"Kiwi" Christmas fare

Well, actually, I think it’s here already—and although I’ve been putting off the day, this morning I bit the bullet and went ‘out there’ to get in all the Christmas supplies, namely food and wine. And because this is New Zealand, i.e. southern hemisphere and height of summer, and also—as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, hot-hot-hot right now—the main thought that informed my purchasing foray was that no way, under any circumstances whatsover, was I buying anything that required the oven to be switched on.  “If it can’t be served either grilled or chilled,” my thinking ran, “then I ain’t buying it!”

Garden fare--just in time for Christmas!

And I didn’t. But this being the height of summer, as mentioned above, there’s lots of great summer food that can be grilled, steamed, stir-fried, chilled, or served ‘as it comes’ that will still make the Christmas board festive. The foods I bought today include: strawberries, raspberries and cherries, sweetcorn on-the-cob, asparagus and snowspeas and bell peppers, new potatoes, oysters, and the meat–definitely for the grill, not the oven–is an eye fillet of beef.  There’s a few other things in the mix as well, but I still think I have the makings of a Christmas Day feast in all that, even if it is not traditional “trimmings.”

I did mention wine as well, didn’t I? According to the wine shop proprietor, Christmas is the one time of the year that both ‘bubbles’ (‘methode traditionelle’ to the more rarified out there, and real-deal champagne for those not on a budget 😉 ) and dessert wine (‘stickies’) are bought in large numbers—so of course I bought both. (“Chilled”—got it? [Winks])

And going outside of wine, just briefly, limoncello—so there can be limoncello & lemon mousse to go with the Christmas Day raspberries!

Some of you may be saying: hold on, it’s only the 23rd. Not so, I reply: this is not just the southern hemisphere, it’s also New Zealand, the first country in the world to see the sunrise—for me, today is Christmas Eve and more than time to be thinking about Christmas fare.

I also promised you poetry and stories for the season. Yesterday’s poem was A Nor’west Season. Today, I’m referring you to Helen Rickerby’s Winked Ink blog, where she featured my poem Christmastide as her Tuesday Poem.

Metrosideros excelsa; aka "crimson"

I was very pleased when Helen chose to feature this particular poem, because to me it is quintessential New Zealand Christmas—the heat, the vegetation flowering, the odyssies we all make to reconnect with friends and family around the country. Usually though, the pohutakawa doesn’t flower at Christmas; it’s just a little earlier, in mid-late November, early December. But the year I wrote Christmastide was anomalous for some reason and the pohutakawas were all flowering late, so my journey north, to Hamilton and then Auckland, was coloured crimson.

Worth a poem, I thought, especially as it was another really hot year. So click on the link and enjoy!

You may recall that yesterday I said it was “hot hot hot.”  OK, I just said “hot”, but the plural is more fun! And since it has gotten hot enough to set off the fire alarm in my writing study not once but twice now, I think the repetition is justifiable …

More than that though, it’s high summer, solstice in fact, here in Canterbury and that means ’tis a nor’west season—the dry, hot, blusteringly strong wind that sweeps in from the nor’west and generally creates havoc. Just to give you an idea, a friend emailed this morning to say that one of the trees on their lifestyle block had fallen, taking out a considerable portion of the vegetable garden and the shed that her husband had been inside just a few moments before. And being a hot, dry, strong wind in the height of an already hot dry summer, this round of norwesters has fanned a rash of fires—as well as  blowing down trees!—in and around Christchurch. Nothing on the scale of Australian bushfires, but enough to keep the fire services feeling stretched over these past few days.

Heralded by the distinctive cloud formation known as the nor’west arch, the nor’wester is similar to the chinook, the Santa Ana, and the sirocco (in other parts of the world) in being a foehn and/or katabatic wind, i.e. amongst other things, it gives you an exciting ride when coming into land at Christchurch airport. The nor’wester also has the same reputation as its fellow foehn winds for affecting emotional as well as physical equilibrium when it blows for days on end—all qualities that I have tried to capture in my poem A Nor’west Season

—

A Nor’west Season

Waiting . . .

the nor’west arch a pale slash

along cloud-filled sky,  promises heat—

big bluster coming

beating in across the plains    lifting

roofs              tossing down

trees                              a dog howls

into the sun’s glazed eye

falls back into shadow

beneath a car body

propped on a rusted jack    waits

for the lull . . .

—

© Helen Lowe

Published, Crest to Crest: Impressions of Canterbury Prose & Poetry, Ed. Karen Zelas, Wily Publications, 2009

What’s Gone Down …

On Monday I posted about finally finishing Part 3, which is one of the two really big (of four—although I’m thinking of re-jigging the order so four may become five) sections of The Wall of Night Book Two, aka as (working title) The Gathering of the Lost.

And yesterday was the long-awaited Tuesday Poem Blog Christmas Exchange, where I got to feature fellow poet Helen Rickerby’s Burning with Joan of Arc, while Helen featured my poem, Christmastide on her Winged Ink blog.

Other stuff that’s been happening lately includes the end of the radio station year (that’s Plains 96.9FM), so no more interviews or podcasting for me until February. But there’s still some great recent book—and other—interviews from Women on Air that you can listen to on podcast, here, over the break.

And last Thursday, you may recall, I was performing as part of Mer Made, a combination music and poetry-in-performance event at Beat St Cafe. It was a fun evening, the joint was jumping–and I forgot to take photos for you! So you’ll just have to take my word for it, but next time … 😉

—

What’s Coming Up …

Well, just to prove that I’ve obviously been very wicked in some past life if not this one, it’s straight into the fourth and final part of Gathering for me, but as I also said on Monday I am hoping that will be very much an epilogue and therefore a short and smooth write. Fingers crossed!

And of course there’s Christmas and New Year’s Eves and Days, which I do plan to have off, because it’s my personal view that if there are only two days in the year able to be dedicated to spending time with friends and loved ones, these are those two days. So that’s exactly what I’ll be doing.

But because it’s “hot as” here in Christchurch at present I have scotched the idea of a Christmas Day roast and will be doing something quick on the grill, with something “chilled” in nature for dessert—and possibly to quaff as well. 🙂

The other thing I’ll be doing over the break, right here on ” … Anything, Really”, is bringing you a selection of poetry and prose by myself and others that somehow speaks to me of the season. This is my gift to you as followers of my blog and I hope you will enjoy.

Burning with Joan of Arc

The yellow sand is hot under my palm
Despite my shorts and tee shirt
and slatherings of sunscreen
I can feel the sun
scorching my skin

Joan is stretched out beside me
sun hat over her face
bikinied body idolatrous
worshipping the sun

‘More sunscreen?’ I ask
‘I’ve already burned,’ she says
‘I was burning with the words
given by God
I burned for my people
burned in battle
I was burned when betrayed by my king
burned with shame when they made me a witch
and you know of course
about the English flames’

‘So yes,’ she says
‘I’d love some more sunscreen’

(c) Helen Rickerby

Published in My Iron Spine (Headworx) 2008

—

About Helen Rickerby:

Helen Rickerby is the author of two collections of poetry: Abstract Internal Furniture (2001) and My Iron Spine (2008), and recently had a sequence of poems, Heading North, published in a hand-bound edition by Kilmog Press. She is co-managing editor of JAAM literary magazine and runs Seraph Press, a boutique poetry publisher. She lives in Wellington, in a cliff-top tower, and works as a web editor.

To find out more about Helen and her wonderful poetry, you may visit her on her blog Winged Ink. To read her guest post on the recently released  JAAM 28: Dance Dance Dance, which she co-edited, click here.

—

About the Christmas Exchange:

Basically, the Christmas Exchange comprises the poets of the Tuesday Poem Blog pairing up and featuring one of the other’s poems on their site—all in celebration of the Christmas and New Year festivals!  I was delighted to be paired with Helen Rickerby, whose poetry I admire immensely, and even more delighted when I read the poems Helen sent me. I liked both of them very much but I have to say that Burning with Joan of Arc really spun my poetic wheels.

Firstly, because it’s very powerful poetically—this is a poem that packs a lot of punch! (Fittingly, of course, for Joan of Arc.)  The power is achieved through a number of devices: the use of dialogue and ‘voice’;  the spare language juxtaposed with repetition, particularly around “burned” and “burning.”  We all have our personal prejudices and preferences as poets, and one of mine is a wariness of repetition: I find it tires very easily as a device, and risks boring the reader and dragging  a poem into the banal. But in this poem it works perfectly—so much so that it was only on the second reading that I even noticed that there was repetiton.  (At first reading I just went: wow.”)

I really don’t like breaking poems down—if they work as a whole then that’s good enough for the Lowe gal!  And this poem definitely works as a whole. But because this is the Christmas Exchange I want to talk about  a couple of other aspects that make Burning with Joan of Arc rock for me. For example, how quickly and effectively Helen creates the atmosphere of the poem through words such as “yellow”, “palm” and “scorching” in the first stanza; then the way in which she juxtaposes the macro story of Joan of Arc, her life and death, with the minutiae of the beach expereince: sunbathing and a conversation around sunscreen. The latter gives bathos to the former, but in such an understated way that as a reader you don’t see it coming—and even after it’s gone the effect is so neat that rather than flagellating over the glory and tragedy and injustice of Joan of Arc’s life, you are left simply with a feeling of satisfaction: for the poem well conceived and delivered, as well as for the “story” effectively told.

For those who might argue that it is not a NZ Christmas poem: of course it is! NZ Christmas is all about high summer, and beaches, and sunscreen, and Burning captures that perfectly.  Given that Joan of Arc has been canonized as a saint, I also feel that it is timely to reflect that a festival that promises “peace on earth and good will to all” has many times delivered “not peace but a sword”—together with the stake, the rack, the wheel, and the cross. Not a reason to turn away from the promise that offers better hope, but an incentive, as individuals and societies, to strive harder to realise it in the world.

And on that note—enjoy Helen Rickerby’s Burning with Joan of Arc.

To enjoy more Tuesday Poems as part of the international Christmas exchange, go to the Tuesday Poem Blog hub here or click on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

Title to be hummed to the tune of the song!

But yeah, I’ve done it—finished Part 3 of  WALL2.  Cover your ears for the “Great Shout” (reference: Patricia McKillip’s The Riddlemaster of Hed—a seminal and fantastic trilogy, so if you haven’t already read it, hie thee to a book store or library!)

You’ll recall on Saturday that I thought I was closing on the target fast and hoped to see you on the other side? Well, ‘the other side’ turned out to be Sunday evening and not Saturday as I had first hoped, and 14.5 hours, 5437 completely new words written and 3134 revised—but we got there. This is it, the other side.

And you know what else, my gut is telling me it’s good, that I’ve nailed it—so now I’ll just have to find out whether all those editors and my official readers agree! (The one reader who has seen most of Part 3 so far does agree—but his is only one opinion, albeit a reliable one up until now!)

Where to from here? That would be Part 4, but if the Muses are kind, the story arc will be fulfilled and Part 4 will be very much epilogue to the main—and I hope, to use Mary Victoria’s word, “rambunctious”, action in Parts 1, 2 and 3.

Although of course, being a Helen Lowe story, it is all about danger and wild flights, sword fights and intrigue, as well as “dark treachery and conflicting loyalties”, there is also a little bit of romance in there—because much of the action takes place in a part of Haarth, which while being most famous for its heavily armoured knights, also as a long tradition of “springtime love” …

Well, it’s more “to be read” this week, but on my TBR table I have:

William Gibson’s Zero History (having recently read and enjoyed Spook Country.)

Justin Cronin’s The Crossing (comes highly recommended!)

The 3-book set of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series ahead of a potential radio interview next year.

How about you, what are you reading?

Right now, I’m working hard chasing down that mirage-like conclusion to Part 3 of WALL2—but the target is in sight and I’m closing fast, so that’s the mission for today! See you on the other side (I hope) …

I’d still be interested to hear your thoughts on ground breaking—or should that be “space breaking”?—scifi, as per yesterday’s post.

One of the blogs I follow is Phil Platt’s Bad Astronomy, which is hosted on the Discover Magazine site.

A few days ago, Bad Astronomy featured an update on Voyager, launched in 1977, which is currently heading out beyond the solar system. Here’s an excerpt from Phil’s post, titled The wind is no longer at Voyager’s back:

” … There is gas between the stars, which astronomers call the interstellar medium. The solar wind blows out into it, slowing. There is a region, over a billion kilometers thick, where the solar wind plows to a halt, creating a roughly spherical shell around the solar system. That’s called the heliosheath, and it looks like Voyager 1 is now solidly inside it. In fact, it’s been there for four months or so; the scientists measuring the solar wind speed noticed it dropped to 0 back in June, but it took a while to make sure this wasn’t just some local eddy in the flow. It’s not. Voyager 1 now has calm seas ahead.

But the probe is still moving outward at 60,000 kph (38,000 mph). In a few more years it’ll leave the heliosheath behind, and when that happens it will truly be in interstellar space, the vast and nearly empty region between the stars. At that moment it will be the first human device ever to truly leave the solar system and enter the great stretches of the galaxy beyond. …

To read the full article, click here.

Call me a terrible sentimentalist, which I probably am, but I do get more than a little teared up thinking about Voyager heading out there into the vasty deeps of space beyond the solar system. I get the loneliness of it, but also the grandeur of both the enterprise and the magnitude of space.  And of course, all the “what if” imaginings of what that “beyond” might bring are the very stuff of science fiction!

Arguably, the reality can beat most of that fiction into the proverbial cocked hat (great expression, huh?!) but there’s still a few scifi stories out there that capture my imagination in terms of what the human experience of space “might be.”

One of my favourites is CJ Cherryh’s Downbelow Station.

How about you? Do you have a “definitive” science fiction story?

Starting 8 pm at Beat Street Cafe, cnr Armagh and Barbadoes Streets, central Christchurch—be there or be square for poetry and music with — Tusiata AVIA; Nikki BERRY; Jania GALLETLY; Marissa JOHNPILLAI; Helen LOWE; MUNDI; Danielle O’HALLORAN; Tamara SMITH; Sum SURAWEERA; The Cracks in Everything.

$5 entry.

Jan Butterworth, Press Officer for the Science Fiction Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ), has asked me to advise blog readers that the Sir Julius Vogel Awards will be open for nomination from 1 January 2011, closing on 31 March 2011.

Sir Julius Vogel Award trophy

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are given annually by SFFANZ and recognize achievement in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror by New Zealanders. Previous professional category winners include Brian Falkner, Russell Kirkpatrick, Anna MacKenzie, James Norcliffe, Juliet Marillier and Nalini Singh, and I won the award for Best Novel: Young Adult for Thornspell in 2009.

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are a reader’s/fan choice award and initial nominations are  open to everyone. The final vote for shortlisted works is restricted to members of SFFANZ and those attending the national convention (to be held next year over Queen’s Birthday weekend.)

Categories of award, for works created by a New Zealander and first published or released in the 2010 calendar year, include:

Professional Categories:
Best Novel
Best Novella or Novelette
Best Short Story
Best Collected Work
Best Artwork
Dramatic Presentation
– Long Form
– Short Form
Best Production/Publication
Best New Talent

Fan Categories:
Best Fan Writing
Best Fan Artwork
Best Fan Editing
Best Fan Publication
Best Fan Production

Special Awards:
Services to Fandom
Services to Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror

If you’re interested in finding out more or nominating a work or works, you can read  the rules and criteria here. I will also post more information about how to nominate a work early in 2011, once the period for nomination opens.