Cowarral:

iii  A Summer Storm

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(c) Joanna Preston

Cowarral is one of two main sequences in Joanna Preston’s first collection The Summer King (Otago University Press, 2009). A fellow Tuesday Poem poet, Joanna won the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award, currently NZ’s richest poetry prize, in 2008 and has just received Australia’s  Mary Gilmore Prize 2010, which is conducted by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature and presented every second year to a first book of poetry by an Australian writer. Both awards were for The Summer King.

I was sitting in the sun reading Tamora Pierce’s Beka Cooper: Bloodhound—despite the sunshine there was an iron hard frost outside so inside was definitely the place to be—when my cellphone rang. I made pickup—just—but there was a glitch, so no voice connection although I could see the caller’s number. And not only was it not a number I recognised,  but I was pretty sure that it wasn’t even a NZ number. Fortunately, by the time the call came though again a minute later I had been able to join the dots—mainly because my agent, Robin, in the States, had told me that she had passed on my cellphone number to Bella, my English editor, who might be calling about covers. So when I picked up the second time and there was that time-distance pause, I was able to say: “Hello. Is that Bella?”

And indeed, it was—calling me from the UK at 12.45 am in her early Sunday morning (the UK is eleven hours behind NZ at present). True editorial dedication, but as she explained to me, there is only a 30 day window for Orbit (my UK/ANZ publisher) to bring The Heir of Night out in Australia and New Zealand after it has been released in the USA. (My publisher there is Eos.) So the race is on to get the Australia/New Zealand edition ready to go, including the cover—and it was the cover that Bella was calling about. She says the Orbit team are keen to get a design that reflects the adventurous feel of the book; also one based around Malian (the central character in Heir) so they need information on clothes, armour and ‘all that jazz’ pretty much yesterday.

So guess what I spent the rest of yesterday afternoon doing? No, no, I’m joking really, because of course I keep files on what characters look like, what they wear, and armour, so it was really just a matter of pulling that together and finding a few images that might illustrate the notes a little better … Fun stuff, especially when you know that it is all part of developing the cover look and getting the story out there into the world.

Also (call me old fashioned here) but it was just really nice to speak with Bella and “hear” the person: email is a great medium, but the telephone call—despite the occasional time-distance delay—definitely added another dimension. But I can well understand Bella not wanting to make too many at 12.45 am in the morning. So next time, maybe, I will have to take that hit for the team!

Meanwhile, I’m really looking forward to seeing the Australia/New Zealand cover. 🙂

Yesterday I blogged about attending the launch of my friend Rhian Gallagher’s book  Feeling for Daylight: The Photographs of Jack Adamson, which was held at the South Canterbury Museum in Timaru.

Sefton Homestay

Timaru is a small city in South Canterbury, about two hours drive south of Christchurch. Like many of the South Island’s smaller cities, it’s hey day was in the gold rush era, which was followed by the wealth of refrigerated meat and fine wool. These glory days left Timaru with a fine legacy of late Victorian/Edwardian brick and stone architecture, so since we were going to be in Timaru overnight, we thought we’d enjoy a little of the local atmosphere and stay in one of the town’s historic homestays.  In our case, this was the delightful Sefton Homestay, which I thoroughly recommend for anyone wanting to experience genuine southern hospitality in an authentic Edwardian villa setting.

There's snow on them thar mountains ...

One of the other charms of Timaru is Caroline Bay, a traditional summer holiday spot which was revamped by the Timaru District Council a few years back. In our small amount of downtime between events, we enjoyed a stroll around the bay area and a coffee on the hill overlooking the sea. And it being midwinter here, particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of the the Bay’s palm trees with the snow clad Southern Alps in the background.

Visiting Timaru is always an opportunity to catch up with Owen Marshall,

Owen Marshall

one of New Zealand’s pre-eminent writers—and his latest short fiction collection, Living as a Moon, is a finalist for this year’s NZ Post Fiction Award. Owen was also my creative writing mentor a few years back, through the NZ Society of Author’s/Creative New Zealand programme, and although we worked on short stories rather than novels, I know his feedback assisted in the development of my writing. (I have said as much, too, in the Acknowledgments to my forthcoming novel, The Heir of Night, to be published October in the USA, Australia and New Zealand.) It was very pleasant to have the opportunity to catch up over lunch and “talk writing”. In fact, it is always fun to talk writing, so with both Rhian and Owen in residence, plus that wonderful Ewardian architectural legacy, Timaru will always be more than just another small provincial town to me.

Feeling for Daylight: Flyer & Book

Yesterday I attended the opening of the exhibition, “Feeling For Daylight: the Jack Adamson Collection” at  South Canterbury Museum. The opening also included the launch of the book, Feeling for Daylight: The Photographs of Jack Adamson, written by Rhian Gallagher.

My connection to the launch and the book was through knowing Rhian—you may recall that I featured her poem, Between, as my June 29 Tuesday Poem. Rhian is a poet with a background in the publishing industry and first encountered the photographs of Jack Adamson when she returned to South Canterbury in 2006, after 18 years living and working in London.  The collection of around 450 glass photographic plates, glass nitrate negatives, and also some of Adamson’s camera gear had recently been denoted to the museum by the Adamson family—and when Rhian saw the plates and learned the basic facts of who and what Jack Adamson was, her first response was: “there’s a story in this”.

Having seen the exhibition yesterday and had my first look at the book, I can only agree: Jack Adamson’s life and work definitely comprise a story that deserved to be told. I am very glad that Rhian, together with the curatorial team from the museum, found the time and funding to do so.

Newspaper feature

Jack Adamson was born in Timaru, South Canterbury in ca. 1868, the son of working class, farming parents who had immigrated to New Zealand from Scotland. The book focuses on the time when he lived at the Hermitage, in the Hooker valley at the foot of Aoraki-Mt Cook, which is New Zealand’s highest peak. During that time, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jack Adamson became one of New Zealand’s first alpine guides and was instrumental, with his wife Nora, in keeping the Hermitage going as an early destination for New Zealand’s fledgling tourism industry and mountain climbing tradition.

But the interest of the collection, the exhibition and the book, is centred on Jack Adamson’s marvellous photographic legacy. What struck me about these stark, powerful, black and white images, is not just the historical record they provide of climbing, climbers and the Mt Cook region, but also their wonderful humanity. These photographs capture people as well as place: climbers, station workers, swaggers, Jack himself and also his family–and not in the stiff, formal way so familiar from most Victorian photographs. What distinguishes these photographs, for me, is their naturalism, redolent of modern photographic approaches.  The images caught in the photographs become real people, their eyes and expressions still speaking to us eloquently, despite the separation of more than a century.

The signing

A wonderful project and a wonderful book: my sincere congratulations to Rhian and everyone involved with the project.

If you get the opportunity, see the exhibition; if you can’t do that and are at all interested in photography, mountain climbing, mountain guiding, and/or NZ history—or know someone else who is—you should definitely consider buying this book.

If you missed my interview with Sarah Broom last week, discussing her debut collection Tigers at Awhitu (Auckland University Press, New Zealand; Carcanet, UK) 2010, you can now listen to it on podcast.

Click on the “play” button to listen or download the mp 3.

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Tomorrow, Saturday 10,  I interview Ingrid Horrocks about her first poetry collection, Mapping the Distance (Victoria University Press) 2010, on Women on Air, Plains 96.9 FM between 10 am and 12 noon. (Tune in at 10.00am for an exact playing time, but it’s likely to be after 11 am.)

For those not able to pick up Plains 96.9 FM, the interview will go onto podcast next week.

The Summer King

‘O frabjous day!’ My friend, Joanna Preston, has just won the Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize in Australia for her debut collection The Summer King.

The Mary Gilmore Award, conducted by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature and named after the writer and socialist Dame Mary Gilmore, is presented every second year to a first book of poetry by an Australian writer. And the judges had the following to say about Joanna’s collection, The Summer King:

“Joanna Preston’s title poem, the first in the book, jolts the reader with its imaginativeness and dramatic power, and these qualities are apparent in all the poems that follow. A strong grasp of the actual underlies imaginative representations of both the natural world and the humanly made, generating a dramatic intensity, even in the quieter poems. This is a book of succinct, taut writing that displays a depth of imaginative thought.”

And quite right, too. In my humble opinion also, this a wonderful book, filled with powerful, compelling poetry. Last year, when The Summer King was released, I wrote on Beatties Bookblog that:  ” … her [Joanna Preston’s] work is also distinguished by strength of structure; her command over the poetic form, including line endings, metre, and the rhythm and flow of her poetry; the emotional power of her work, and its range, from raw to delicate; also her mastery of the subtle nuance as well as not shying away from more in-your-face imagery.”

A view from which I do not not resile. I am just over the moon for Joanna, who—just by the way—also won the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award in 2008, which is New Zealand’s richest and among its most prestigious poetry prizes.  In  2007 a selection of her work was published as part of UK publisher Carcanet’s prestigious New Poetries series (in this case New Poetries IV) and Preston’s poem “The Pride of Lions” was selected by Les Murray for publication in Best Australian Poems 2005.

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About Joanna:

An Australian by birth, Joanna grew up in the NSW hinterland, both in rural small towns and spending time on her grandparents’ farm, Cowarral; she then married a New Zealander, which led her to become a resident of Christchurch, but a three year residence in the UK allowed her to complete a MPhil in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan, which is known internationally for having poets of the calibre of Sheenagh Pugh and Gillian Clarke on its faculty.

Thank you for all the comments on yesterday’s Tuesday Poem, My Last Duchess: Ferrerra by Robert Browning.  I am glad so many readers seem to have enjoyed it as much as I do. Another reason I like it so much, aside from my brief commentary yesterday, is that it “captures” what my historical reading has told me about the Renaissance princes: the immense wealth, the passionate interest in the arts—as well as the subtext of worldly advancement—juxtaposed with overweening pride (“I chuse never to stoop”).

This week I am carrying on with my poetry month interviews and will be  talking with Ingrid Horrocks about her first collection, Mapping the Distance (VUP). I have enjoyed reading the collection, which traverses family connections, both to the past and new generations,  as well as experiences of place and the connections between place and people, and am looking forward to the interview.

And here’s what the NZ Listener review had to say: ‘Horrocks writes beautifully and simply. She is not only a keen observer, but also that most fortunate of travellers – someone that things happen to.’

Most importantly though, I have dived into writing Part 3 of The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night, Book Two), although I must also put some time toward writing my next post for the Out of this Eos blog—I am thinking that this one will be on “reading for the Hugos” since I am eligible to vote this year. If you haven’t already checked out the list of Hugo Awards’ 2010 finalists for yourself—what are you waiting for?

Apparently the Mythopoeic Award winners will be out on July 11, so I’ll know then whether or not I picked the winner of the Children’s Award in my Monday post! 🙂

FERRARA

On June 13 I wrote about “What I’m Reading” and my self-imposed reading for the Mythopoeic Awards. I also promised to “post my personal winner here before the Mythopoeic Society make their final announcement.” This latter date is now very soon, and sadly, due to my own writing, blogging, radio interviewing, and other general life commitments I have only managed to get through all the Children’s/YA Finalists. As you may recall, the five finalists are (in alphabetical order, by author):

Kage Baker, The Hotel Under the Sand (Tachyon)

This is a story for younger readers (say 8-10) and tells the story of Emma, a young girl who is swept away from her life and family, but survives, discovers a hotel that has been buried under sand, called The Grand Wenlocke, makes new friends and has some adventures in the process, not necessarily all in that order.

Shannon Hale, Books of Bayern consisting of The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, and Forest Born (Bloomsbury): YA readers

The Goose Girl is a retelling of the traditional fairytale (one of my favourites as a child) and the subsequent three books tell the stories of the Goose Girl’s friends, Enna, Razo, and Rin, as they also discover old powers related to those of the Goose Girl.

Grace Lin, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Little, Brown)

Once again, this is a book for younger readers (8-10/11) and weaves a number of Chinese folk stories into the tale of Minli, who goes on a quest-journey to find the Old Man In the Moon and change her fortune; is joined by a dragon who can’t fly; and meets a number of friends and helpers, from an ox boy to a king, along the way.

Malinda Lo, Ash (Little, Brown)

Ash is a re-working of the Cinderella fairytale, one that keeps fairly closely to the original idea of the story, although with a twist on the fairy aid given to Cinderella. The most marked difference from the original is the lesbian take on Ash/Cinderella’s love interest. A book for YA readers.

Lisa Mantchev, Eyes Like Stars (Feiwel & Friends)

Another book for YA readers, Eyes Like Stars, introduces the story of Beatrice Shakespeare Smith, a foundling who has grown up in the Theatre, where the characters of every play ever written are bound by the Book. Clearly a “to be continued” story, this first novel is a coming-of-age story in which Beatrice begins to find out who she is and must decide whether or not to leave the Theatre.

So what’s my pick? First let’s talk parameters. The Mythopoeic Society is an organisation “devoted to the study of mythopoeic literature, particularly the works of members of the informal Oxford literary circle known as the ‘Inklings,’ ” the most famous of whom were JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis.  The Mythopoeic Awards for adult and children’s fiction are given to “… the fantasy novel, multi-volume novel, or single-author story … published during the previous year that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings”. For the children’s award the further proviso is given that the award: “honors books for younger readers (from “Young Adults” to picture books for beginning readers), in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia.”

In terms of what “the spirit of the Inklings” constitutes, reference to the overarching wisdom of Wikipedia suggests three main threads: mythopoeic vision in terms of the incorporation of myth, legend, fairytale (elements that characterise both Tolkien and Lewis’s work); strength of narrative Fantasy; and the exposition of Christian values through the writing. In terms of the latter element, I  assume from looking at previous winners that the Mythopoeic Society judges will look more at the expression of values such as compassion, mercy etc rather than Christianity per se (although I may of course, be quite wrong.) At any rate, I proceeded with my reading on that basis.

Now, back to the five Children’s Award finalists.  Obviously to get to the final list I knew these were all going to be good books, although I will admit to being disconcerted by the difference in reading age, particularly between The Hotel Under the Sand and Where the Mountain meets the Moon and the other three finalists. Because the reading level was so much younger, it was more diffcult for these two books to engage me as an adult reader, so I had to be careful to allow for that when making my evaluation. The other difficulty I felt was in trying to fairly measure the four  Books of Bayern, which constitute four independent stories, but have to be evaluated as one entity against the other four finalits—one of which, Eyes Like Stars is the first of a proposed series and where the story is clearly not complete.

So, in terms of evaluating against the “strength of narrative Fantasy” criterion, I did find some difficulty in comparing apples with apples.  For this reason, I probably gave more weight to the second criterion: “mythopoeic vision in terms of the incorporation of myth, legend, fairytale.” In this case, my summing up of the five contenders was:

The Hotel Under the Sand: This is a charming story, with a lovely Edwardian feel to both the hotel and the characters, but—I felt—the weakest of all the five finalists in terms of incorporating the elements of “myth, legend, and fairytale.”

Books of Bayern consisting of The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, and Forest Born: I have always loved Shannon Hale’s retelling of The Goose Girl fairytale, and the way she wove it into a real and believable novel. I do have a slight, enduring caveat, in that as a child I always loved the role of Falada and was disappointed with how that played out in Hale’s retelling. In terms of the mythopoeic elements, the author has created her own magic system for the Bayern world, based around the natural elements of wind, fire, water, but I do feel that the incorporation of the elements of “myth, legend and fairytale” are strongest in the first book. Hence the quandary: do I weight my evaluation on the basis of that first book, or do I make it on the incorporation of mythopoeic elements across the four. In the end, on the basis of its finalist placing as The Bayern Tales, I  decided that evaluation did have to be on the basis of all four books.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon: as with  The Hotel Under the Stand I found this a charming story and I felt it was one of the strongest contenders in terms of weaving elements of traditional Chinese folklore into an entertaining and adventurous quest for the young heroine.  I also gave it bonus points for the clear thread within the story of values such as compassion and mercy, in terms of being written in the “spirit of the Inklings”.

Ash: All such views are subjective, but I felt Malinda Lo’s book was the strongest contender in terms of incorporating deeper mythic and magical elements into the retelling of the Cinderella fairytale. She incorporated a parallel, mysterious, and dangerous world of the fey; together with a change in mythos in the mortal world; and an overlapping tradition of legendary/folktale encounters between fey and human that both gave Ash’s story texture and also had a bearing on how it played out. And in terms of the narrative, I felt the lesbian love story angled worked well. ’nuff said.

Stars in her Eyes: This book also suffered from not being quite of like kind, i.e The Bayern Tales is a completed four book series, whereas Stars is the first book in the Theatre Illuminata series, with two yet to come. But I did love the idea of it, the foundling brought up in the Theatre with the cast of every play ever written  as her companions. Slight overtones of Neil Gaiman’s  The Graveyard Book, perhaps, but in a good way, i.e Stars is definitely its own story. The working in of Shakespearean elements, particularly some of the more fantastical characters, such as Ariel (The Tempest), Ophelia (Hamlet) and the four fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, are well done, as is the sea witch from The Little Mermaid story. But these were the strongest claim to including mythopoeic elements of “myth, legend, and fairytale”—but in the end, for me, not as compelling as the use of similar elements in Ash, Where the Mountain meets the Moon and The Bayern Tales.

So in the end, here’s my “order” for the Mythpoeic Children’s Award 2010:

1: Malinda Lo, Ash (Little, Brown)

2: Grace Lin, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Little, Brown)

3: Shannon Hale, Books of Bayern consisting of The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, and Forest Born (Bloomsbury)

4: Kage Baker, The Hotel Under the Sand (Tachyon)

5: Lisa Mantchev, Eyes Like Stars (Feiwel & Friends) [mainly because the series is not yet complete.]

So now I have just have to wait, along with everyone else, to see who the Mythopoeic Award judges choose as their winner for 2010!  My breath is suitably bated. 🙂

But as I said at the beginning, these are all good books and I am just glad that the process of “reading for the awards” gave me the impetus to read all of them.

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Final Note: Kage Baker, the author of The Hotel Under the Sand, died earlier this year. The Hotel Under the Sand was her first book for children and, I believe, a testimony to “what might have been” if she had been able to write more books for younger readers.

SpecFic Christchurch Does the Long Lunch

On June 24 I blogged about the first meeting of a small group of Christchurch Spec Fic writers after we had all attended an event with Elizabeth Knox—and how we  agreed to meet again “soon” over the traditional long lunch. Such was the level of enthusiasm, that “soon” turned out to be yesterday, where the original “gang of eight” became a “gang of nine” around the long tabe at Cafe NG. The lunch was indeed satisfyingly long and many subjects were traversed, including the forthcoming launch of SpecFicNZ at Au Contraire (the New Zealand Science Fiction-Fantasy Convention in Wellington on 27-29 August), as well as short fiction, flash fiction, poetry, novellas and the midnight screening of Eclipse, the latest Twilight film . . . We all agreed that we wanted to keep the get-togethers and conviviality a regular event, so a monthly reprise of the lunch is planned. So if you write speculative fiction and either live in the Christchurch area, or are visting Christchurch on the first Saturday of the month, contact me via the “contact” button above and I will let you know when and where.

Foreign Country Anthology 2010 (Random Static)

A couple of writers around the table, namely Janine and Ripley, have short fiction in the newly available anthology Foreign Country from Random Static. To learn more, check out Ripley’s blog or preorder here.

Locus Fun!

Well, this bit’s fun for me, anyway.  Earlier this year, Writers House negotiated the sale of the UK/Australia & New Zealand rights to The Wall of Night quartet to Orbit (Little, Brown & Co, UK) and in May the news appeared in Locus. Cool, huh?! I’ve only just got my hands on the hard copy, so I thought I’d share it with you. 🙂

And here’s the actual words …

from Locus May 2010: People & Publishers