone in with Failed Love Poems and how quickly she takes up new role models (eg Mary Ruefle, erasure poetics) and rearranges and ‘re-aspirates’ these.

Because as a student I always used to write far too much and get reprimanded for exceeding the word limit, I have to add here Bones in the Octagon by Carolyn McCurdie – see particularly her poem about the Brothers Grimm – and oh please just one more to add – two Hungarian poets have dazzled me this year: Ágnes Nemes Nagy and Ferenc Juhász.

Emma Neale

Bones in the octagon front cover copy

Poetry Shelf, Poet’s Choice: Bill Manhire selects some favourite reads of 2015

Leave a reply

23282023

The late R.F. Langley is still one of the secrets of recent poetry in English, though Carcanet’s new Complete Poems (edited by Jeremy Noel-Tod) will be doing something to bring him out of the shadows.  He looks a bit remote and narrow on the page – but in fact the poems are full of hidden rhymes: listen to him hard, sound him on the tongue, and you realise he’s one of the most musical poets going.  And if poems are, as someone said, acts of attention, then he’s also one of the most attentive you’re ever likely to come across.

I like how Commune Editions, the publisher of Juliana Spahr’s That Winter the Wolf Came,  describe themselves: ‘purveyor of poetry & other antagonisms’.  There are plenty of antagonisms in this new book, which builds its effects into something bigger than the simple arithmetic of its individual poems. A poem called ‘Turnt’, online at the Poetry Foundation, gives a reasonable sense of how Spahr goes about things.

Though I’m late to the party, I’ve been reading Dan O’Brien’s 2013 collection, War Reporter (CB editions, 2013), which voices itself through the persona of the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Paul Watson – so that you’re both in the action and out of it at the same time.  As with Wilfred Owen et al, it will never be an easy time to read work like this – but just at the moment it feels especially challenging.

Finally, Zaffar Kunial is a poet I like a lot, though he hasn’t published a full collection yet.  He has the wonderful/weird distinction of once having worked as a writer for Hallmark Cards. Here’s a link to why – or part of why – I like his work. The page also includes a link to his poem ‘The Word’. It’s small and tidy, but is a sort of Tardis poem: bigger on the inside than the outside.

Bill Manhire

Poetry Shelf, Poet’s Choice: local poets share favourite reads of 2015

Leave a reply

For the past two years I have posted an annual list of reading picks by poets and poetry fans to celebrate poetry. The lists turned out to be a sumptuous poetry guide for summer reading – with a few other reading treats thrown in for good measure.

This year I have invited some local poets to share favourite reads over the past year. Rather than assemble the enormous list of previous years, I plan to post them as they arrive.

Happy summer reading!

Poetry Shelf Book Review: Steven Toussaint’s The Bellfounder – It is an exquisite read

1 Reply

The+Bellfounder_CultSoc_COVER_v04-2-page-001

 

Steven Toussaint The bellfounder  The Cultural Study Society, 201B

 

 

Steven Toussaint was born in Chicago in 1986. He is the author of the chapbook Fiddlehead (Compound Press, 2014). He lives on the side of a volcano in Auckland, New Zealand.

Steven’s new poetry collection, The Bellfounder, is an exquisite read. The epigraph stands as a dedication to Eleanor Catton: ‘For you I have emptied the meaning/ leaving the song’. The ‘you’ widens to gift song to the reader as music is both first and last reading effect. A lexicon of musical terms amass: melody, pitch, chord, counterpoint, harmony, rhythm. I wanted to shut my eyes and absorb the musicality through the pores of my skin.

Each word chimes like a musical note, but the reward is in the aural connections – surprising, comforting, hair shivery – that produce the lift and skip of melody (‘brine seamed, milked at alpine view’). Your ear flutters to and fro along the track of the line catching sounds that twitch and oscillate and gel (‘alive as white aster, as stars’). There is both musical playfulness and musical craft. The little shift from ‘aster’ to ‘as stars’ sends gossamer threads to Gertrude Stein, Michele Leggott, Susan Howe. Melody is made more endearing by syntax that sidesteps, elides, eludes (‘hoove the ground/ each order othering’). Words hum on the ends of lines like a secret sidebone poem (whole formative cloud downgrowth longing parades embankments view is left stars ground othering bellow). (quotations are from ‘The Ground’)

At times, the language is demanding (I love this), when the words are obscure, not in everyday use, deliciously coined, twisted and shifting. At times, there is a sweet economy that counterbalances a governing richness. Always, at every crest and turn, phrases that cling to the ear (‘ore poured/ through ode// and hissed forth/ dread’ from ‘Analogion’).

 

What of meaning abandoned? After the initial joy of melody (song), I savoured the visual tussock; the way image is both ephemeral and grounded. Again I was reminded of Gertrude, Michele and Susan – and the playful energy of an image held in the mind. A point of contemplation. Transcendental, almost. At first, there is the allure of the image (‘quiet tangle/ of birchbark’ ‘Down along/ the frost encased// river little/ stinging reeds’). The images are little anchors in the overall mist of the poems. Yet that grounding enables the folds and creases of connection, personal associations and drifting thought (how to build that ice-cold river in mind’s eye?). Motifs, like the musical wordnotes, echo. The images tilt you. They act as little keys to drifting notions. Now and then, I felt like I was walking into sumptuous strata of Dante’s Inferno or the wet, kaleidoscopic thrill of a Tarkovsky film. I could almost hear Dante’s voice.

For me, the reading drift is the drift of a hiker locked into the rhythm of walking, where the natural world becomes music, music tethers image and image untethers thinking. Then thinking becomes still and still becomes raucous. Glorious. I love the way implanted image builds train of thought. The reading drift becomes a musing on poetry. On the possibilities of poetry. Take the poem, ‘Measure’: beautiful, enigmatic, poised, entrancing. The birchbark and river detail are the physical measure of melody, of viewing the world. Yet there is more, always more. Poetry becomes more than meaning, yet you are never left groundless. It is the mysterious movement that is travel and location and the laying of here and the layering of there.

 

Enormous funnels

of pitch a people

 

press on, tamp

the thicket’s

 

thickset quiet out

as if a current

 

of flame rouses

deep under boats

 

pitch-sealed

to carry them over.

 

(from ‘Measure’)

 

 

This collection is one of my favourite reads of the year. It transports you to the milky mists of nowhere and then feeds you the sublime ‘pitch’ and ‘drip’ of a somewhere that matters to you on a level both conscious and subconscious. Breathtakingly good.

 

Available in NZ from Timeout Book Store, or elsewhere via Small Press Distribution

Steven’s blog

‘Plainsong‘ on Poem Friday on Poetry Shelf

An excerpt from ‘Aevum Measures‘ on The Spinoff

 

 

Slam, slam … & thank you Mams – Vaughan Rapatahana’s take on Slam Poetry & NZ stalwarts

Leave a reply

P1050079

Vaughan Rapatahana has just posted a piece on Jacket2 that casts a spotlight on various poetry activities in New Zealand. Great to see. Thanks, too, for the thumbs up Vaughan.

‘In this, my last commentary post of this series — apart from a brief Coda next week — I want to talk about two distinct areas of the Aotearoa-New Zealand poetry scene that I have alluded to previously, but nor really covered copiously as yet.

One is the vital and brimming Poetry Slam situation in this multicultural land — a scene that is really expanding fast, most particularly among younger poets, and certainly among Polynesian poets who tend not to live in stuffy urban areas, but more likely in places like Mangere, where I grew up. I reckon this bodes extremely well for the future of (their) primarily oral-delivery focussed work, for they seem less interested in being seen in print in established/mainstream journals and much more energized by the live performance, the audience, the competition, the sometimes Americano rap/hip-hop, often Pasifika, definite ngā mōteatea rhythms and beats running through their pieces. Mind you, some DO already have print collections out there … Kei te tino pai tēnei (This is very good.)’

 

and part two:

 

‘So I also want to focus on another essential aspect of New Zealand’s poetry scene — the Stalwarts, the people — very often women, thank you Mams, who keep poetry in this country alive and kicking via their commitment to writing about it; reviewing it as in the several online blogs, like The Tuesday Poem as organised by Mary [McCallum] and Claire Beynon, which ‘carries a poem and commentary on the poet’s work every Tuesday’; publicizing it; organising it — often  regionally: mostly unpaid and as dedicated labours of love.’

 

Full blog here

New Executive Director for The Michael King Writers Centre brings a wealth of experience

Leave a reply

New Executive Director brings a wealth of experience

The Michael King Writers’ Studio trust is very happy to announce the appointment of Ka Meechan as the new Executive Director of the Writers’ Centre.

Ka has comprehensive knowledge of the international book trade from over 30 years of experience working in New Zealand, the UK and Australia. She has travelled extensively during her career working with clients and partners across the globe.

In August 2013 Ka left her role as Managing Director, Asia Pacific with Nielsen Book Services where she was responsible for revenue and client management across the range of  bibliographic information and retail sales monitoring services  in the Asia Pacific region encompassing Australia, New Zealand and the Asian countries bordering the Pacific.

For the past two years Ka has worked with the Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ). Most recently she organized the PANZ International Summit in May and the PANZ Book Design Awards in July. She also project managed the Visiting Author component of New Zealand’s Guest of Honour programme at the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) in February 2015.

Ka says:  I am very much looking forward to working with the Michael King Writers’ Studio Trust to build on the successes achieved over the last ten years.

Catriona Ferguson, Chair of the Trust says “Ka will bring energy and enthusiasm along with vast experience of the literature sector to the Trust. We are thrilled that she has accepted the role of Executive Director”.

As the first national writers’ centre in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Trust’s mission is to support quality New Zealand writing and the development of New Zealand writers. The centre is based in the old Signalman’s House on Takarunga Mt Victoria, Devonport, Auckland.

 

Ka will take up her appointment on Tuesday 01 December 2015.

Damien Wilkin’s launch speech for Bill Manhire’s short story collection: ‘I think of these stories as ludic on the outside but ferocious in their hidden centres.’

Leave a reply

Great launch speech!

‘It’s not a bad way to approach this book – to listen for the tune as much anything. Because while it’s true that these beguiling, discomforting stories take many strange and sudden turns, I was struck all over again by how hummable they are, how they stick to the ear and the mind.’

Launch speech here