A Good Kiwi Girl

A good Kiwi girl wears black
travels light
can rip her gear off quick
if she’s interested   .keen for action

She’ll arrive in a foreign town
friendless      homeless
find a flat a job      mates
faster than a postcard home

will nanny for the rich
work behind a bar
waitress      pick fruit

cheap flight weekends
Paris Prague Rome
has slept in airports
her back-pack a pillow
hitchhikes through Greece

A good Kiwi girl
in four-inch heels
if she’s pissed
will arm-wrestle you in a pub
If she’s really pissed
she’ll let you win

A good Kiwi girl wants
a double-shot flat white
her own back yard
with a feijoa hedge
and a lemon tree

© Alexandra Fraser

A Good Kiwi Girl first appeared in the NZ Poetry Society publication a fine line.

The poem is reproduced here with permission.

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About the Poem:

A Good Kiwi Girl caught my eye as soon as I saw it featured in  a fine line last year—in part because of the title, but also when I read it because I felt it captured something quintessential about so many good Kiwi girls whom I know, as well as the great New Zealand “OE” (“overseas experience”—usually a working holiday.)  It has something of an ‘epic’ feel to it, too, that appeals. We go out into the world like lionesses—but always, like Euripides with “the apple tree, the singing, and the gold” there’s the return to the home (part) acre, the feijoa and the lemon tree.  A great poem to have as part of my current “Kiwi” and “summer” (respectively) Tuesday Poem focus, and I am grateful to Alexandra for letting me feature it.

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Alexandra Fraser

About the Poet:

Alexandra Fraser has been published mostly in NZ journals and anthologies, most recently in InterLitQ 17. Sometimes she lives in Grey Lynn, otherwise resident by a northern beach. She writes poetry when it rains.

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub—and link to other Tuesday Poets posting around NZ and the world—either click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

I read Hannu Rajaniemi’s  The Quantum Thief late last year, and loved it. At the time I was not aware that the book was the first part of trilogy. There was clearly scope for a sequel, but I felt the book worked well as a standalone novel. It wasn’t until I got to the last few pages that it was clear to me that there was a plan for more to come.

That first part of the “more to come” turned up on Christmas day in the form of The Fractal Prince – a gift I was very happy to receive. The book picks up the on-going story of the infamous Jean De Flambuer and his Oortian co-conspirator Mieli: pretty much straight from the point we left them at the end of The Quantum Thief.

Much of the action of the story takes place on Earth, or at least in the city at the heart of the place that Earth has become. Almost nothing about this Earth is recognisable to the reader. The environment, (physical, cultural, and conceptual) is altered in just about any way you care to name.

As with The Quantum Thief, this is a story with layers, as well as plenty of smoke-and-mirrors. Yet having experienced the first book, I felt confident that despite my initially fragile grasp of just how the world I was experiencing in The Fractal Prince worked, the story would reach a satisfying conclusion.

So did it? Well I was satisfied, as I enjoyed this book very much. But I am less clear that a conclusion was reached. To me, The Fractal Prince is much more of a set up for Book Three in the series, than The Quantum Thief was for Book Two. This is a weakness often associated with the second book in SFF series, and did detract from my enjoyment of The Fractal Prince — but not too much.

Having said that, this book does expand our knowledge of the personalities at the heart of the Sorbornost (the social construct that dominates the inner system), their conflict with the competing Zoku guilds, and with each other. You also learn more of Jean De Flambeur’s origins and motivations — if still being a little unclear about his ultimate goals. These are the major plot elements that emerge throughout the book, but clearly with more to come in Book Three.

Yet for me, the central themes of this book are the transformative effects of technology and information: how we use these to alter the world, alter ourselves and be altered in return, and the unintended places this can take us. Even more so, there is the matter of scale and control, and the way that this impacts technology and the world as information.

These themes are interesting to me as a reader, and are clearly valid extrapolations of some of the technologies we already see emerging in the real world today, such as nanotechnology and the ever-increasing scope of information technologies.

Apologies if the above appears a little obscure as an illumination of the story being reviewed — but read the book and then let me know how you think I have done! Needless to say, readers who prefer their storytelling linear, with all plot elements clearly signalled, may not find The Fractal Prince to their taste.

I have been fortunate recently to read (or in some cases re-read) a number of books that touch on similar themes, if in a variety of different ways. These are:

Bloom – Will McCarthy (Del Ray 1998)

2312 – Kim Stranley Robinson (Orbit 2012)

The Cassini Division  – Ken Macleod (Orbit 1998)

I love all of these books, and highly recommend them. If you have also enjoyed them, then you will most likely enjoy The Fractal Prince as well.

Publisher: Gollancz, 2012; 300 pp

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About the Reviewer:

Andrew Robins is a long time reader – and sometime reviewer – of science fiction, fantasy and history. People pay him to test stuff, mainly radios, which most of the time is more fun than it has any right to be. Any and all views expressed in this review are entirely his own.

To read more reviews by Andrew, see “Book Reviews for ‘on Anything, Really’“in the right hand side bar.

“Fame is for the future to decide.  All that the present can offer is celebrity.”

~ J.M. Coetzee

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I think this just about says it all really… And remarkably succinctly, too. 😉

UK/AU/NZ Cover

Well, besides the mass market release of The Gathering of the Lost in the UK on Thursday 21, that is—as first canvassed on Monday. 😉

But seriously, expect a few more of those feature re-posts from the Great Gathering Blog Tour 2012 over the next week or so, to celebrate the mass market launch… (The first, The Power of Environment, posted Thursday.)

But also coming up, we have a review of The Fractal Prince—by Finnish author, Hannu Rajaniemi—due for Monday. I loved his debut novel, The Quantum Thief, last year, so am looking forward to seeing what reviewer, Andrew Robins, has to say.

There is also a new post series in the wings, but more on that later…

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

Still with the letter “A”, Aeris is the second entry in my A Geography of Haarth series, featuring locales and places from The Wall of Night.

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“Aeris: a city kingdom in the lands beyond the River, in the Southern Realms of Haarth.”

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” “The Lost are another reason behind my journey here,” she told Kalan. “At the end of last summer, the Band received a report of strange doings in Aeris. Lightning and thunder out of a clear sky one day; on the next a stone barn caught fire and couldn’t be put out. I investigated and the Lost weren’t there—but they had been.” She watched his eyes widen.

“The Little Pass from Aeris to Emer,” he said. “They must be using that. It’s hardly more than a goat track, but passable in summer. And once in the wilds of Northern Emer they could go anywhere if they had the right guides.” “

~ from The Gathering of the Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 27 — Rumor and Doubt

UK/AU/NZ Cover

On Monday I posted about the forthcoming mass market release of The Gathering Of The Lost in the UK—fun stuff indeed!

And  thought, why not re-post some of the guest posts I did for the US and UK trade release last year as a way of celebrating that — after all they are all good posts and very apt. So I thought—particularly with the next instalment of A Geography of Haarth coming up tomorrow—that I’d start with this guest post that I did for Orbit Australia: enjoy!

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“Celebrating The Gathering of the Lost And The Power of Environment

One of the strongest influences on my writing has always been environment – my appreciation of the natural, technological and cultural elements of the surrounding world, with a flow-on to the creation of milieus within my works. This is particularly true of The Gathering of the Lost, where readers will encounter new lands within THE WALL OF NIGHT world, such as the River, Emer, and Aralorn.

Imagination certainly counts in fantastic world building, but when writing a great river, for example, it helps to have experienced big river systems, whether the Waikato and Clutha, in my own New Zealand, the Murray in Australia, or the Mississippi in the US. The River in The Gathering of the Lost is not any of those waterways, but I suspect that growing up with the Waikato and the Clutha has helped give it authenticity.

I lived close to the Waikato for a considerable period, but did not get to know the Clutha until I was an adult. Yet by then it was already entrenched in the landscape of my imagination—because of family stories and its place in New Zealand’s colonial history of gold mining, as well as its prevalence in photographic and painting art. My own view is that it is not possible to live with a landscape that resonates so powerfully in culture and history and not be influenced by it. After all, even a conscious decision to fight against its sway is still an influence.

But the “elephant in the room” when discussing the environment of this book has to be that The Gathering of the Lost was completed during the period of major earthquakes that devastated my home city of Christchurch between September 4, 2010 and December 23, 2011. The February 22nd 2011 event in particular resulted in both loss of life and widespread destruction. The Gathering of the Lost is dedicated to those who died, and to the police and emergency services that played so vital a role on February 22nd and during its aftermath. Working to complete this book during that time, with the June 13 earthquake coming just as I was on final deadline, was something of a challenge.

I now live in a city where “the broken”—from fissured roads, to slumped river banks, to compromised houses—as well as large scale demolition, is everyday reality. While I cannot know how these events will finally work themselves through, I suspect that it is not possible to experience such sustained trauma in the physical environment without it influencing my cultural imagination, and through that my writing, to some extent.

But that is for the future. Because despite what happened in the recent past I did finish The Gathering of the Lost—and hope you will find it a story where the influence of both natural and cultural environments come through in the world building. “

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Just for the record, one year on, the jury’s still out on that “influence on the cultural imagination” question, by the way. 😉

As promised, here is the giveaway result for the UK trade paperback edition set of Elspeth Cooper’s Songs of the Earth and Trinity Rising, Books 1 and 2 of The Wild Hunt series.

The draw for the books has been made from amongst those who left comments on my interview with Elspeth Cooper last week.

Both Elspeth and I were very pleased to see the level of interest in both the interview and the books. 🙂

But for now, down to business—the giveaway draw!

[Cue: Drum Roll!]

The winner of “The Wild Hunt” book set comprising Songs of the Earth and Trinity Rising is:

Peter

Congratulations, Peter!

Peter, if you email me via my website on contact[at]helenlowe[dot]info with your postal address, I will pass it on to Elspeth so she can then forward you the books.

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Notes re the Giveaway:

• The giveaway was full international

• The draw was made using Random.Org Integer Generator

• If the winner has not contacted me by 12 midnight on Saturday, 16 February (NZ time), I will re-draw on Sunday 17 (again, NZ time.)

Thank you again, from both Elspeth and myself, to everyone who has participated!

At the Workingmen’s Club Picnic

In a forest of legs,
I watch bulging sacks jump haphazardly
And eggs pirouette on spoons
Before I turn to look for you –
………….All the way around
And back again:
Looking down, shoes I do not recognise
Looking up, page after page of faces.
The world has slowed,
It is filled with other children’s fathers.
My mouth is sticky,
In my chest there is some other kind of race.
Ferris wheel buckets tumble
In a kaleidoscope of red, yellow and blue,
Children’s voices float
Back and forward on the air.

I turn and the long moment shatters,
Your hand wraps around mine;
Its puckered knuckles
And calluses, roughly reassuring.

Together, we stride back
To cars circling brightly coloured blankets,
Stripes crossed like swords.
Mum has emerged from the car
And sits on a folding chair,
Her red cardigan draped across her shoulders
While the sleeves just hang.
You reach into a cardboard box in the boot
And bring out a flask with two white cups
(Like a man with two hats)
And an egg
For me to peel.
The shards of brittle white shell
Edge beneath my nails
As I reach for the wobbly moon
With a shadow inside.

© Gail Collier

Reproduced here with permission.

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About the Poem:

“As my father has aged and become ill, I found myself coping with a sense of loss but was unable to write about this due to its immediacy. I found I was able, instead, to access a childhood memory of a moment of loss – of being lost in a crowd and the sheer physical panic that overcomes a child as they lose sight of their parent.

I also found that the setting enabled me to recapture objects and experiences familiar to annual picnics in the sixties, but much less so now: cardboard boxes carrying picnic foods, hard-boiled eggs, three-legged races.

Because it is a very biographical poem, I also wanted to be true to the particular circumstances of my family. I tried to use my mother’s cardigan to symbolise the passivity of a parent suffering from mental illness, without commenting on it directly which would have been incongruous with a small child’s consciousness.  The ambivalent tone created at the end of the poem, as the hopefulness of the white of the egg is tempered by the  the dark yolk within, was also an attempt to project the precarious uncertainty which was always, therefore present.” — Gail Collier

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About the Poet:

Gail Collier is an English teacher who squeezes her poetry writing between the demands of NCEA marking. She is raising the last of four children in the southern suburbs of Christchurch, where she grew up, and hoping for a hiatus before grandchildren appear. Gail is a member of the Canterbury Poets’ Collective and has been published in The Listener, The Press, Micropress, Manuka Musings, Takahe and the infinity we swim in (NZ Poetry Society, 2007).

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub—and link to other Tuesday Poets posting around NZ and the world—either click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

UK/AU/NZ Cover

The mass market edition of The Gathering Of The Lost will be released in the UK on Thursday 21 February—handsprings and cartwheels!

Look out for my guest post on Gathering’s  UK publisher , Orbit’s blog on the big day: the subject matter is still strictly hush, hush but an advance rumour is that weaponry may feature… 😉

So check in on Orbit–and here—on the 21st for the celebratory posting.

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.”

~ Ray Bradbury,  1920 – 2012

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Although to be honest, much as I admire Ray Bradbury—and I do, as I discussed here when he died—I think about a novel like To Kill A Mockingbird, the one-and-only novel penned by Harper Lee and I have to say: quality, yes; doomed, I don’t think so.